Studies of when youth classify academic achievement in racial terms have focused on the racial classification of behaviors and individuals. However, institutions--including schools--may also be racially classified. Drawing on a comparative interview study, we examine the school contexts that prompt urban black students to classify schools in…

A growing literature documents the myriad penalties for children of incarcerated fathers, but relatively little is known about how paternal incarceration contributes to educational outcomes in early and middle childhood. In this article, we use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to provide the first estimates of the…

Previous research demonstrates that students taught by teachers of the same race and ethnicity receive more positive behavioral evaluations than students taught by teachers of a different race/ethnicity. Many researchers view these findings as evidence that teachers, mainly white teachers, are racially biased due to preferences stemming from…

Researchers and policy makers overwhelmingly stress the harmonious nature of parent involvement. Researchers have focused on individual forms of parent involvement, yet collective efforts of parents in parent-teacher organizations (PTOs) are a key dynamic in schools. Drawing on a case study of an elementary school in an upper-middle-class…

This paper examines how high levels of social-cultural connectedness and academic excellence, inflected by gender and social class, constitute a particular school habitus of "assured optimism" at an elite Scottish girls' school. In Bourdieuian terms, Dalrymple is a "forcing ground" for the "intense cultivation"…

The elite international school is a rich site for sociological inquiry in global times. In this paper, we conceptualize the international school as a transnational space of agonist social class-making given the dynamic positioning of the complement of international school actors. We position international schoolteachers in the middle of these…

This paper draws upon the sociology of numbers, particularly work by Theodore Porter, to reveal the multifarious ways in which numbers actively constitute practices in schools. Drawing upon a case study of one low-performing school in a low-performing region in the state of Queensland, Australia, and theorising into the sociology of numbers, the…

Studies of teacher satisfaction suggest that satisfaction is related to both the racial composition and the organizational structure of the schools in which teachers work. In this article, the authors draw from theories of race and organizations to examine simultaneously the effects of school type (traditional public vs. charter) and racial…

The data for this paper are drawn from a qualitative research project involving a number of alternative education sites in Australia and the United Kingdom. In this paper, we focus only on the motives and teaching philosophies of a sample of teachers who have chosen to work in alternative education sites despite, for some, the prospect of…

In this paper we study the effects of power in a bathroom, which is a rarely analysed space in preschools, using empirical examples from a semi-ethnographic study conducted in New South Wales, Australia. We demonstrate that educators' understanding and practices mostly consider their own positioning in discourses and come short in accounting…

This article focuses on the concerns expressed by three female Muslim educators who are support staff at an English comprehensive school. Consistent with the debates associated with multiculturalism, group rights and feminism, the article illuminates spaces of gender constraint and possibility within the discourses shaping these women's lives…

Sex education is a politically contentious issue in many countries, and there are numerous, competing ideologies relating to the most appropriate methods to teach young people about sexual and reproductive health. This paper examines policy and practice in Uganda in light of two contrasting ideologies, namely morally conservative and comprehensive…

With the relaxation of the system of command in China's public schooling sector and the decline of ideological coercion in the post-Mao era, the Chinese state has reshaped its control over individual teachers. Much effort has been made to analyse the state's influence on teachers' academic activities at school, but little attention…

This article details the findings of a study into lecturers' perceptions of undergraduate employability. The investigation employed interviews with the staff on a BA (Hons) in Education Studies course at a post-1992 university. The aim was to examine staff beliefs regarding their students' potential employability in the business and…

A priority toward creating "active" citizens has been a feature of curricula reforms in many income-rich nations in recent years. However, the normative, one-size-fits-all conceptions of citizenship often presented within such curricula obscure the significant differences in how some young people experience and express citizenship. This…