Analyses of elicited pantomime, primarily of English-speaking children, show that preschool-aged children are more likely to symbolically represent an object with gestures depicting an object's form rather than its function. In contrast, anecdotal reports of spontaneous gesture production in younger children suggest that children use multiple…

This paper investigates the emergence of "internationalised" schools as a form of middle-class aspiration in Kochi, India. It complements recent literature on the growth of international schools catering for host country elites, and shows how private schools are actively engaged in extending the aspiration for internationalised education…

This paper presents a theoretical argument regarding the power of school to shape parental involvement in culturally informed ways. The paper emerges out of preliminary fieldwork among Jewish middle-class parents in a town in northern Israel, during which our attention was drawn to the intense activity in and around their children's transition to…

The rhetoric about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in urban schools reflects a desire to imagine a new city that is poised to compete in a STEM-centered future. Therefore, STEM has been positioned as a critical part of urban education reform efforts. In various US cities, schools labeled as "failing"…

This article highlights four qualitative studies that examine young diverse populations (i.e. middle-class African-American learners, Latinx immigrant children, emergent bilingual writers, and teachers of low-socioeconomic African-American learners) using culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogies as our theoretical lens. The…

The issues that African American students face daily in suburban schools are different from what their White counterparts as well as other African American students living in urban areas face. Such issues are grounded in the cultural and social identity development of individuals. Not only do African American students have to learn to deal with…

This article explores how a formal state examination system operates as a tool which enables the cultural reproduction of the middle classes in an increasingly market-driven education system in Ireland. It is based on a study of a group of final-year girls approaching the high-stakes terminal Leaving Certificate examination. The success of this…

This article focuses on the bodies of schoolgirls as visualised and represented in a short film of Finnish secondary schools for girls in the 1950s. The film, "Oma tyttökouluni" ("My Own Girls' School") was released in 1957 and was screened in cinemas in advance of feature films. Although the short film was made in a…

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…

In the present moment of global capitalism, the marketisation of higher education is a reality in the Global South and North. Yet, the Southern experience of marketisation differs from that of the North. This article examines how market-based development in Sri Lanka since the economic liberalisation of 1977 has reshaped Sri Lankan university…

Far from providing relief for working families, recent proposals to eliminate school property taxes in Pennsylvania would increase taxes on the middle class while sabotaging the chance to adequately fund Pennsylvania schools for middle- and low-income families. This report provides the first estimates of the impact of property tax elimination…

With the goal of motivating a broader swath of philanthropists to make well-informed, actionable "big bets" to catalyze dramatic improvements in social mobility in the United States, a Bridgespan Group team spent a year researching and developing prototypes of potential large-scale investments that aim to build pathways to the middle…

This case is based on our cross-cultural study of Israeli middle-class mothers' engagement in their children's education. The mothers in our study belong to three social-cultural groups: Palestinian Israeli, Russian immigrants, and Israeli-born Jewish. These three groups participate today in the Israeli middle class, albeit with different…

Social class differences in educational decision-making form an important explanation for persisting educational inequalities, particularly in choice-driven systems with early tracking. Nevertheless, little is known about the process preceding these choices, especially when school and track choice are interrelated. Building on school choice…

Sylvia Wynter's wide-ranging intellectual contributions contain a poetics of being and becoming human that serve to counter the hegemony of developmental psychology and its articulation of the child in teacher education. In this article, I use Wynter's insights to unsettle the universality of this child figure to reveal the child of Man, a…