Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) youth face hostile and exclusionary learning environments. A qualitative phenomenographic method involving semistructured interviews of seven secondary school administrators was conducted to identify perceptions of experiences creating a safe and inclusive environment for students…

After nearly a decade of political polarization and deepening conflicts, Thailand is embarking on yet another cycle of reform and democratization project. While one of the proposed reform and democratizing strategies is to strengthen civic education curriculum and value inculcation, there has been a limited critical understanding on how…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the reduction of school violence from the management point of view. It reflects on the utterances by teachers, principals, learners and members of school governing bodies (SGBs) to establish the influence that school management practices can have on the prevalence of school violence.…

The unique characteristics of tablet PCs promise important benefits for education. Yet, little is known about the rationale underlying teachers' decisions concerning their educational uses within the constraints of daily classroom practice. The current multiple case study investigated the practical considerations informing nine secondary school…

Emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) in mainstream schools in Ireland attract much attention and significant resources, yet little research has been conducted in the Irish context about how this concept is understood by practitioners, what influences that understanding nor how that influences provision in schools. This paper is based on…

An exploration is presented of how urban spaces, polarized by class and ethnicity, structure the basic conditions of emerging local school markets. The authors investigate how the distribution of symbolic capital, or "hot knowledge" of the market, affects schools, the market, and the urban spaces themselves. The study is guided by…

This study explores participant experiences at two contrasting high schools in a large, urban school district in crisis who implemented mandatory community-based learning (CBL) (e.g. community service, work-based internships) as a policy of reform. Rawls' theory of justice as fairness is used to examine capacity of the district formal policy to…

Beyond policy, this paper investigates the actual practice related to the integration of new media in schools. Despite continuous government effort to integrate new media in schools, the use of digital technologies for teaching and learning in the classroom remains limited. This study suggests that, apart from the issue related to the state of…

An exploratory qualitative case study of 10 government secondary schools (Grades 7-12) in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, was conducted to investigate the extent to which the revised NSW gifted and talented policy (2004) has contributed to gifted program quality and scope. Findings from the qualitative analysis of in-depth interview data with…

This article explores the critical role of school leaders in language policy change, and specifically in shifting their language education policies and practices from monolingual to multilingual. We examine the process of language policy change in three schools that were involved in a project aimed at increasing the knowledge base of school…

How to best support pupils who are considered to be in danger of temporary or permanent exclusion from secondary school is an issue that is currently exercising policy makers, school managers and teachers in the UK. Using primary research data gained from interviews with secondary pupils, school managers and behaviour support staff in a group of…

The concentration of this study was the documentation and analysis of ways in which competing conceptions of citizenship play out in actual classroom settings. Examining three cases in the context of the Israeli education system, its findings show that civics teachers' views and beliefs influenced ways in which they interpreted the curriculum…

In spite of decades of research and more recent guidance by Government, bullying in schools remains a serious concern to young people and to educational practitioners. This two year qualitative study explored the meanings eight teenagers gave to bullying they had experienced, and related this to an analysis of previous research and school policies…

Although mandatory attendance is easily determined in a traditional, brick-and-mortar school, monitoring and enforcing attendance and truancy in an online environment is less obvious. Despite this challenge, virtual schools, especially those that are publicly funded, have a requirement to ensure that students who are enrolled are actually logging…

Drawing on a larger study, this qualitative investigation explored the factors that African American and Latino high school students perceived as barriers to positive educational opportunities. Eighteen African American and Latino urban high school students comprised the sample. The findings indicated that perceived barriers to positive…