The purpose of this paper is to illuminate that acquisition of knowledge, positive attitudes, skills and identity formation are by-products of primary socialisation and secondary interaction with people and institutions from all walks of family life, environmental experiences, and lifestyles. Based on the first phase of a qualitative case study on…

Smoke from massive wildfires blanketed Indonesia in late 1997. This paper examines the impact that this air pollution (particulate matter) had on fetal, infant, and child mortality. Exploiting the sharp timing and spatial patterns of the pollution and inferring deaths from "missing children" in the 2000 Indonesian Census, I find that the…

Dutro discusses an analysis of the disconnect between the material realities of the lives of a group of third-grade children living in poverty and the middle-class assumptions of a district-mandated unit within a literacy curriculum. The analysis arose in the context of an ethnographic study of identity and classroom literacy practices; it was…

While conducting a qualitative inquiry involving in-depth interviews on the perceptions of health risks within a group of profoundly poor urban families in the southern part of Mexico City, Martinez-Salgado and her interdisciplinary team of women interviewers got involved in emotionally complex situations with the women participants in the study.…

Using data from Add Health, this study investigates the role of neighborhood violence in mediating the effects of neighborhood disadvantage on high school graduation and teenage pregnancy. Results show that neighborhood violence is a strong predictor of both outcomes, net of individual, family, community and school controls. Neighborhood violence…

This article reviews educational literatures that should be relevant to helping individuals understand and improve the lot and life chances of girls and boys who are at risk in a global world. The authors began this review with a vignette from India, a country whose linguistic and ethnic diversity, whose international reputation for advances in…

The international and comparative education literature is not in agreement over the role of schools in student learning. The authors reexamine this debate across 25 diverse countries participating in the fourth-grade application of the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. The authors find the following: (a) In most cases,…

Although school climate has been thought to be especially important for racial minority and poor students (Booker, 2006; Haynes, Emmons, & Ben-Avie, 1997), little research has explored the significance of racial climate for these students. Furthermore, research in the area has tended to treat race, socioeconomic class, and gender separately,…

This interpretive case study focused upon the outcomes of a 14-year collaboration between a PreK-4 elementary school serving a high percentage of low-income students and a church located in the same urban neighborhood. The purposes of the investigation were to (1) perform a qualitative study that identified central themes underlying this…

Vocational education and training (VET) can contribute to the attainment of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. A key to economic and social progress is the training of better-qualified individuals and skilled enterprise staff who will be more productive, improving goods, increasing incomes and adapting to changing markets. Experts…

Students attacking other students. Students attacking teachers, support staff, and even community members. Disrespectful and threatening language, overwhelmed or inattentive parents, and an administrative system that often appears unable to bring back order in the classroom. These are stories have become an everyday part of teaching in urban…

Many rural California high schools are impacted by the disadvantages of poverty, non-English speaking students, limited resources, changing demographics, and challenges of the rural context. Focusing on contemporary leadership theories and school-community interrelationships, this qualitative study examines the practices of educational leaders in…

In this article, the author elucidates the identity work of Lao American urban, immigrant students, highlighting ambivalent identities that do not fit into notions of bicultural or binary identities. It examines the various discourses and practices that inform and shape the experiences and identities of urban, Lao American high school students. It…

This study explores within-district fiscal resource allocation across elementary schools in Texas and Ohio large city school districts and in their surrounding metropolitan areas. Specifically, I ask whether districts widely reported as achieving greater resource equity through adoption of Weighted Student Funding (WSF) have in fact done so. I…

This essay explores poetics and politics among Latino Catholics in Fresno, California, who draw on a tradition of storytelling and religious ritual to mitigate the hardships that result from their marginal social assignment. Storytelling and ritual allow them to recognize where faith and daily life intersect, exposing the tensions--including those…