Policy for young children in South Africa is now receiving high-level government support through the ANC's renewed commitment to redress poverty and inequity and creating "a better life for all" as promised before the 1994 election. In this article, I explore the power relations, knowledge hierarchies and discourses of childhood, family…

Grouping students by "ability" is a topic of long-standing contention in English education policy, research and practice. While policy-makers have frequently advocated the practice as reflecting educational "standards", research has consistently failed to find significant benefits of "ability" grouping; and indeed has…

New digital technologies are changing the nature and contexts of work in Canada. It is essential that education policy and practice acknowledge and respond to these changes. The impacts and implications of new and emerging technologies for work can be summarized within two paradigms: technology is replacing work through automation and digital…

This article explores using spoken word poetry and song analysis in the classroom to inspire students to analyze their identities and strive for social justice in their research efforts. Poetry is empowering. It can show students how people express themselves, push them to consider their own identities, and inspire them to seek social change.…

This dissertation examines the politics of design practice in urban India through an ethnography of a Delhi-based design and innovation studio. The dissertation focuses on the ideological continuities between the profession of design and middle class Indian citizenship post-liberalization, twinning arts of governance through the shaping of the…

How do undergraduates engage authority figures in college? Existing explanations predict class-based engagement strategies. Using in-depth interviews with 89 undergraduates at an elite university, I show how undergraduates with disparate precollege experiences differ in their orientations toward and strategies for engaging authority figures in…

Finland has been celebrated as a country where everyone has the possibility to educate themselves and to get ahead in life through education. However, social differences of educability continue to persist and social differences of employability are further construed in the neo-liberal market economy. In this article we will examine 2 adult…

Research has shown social class differences in undergraduate engagement, yet we know little about the reasons for these differences. Drawing on interviews and participant observation with undergraduates at an urban, public comprehensive university, this ethnographic study investigates the academic engagement strategies of students from different…

Empirical research on cultural and social capital has generally ignored the key role of institutions in setting standards that determine the contingent value of this capital. Furthermore, many studies presume that the yielding of profit from cultural, social, and economic capital is automatic. Bourdieu's concept of field highlights the ''rules of…

Research points to sections of the middle-class repopulating the "ordinary" urban public school and whilst there are key differences in how they are navigating public school choices, from "seeking a critical mass" to resisting traditional methods of choice and going "against-the-grain", or collectively campaigning for…

Growing pressure on parents to equip their children with the skills required for future success, coupled with an increased focus on providing quality learning experiences in the early years, has contributed to an upsurge in the enrolment of young children in formal (often privatised) activities. Moreover, in response to growing societal concerns…

The educational reproduction of elite masculinity in postcolonial societies has not been properly studied. This is partly because the postcolonial masculinities of non-western elites are accomplished through the cultivation of naturalized practices signifying the body politic of the nation-state. In Singapore, same-sex elite schools of colonial…

We examine school choices made by western expatriate parents in post-colonial Hong Kong in order to understand the essence of imagined global citizenship and its implications for existing ethnic and class inequalities in the education system. Responding to changes in the global job market, a small but increasingly visible group of parents are…

The global middle class (GMC) is a theoretical construct that seeks to globalise a set of attributes identified in studies of school choice in the global north, and to a lesser extent in developing nations in Asia. As theorised by Ball a mobile middle class with cosmopolitan sensibilities drives international education options in global cities.…

Research on family socialization of positive emotion has primarily focused on the infant and toddler stages of development, and relied on observations of parent-child interactions in highly structured laboratory environments. Little is known about how children's spontaneous expressions of positive emotion are maintained in the uncontrolled…