The rise of China as the world factory in the last few decades has been accompanied by a rapid expansion in vocational education. A growing number of youth from rural backgrounds now have the chance to receive post-compulsory education in vocational training schools. Using human capital theory as an analytical focus, this study examines their…

Research on the merit of school tracking policies has long been at the center of heated educational debate. Unfortunately, while the trend in studies looking at tracking in schools has continued, the student perspective has been underutilized in much of this previous research. Recently, however, there has been a surge in research that focuses on…

In this multisite case study, we examine the personal capacities of six high school principals who have developed the leadership capacities of other leaders in their respective schools. Participants were purposefully selected by two teams of researchers in two states of the United States, one on the east coast and one on the west coast, who…

The new schooling-leaving age policy in New South Wales, a state in Australia, requires all students to stay at school until they are 17 years old. The policy was introduced in January 2010, with little warning and, it appears, little consideration of its impact in complex contexts. In south-western Sydney, the most diverse region in the city, the…

Although many states in the United States are adopting policies that require all students to complete college-preparatory science classes to graduate from high school, such policies have not always led to improved student outcomes. There is much speculation about the cause of the dismal results, but there is scant research on the processes by…

In a national context of standards and high-stakes testing, concerns are emerging about challenges to the already tenuous position of the citizenship mission in the social studies curriculum. In this qualitative study, the authors administered a survey to social studies teachers in Ohio and conducted follow-up interviews focusing on the present…

The purpose of this research is to discover the extent to which prospective higher education students still in secondary education might identify with international branch campuses and the extent to which organisational identification and its individual components might influence students' behavioural intentions towards these institutions. The…

This paper looks at policy discourse around "youth at risk" (YAR) by asking two questions: First, how have problems and solutions related to YAR been constructed by Governments? And second, how do particular technologies of Government (differentiation of schools, programmes, and course streams, and the funding and identification of…