This article examines the school choices of families who have recently experienced downward mobility during the economic crisis in Spain. Based on semi-structured interviews we analyse the educational strategies of the families in a Bourdieusian framework, focusing on how they cope with the loss of their perceived social status. Prior to the…

Using open-ended, semi-structured interviews, this study pulls together insights on social class and geography to explore how parents choose schools differently for their children in a unique Israeli setting. Querying parents' feelings and perceptions about themselves and others in their immediate and distant locality offers an opportunity to…

This paper draws on a three-year critical ethnography which interrogated intersections of social class, school and identity in an urban Irish community. The focus here is on the psycho-spatial disidentifications, inscriptions and class fractioning enacted throughout the school and community of Portown by a cohort of succeeding students from this…

This article employs Bourdieu's conceptual tools to unpack family influences on students' subject and university choices in China. This empirical study employed mixed research approaches, using both quantitative and qualitative methods, to examine students' choices of subjects and universities in a sample of secondary school students from the age…

This paper examines post-primary school choice processes in the urban Irish working-class community of Portown. Here, there is an awareness of hegemonic neoliberal ideals and how school choice becomes a significantly classed space characterised by market ideologies and structural inequality. This critical ethnography explored the world through…

Although working-class boys' disengagement with education continues to be a major public concern, the focus of educational research has been on anti-school, hyper-masculine so-called "laddish" masculinities and their salience within learner identities. What tend to be forgotten are the areas in which low-achieving boys actively engage…

Family policy was a key component of the "New" Labour government's family, social and education policy, and a wide range of family focused initiatives and interventions designed to "support" families and improve individual, family and social outcomes were introduced. The post-May 2010 coalition government's family policy…

This paper addresses some particular aspects of the complex intersections between race and social class. It is based upon data collected as part of a two-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project exploring the "Educational Strategies of the Black Middle Classes" (BMC). ("The Educational Strategies of the Black…

Young people's perceptions may offer an insight into the complex associations between language, education and social class. However, little research has asked young people what they think of their own talking. Forty-two British adolescents aged between 14 and 15 years were interviewed: 21 attended a school in a working class area; 21 attended…

For more than three decades, community schools have aimed to improve education and neighborhood outcomes in low-income, urban communities of color. In this article, we position community schools as a place-based reform strategy that pushes back on top-down accountability systems. While most research on urban school reform focuses on improving…

This article studies the educational strategies adopted by university students from different class backgrounds in a Scandinavian welfare regime. Studies show distinct differences among classes relating to economic considerations, risk-averse behavior, and patterns of socialization among university students. We investigate these differences…