Through a critical discourse analysis of three Asian American organizations' rhetoric around race and education, we explore the activism of Asian Americans working against affirmative action and other race-based educational policies. We examine the way these groups engage ideological discourses regarding race, civil rights, and the freedom to…

This article examines four discourses of volunteer/service work--charity, leisure, citizenship, and border crossing--in terms of how they construct relationships between those who serve and those who are served. Specifically, it analyzes the discourse of border crossing, which assumes White middle-class students crossing a border to work in…

This paper is a critical discourse analysis of teacher resource materials about girl bullying. The "mean girl" phenomenon has been widely taken up as one of the current key narratives about schools and school girls. This paper argues for the importance of understanding the origins of this discourse within behavioural psychology, which…

The paper sets out to challenge the notions of "affordable" private schools in the context of South Africa. It is guided by one main question: "affordable private schools for whom?" It argues that, contrary to claims by its public and private proponents, affordable private schools in South Africa do not cater for poor children.…

Grouping students by "ability" is a topic of long-standing contention in English education policy, research and practice. While policy-makers have frequently advocated the practice as reflecting educational "standards", research has consistently failed to find significant benefits of "ability" grouping; and indeed has…

In undertaking a critical discourse analysis of the professed aims and objectives of one of the most influential curricula in the teaching of thinking, this article foregrounds issues of power and ideology latent in curricular discourses of rationality. Specifically, it documents the subtle but powerful ways in which political and class…

The research we report on was conducted from our computer desktops. We have not met the people we have studied; they are part of what Eichhorn described as a "textual community", gathered around the threads of online conversations associated with a website servicing the needs of English-language speakers in Germany. The thread in…

This paper examines the multiple ways in which health policy relating to obesity, diet and exercise is recontextualised and mediated by teachers and pupils in the context of social class in the UK. Drawing on a case study of a middle-class primary school in central England, the paper documents the complexity of the policy process, its uncertainty,…

The present paper explores middle-class fathers' educational work by studying how they and their partners are involved in their children's education at home, in school, and how they investigate school options and make decisions about educational issues. Drawing on data from an ethnographic study of 30 dual-earner couples in the Greater Los Angeles…

This paper explores the ways physical and health education is justified in two school settings: a private girls' school and a co-educational government school located in the same Australian city. Physical and health education policies and interview material with teachers are drawn on to explore the meanings taken up by the schools. Whilst similar…

This paper presents a psychosocial analysis of interview data of three Canadian, middle-class, Jewish mothers engaged in processes and practices of "school choice". We consider how middle-class, white identity intersects with Jewish ethnicity. We also examine how commitments to Canadian ideals of multiculturalism sit in contradiction…

Two-way bilingual immersion education, offered in a fast-growing number of primary schools in the United States, provides primary language maintenance to minority language speakers while simultaneously offering an enrichment "foreign" language immersion experience to English-speaking children in the same classroom, generally with the same teacher.…

Social justice, equality and inclusion are complex and inter-linked concepts and feature prominently in Scottish social policy rhetoric. This paper begins with an overview of the discourses surrounding these concepts and the ways in which they are used in Scottish education policy, which, in general, is founded on principles of universalism. The…

In studying sociolinguistic rules, researchers must be aware of some guiding principles: that (1) these rules are below the conscious level of awareness, and (2) rules of speaking differ across cultural groups, with none being more correct than another. Even when members of different cultural groups interact in the same language they may find it…