Our world has become starkly inequitable with 0.01% of the population owning 11% of all wealth, 1% owning 38% of all wealth, 10% owning 76% of all wealth, and the lower 50% owning almost nothing. Amongst all of these, there is a group of the most vulnerable, the most underserved, and ironically the most silent because, for the most part, they…

This article seeks to introduce a new historical explanation as to why left-wing working-class women engaged in liberal, middle-class organisations during the first wave of feminism. The article specifically deals with middle-class associations and clubs that had educational purposes. Instead of focusing on the larger explanatory scheme of the…

This paper explores a key dilemma of the Chinese middle class as it appears in their apparent adherence to official language policy despite their lack of direct knowledge of that policy. Using fieldwork data from Hangzhou, I show that a group of middle-class parents worked together to build an "Ancient Way Academy" for their children to…

The preparation of teachers for diversity within and between schools is a growing focus in teacher education worldwide, and particularly in South Africa, where the education landscape has shifted dramatically since the democratic elections of 1994. While diversity is a recurring theme in the literature, the matter of contextual diversity still…

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.…

In 1960s Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian white middle class embraced the samba music written by working-class blacks as a source of authentic national culture. Cultural mediators, or individuals that bridged sociocultural spheres and negotiated the terms in which work was produced and circulated, were essential to samba's mainstream acceptance. This…

"Middle-class School Choice in Urban Spaces" examines government funded public schools from a range of perspectives and scholarship in order to examine the historical, political and economic conditions of public schooling within a globalized, post-welfare context. In this book, Rowe argues that post-welfare policy conditions are…

The global middle class (GMC) is a theoretical construct that seeks to globalise a set of attributes identified in studies of school choice in the global north, and to a lesser extent in developing nations in Asia. As theorised by Ball a mobile middle class with cosmopolitan sensibilities drives international education options in global cities.…

The economic boom of the 1990s veiled a grim reality: in addition to the growing gap between rich and poor, the gap between good and bad quality jobs was also expanding. The postwar prosperity of the mid-twentieth century had enabled millions of American workers to join the middle class, but as author Arne L. Kalleberg shows, by the 1970s this…

This paper examines how two sites of adult learning in the food movement create educational alternatives to the dominant U.S. food system. It further examines how these pedagogies challenge racialised, classed and gendered ideologies and practices in their aims, curricular content, and publically documented educational processes. The first case is…

This paper presents evidence from the biographies of samples totaling 1,215 young adults in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, who all reached age 16 between 1986 and 1992, and whose subsequent life histories coincided with their countries' transitions from communism. The evidence is used to examine whether new classes are being created in the new…

Over the span of all of the years that the Levada Center has been in operation, one of the tasks of the research collective has been to analyze the behavior of "advanced" groups whose characteristic way of life, attitudes, and assessments might have the significance, to other strata of the society, of a model, and provide them with an…

Argues that the propensity and capacity of many adults to conduct self-directed learning projects is now well proven, and that researchers should now infuse a spirit of self-critical scrutiny into this developing field of research. Advances four criticisms regarding the current state of self-directed learning research. (Author/CT)

Crime has become central to any discussion about the consolidation of democracy in South Africa. Concerns about crime intensified in the years after 1994, as the country attempted to grapple with the apparent "crime wave" that accompanied the transition. A decade later crime is still a priority for government and a concern among…

The dominant cultural image of veteran teachers is conveyed in the fictional life story of Mr Chipping of Brookfield School as conveyed in James Hilton's short novel "Goodbye, Mr Chips." This reflects emerging ideals and practices of teacher professionalism in England from the 1920s onwards in terms of its emphasis on autonomy and…