This article demonstrates how using feedback mechanisms or "loops" as heuristic devices can help ethnographers explain the interior logic, robustness and contradictions within complex educational assemblages. After reviewing the use of feedback mechanisms in the natural and social sciences, particularly practice theory, the article…

Middle- and upper-middle-class students continue to outpace those from less privileged backgrounds. Most attempts to redress this inequality focus on the issue of access to financial resources, but as "Producing Success" makes clear, the problem goes beyond mere economics. In this eye-opening study, Peter Demerath examines a typical suburban…