This paper asks whether education is a viable route to better livelihoods and social inclusion for children living in poor urban areas in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It uses qualitative interviews with 36 students aged 11-16, living in slum and middle-class areas, and also draws on data from a larger, mixed-methods study to provide context. Many children…

This Forum issue discusses the centrality of the fieldwork in doctoral research. The inevitability of researchers' influence and of their values apparent during and after their fieldwork calls for a high degree of reflexivity. Since the standard methodology textbooks do not sufficiently guide on addressing such challenges, doctoral researchers go…

International students' connectedness with their peers, institutions and the broader community significantly affects their learning and wellbeing. It is important to understand their multiple desires for intercultural connectedness in order to nurture it. This paper analyses the motives and nature of international students' intercultural…

In Nepal, the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) assessment taken by 16-year-olds at the end of Grade 10 of formal schooling performs a similar function to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examination in England in that it summarises individual, school, district and national achievement and acts as a filtering mechanism to the…

The paper considers citizenship formation at universities, drawing on the example of a student leadership project at the University of the Free State, a formerly White South African university, in a higher education context and society where racialised difference continues to influence peer relationships. The paper proposes a multi-dimensional…

Drawing on data collected in South Korea, Jordan and the USA, this paper examines the degree to which security concerns impact the schooling of North Korean refugees in South Korea and Iraqi refugees in Jordan. Operating from a framework examining the intersection of migration and securitisation, the authors find that accounts of negative images…

Much comparative research into education-related beliefs has exploited questionnaires developed in one culture for use in another. This has been particularly the case in mathematics education, the focus of this paper. In so doing, researchers have tended to assume that translation alone is sufficient to warrant a reliable and valid instrument for…

Because identity (language and culture) are central to Pacific knowledge and knowledge construction processes, Pacific students' educational experiences should be viewed through a cultural lens that sees Pacific knowledge and practices as valid and valued. This study explores the relationship between culture and educational outcomes as seen in how…

In this article, I describe the ways in which two British university students negotiated their identity as second language learners during a year abroad in Italy and the extent to which their struggles helped them to "fit in" into the new social and cultural contexts. Building upon the lived experiences of the two participants, I follow…

The present paper, based on an ethnographic study of a government school and a low-cost private school in Andhra Pradesh, India, argues that the students of a government school and a private school have two different worlds and are socialised differently. As children progress from childhood to adolescence, the transition is accompanied by…

This article aims to report a single case study of how an Islamic boarding school ("pesantren") in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, prepared students for a multicultural Indonesia. Despite negative portrayal by the Western media about increasing Islamic radicalism in some "pesantren", many "pesantren" are in fact transforming…

This study examines the higher education experience among Palestinian Arab females in two national spaces and seeks to determine whether studying at an Arab institution of higher learning in a nearby Arab country can alleviate the emotional and economic difficulties that affect Palestinian women at Israeli universities. What can institutions of…

This paper discusses the background and key findings of a two-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded mixed-method research project (2006-2008) which was designed, within the context of university internationalisation, to provide an investigation of the experiences of first-year international students during their undergraduate…

This article examines the views of "immigrant-background" children on their own linguistic and cultural "differences" within the different educational contexts of primary classrooms in France and England. With the increase in and changing composition of immigration in Europe, the integration of populations from diverse…

This article explores the extent to which participation in alternative human values education affects students' conceptions of agency amidst the economic and HIV/AIDS crises in Ndola, Zambia. Drawing on the concept of transformative agency as developed by critical research in education, this study examines conceptions of agency based on data…