This paper explores the complex landscape of alternative provision across the UK and its implications for school exclusion. Drawing on interviews with over 400 professionals, parents, and pupils in ten selected local authorities in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, we find marked differences in the scale and nature of provision. These…

Across the U.S., a growing movement toward education freedom is driving the rise of "edupreneurs"--educators, parents and entrepreneurs creating innovative learning environments designed to meet the needs of individual kids. As used in this paper, the term edupreneur includes owners and operators of private schools and programs for…

Huntingdale Technical School was opened in 1972 as an 'alternative' school operating within its state government education system in south-eastern Australia. This article is written from the author's perspective as a former student, and draws on data from Oral History interviews with four of the school's former teachers to examine how the school…

The English mass state education system, developing over 150 years, has created subsystems for children and young people who had difficulty in functioning at or beyond 'mainstream' schooling, or whose behaviour was deemed inappropriate. While many descriptions and labels proliferated in the education system, by 1981 children notionally had been…

Alternative certification programs have been created to fill vacant educator positions in the widening educator shortage. The purpose of this qualitative generic study was to understand alternative leadership preparation programs (ALPPs) by interviewing school leaders that received their school leadership certification at an ALPP. The gap is based…

A growing body of research distinguishes between official systems of accountability and "felt" accountability - how people feel responsible to one another across a web of complex, intersecting relationships. Research in the behavioral sciences suggests that while such feelings have a dramatic effect on results, these have been…

Alternative education programs or schools can be defined in several ways, and individuals may have various perspectives on what alternative programs are expected to be. For some, alternative placements may be seen as a setting for students who experience difficulty within public schools, some may think of an exclusive boarding school, or some…

From the 1950s and onwards, Pierre Parlebas developed an original approach to education, which over time has spread beyond the borders of France. This study focuses on how Parlebas was led to develop the concept of an "alter-education of sport" and analyses those concepts through the lens of contemporary democratic societies. It will…

The so-called shadow education system of private supplementary tutoring has in some contexts been described as privatization by default rather than by government policy. An allied literature shows that while such tutoring claims to supplement, it may also undermine schooling. This paper, with data from Myanmar, identifies ways in which shadow…

In Japan, the increase in school nonattendance during compulsory education has become a significant social issue. Adaptation assistance classes play an important role as public institutions supporting students with school nonattendance, aiming to facilitate re-attendance and promote social independence. Despite the lack of thorough evaluation of…

In this paper I demonstrate how zines (pronounced 'zeen', a word that is a contraction of 'magazine') about space science can be theorised as a site of science education at the margins. Through exploring different zines and their potential to create counter-narratives I offer a series of objects that might reshape how we teach and learn about…

Does an assembly make a school a democratic space? What happens if a participant is not interested? Democracy for innovation or democracy for social transformation? Can a democratic school be neutral and apolitical? These are some of the questions this article will try to discuss by focusing on democratic aspects of alternative educational…

It is well established through existing research that flexi schools effectively re-engage disenfranchised young people back into education. However, there is a gap in large-scale studies that privileges the voices of young people who attend flexi schools, particularly regarding their experiences and perspectives on teaching and learning at their…

Alternative provision (AP), in particular Pupil Referral Units (PRUs), have been criticised as a forgotten part of the education system, side-lined and stigmatised as somewhere only the very worst behaved pupils go. In response to this criticism, PRUs have now been academised to become AP Academies and new AP schools have been set up--AP Free…

Purpose: This study aims to examine how learners manage their self-directed learning (SDL) in different SDL contexts through the lens of structuration theorizing. Design/methodology/approach: In this comparative case study, data were collected primarily from in-depth semi-structured interviews with three self-directed learners aged between 15 and…