In the United States, most local jurisdictions are challenged as they seek to maintain fiscal strength. But majority-Black jurisdictions are uniquely burdened due to legacy and contemporary racist and racialized policies and racial capitalism. Leaders in majority-Black locales make harsher budget trade-offs than those in majority-White…

This article explores how social class, "race," and their intersections manifest in Finnish popular music education (PME) through an exploration of popular music practices in one upper elementary music classroom where I worked as a teacher-researcher. By engaging with systems reflexivity, I illustrate how social class, racialization, and…

This article examines perceptions of colonial modernity as experienced by middle-class Bengali children in Calcutta at the turn of the twentieth century. This was the time in which the foundations of modern Calcutta and modern Bengali childhood were laid, and in which urban cultures of education and entertainment gradually replaced precolonial…

Studies have highlighted the growing phenomenon of 'concerted cultivation' wherein middle-class parents are enrolling their children into multiple paid-for organised leisure activities as a way of cultivating their skills and reproducing class advantage. In unpacking the class disparities in children's organised leisure participation, researchers…

Parental choices in non-compulsory pre-primary education are typically analysed in relation to dispositions influenced by class-related cultural capital. In Saudi Arabia, where early childhood education is yet to be fully institutionalised, other local socio-cultural dynamics enter in the formulation and approval of choice. This article focuses on…

Pursuing a college degree--and the open future for young adults it is believed to secure--anchors what it means to be middle class in the United States today. Acting on the conviction that the rising generation can and should do better than their parents is a middle-class inheritance, and getting young adults to and through college is at the heart…

As policy makers consider revisions to the Higher Education Act (HEA), understanding the impact of increasing the size of Pell grants is important if it is to have the intended impact of improving educational outcomes for lower income students across the various types of colleges and universities. Understanding institutional behavior is a place to…

Opt Out Florida, a largely White, middle-class social movement comprised of parents -- most often, mothers -- opposed to high-stakes standardised testing in U.S. public schools, has received media criticism for its homogeneity. This article elucidates that trend while simultaneously offering a more nuanced view, using theories of internalised…

This article argues that food acts and eating in the nineteenth century children's novel "The Coral Island" (1858) reveal adult socializing intentions in the context of an expanding British Empire. Written during a transitional historical moment, R. M. Ballantyne's "The Coral Island" communicates to middle- and upper-class…

In international comparisons, Sweden is one of the countries with the lowest number of children growing up in poverty; its material standard is high, and welfare services are extensive and heavily subsidised. How child poverty can be understood in that context is interrogated in the article. The point of departure for the discussion is Swedish…

In this paper, I use interview data drawn from ethnographic work on a Division 1 collegiate cross country team at a large midwestern university in the United States to demonstrate the ways that possessive individualistic discourses around hard work are embodied in classed subjectivities. I find that middle class women, the products of concerted…

The learning crisis in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is significantly marked by a high degree of heterogeneity in student learning outcomes. Such variations, extending across student abilities, backgrounds, and learning speeds, are believed to be partly a result of teachers failing to devote sufficient attention to students who are…

This study explores the experiences of middle-class transnational Latina mothers whose children are enrolled in gentrified dual-language ­programs. Drawing upon the theory of differential consciousness, I explored how these mothers' own complex identities informed their navigation of conflicting discourses that position dual-language education on…

Dual Language (DL), a bilingual program has expanded at a rapid rate in New York City. This qualitative study explores choice in three public schools (n = 42) with strand Spanish DL programs to determine the role it plays in middle- and higher-income families' decision making. Factors such as location, pedagogical style, environment, and peer…

This chapter describes the community college challenge to support all learners to succeed in college and enter the middle class as citizens, parents, and workers.