This article, based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork, explores the ways in which eight Asian American immigrant high school girls construct a borderland community, which they call the "Basement Group," after the place where they gather at school. While the girls struggle with displacement in the borderlands, including isolation in…

This paper explores the experiences of 12 young people, all teenagers, who have chosen to attend alternative schools known as flexible learning options within the Australian context. Using a phenomenological approach, the study seeks to understand their experiences outside the normalised public discourse that they had "disengaged" from…

While first-generation college students are "at risk", the majority "do" persist. Using in-depth interviews with 28 white college students I ask: How do white, first-generation, working-class students understand their college experiences, especially in terms of their academic, social, and cultural adjustment? Moreover, what kinds of factors seem…

Early resistance theorists analyzed working class students' oppositional behavior at a time of high availability of viable jobs in manufacturing. They argued that oppositional behavior constituted a rejection of middle class culture motivated by an implicit understanding of the myth of meritocracy. But times have changed. This paper seeks to…

Narratives are important to us not only or even primarily because they tell about our past lives, but because they enable us to make sense of the present. We attempt to create coherence and give meaning to our lives by learning to read time backwards. This paper examines a counter narrative of entry into the teaching profession showing how the…

Qualitative research methodologies comprise distinct traditions, each of which is based on its own assumptions and discrete methods for collecting, analyzing and reporting data. This paper examines a distinctive approach to qualitative research that was employed in a recent study to open a gateway to understanding the impact of the shootings at…