Critical pedagogy (CP) with the eventual aim of creating changes in society towards the socially just world rests upon the premise that language learning is understood as a sociopolitical event. Schools and classrooms are not merely seen as the neutral and apolitical sites or oxymoron of transmitting taken-for-granted knowledge and common sense to…

This paper provides an in-depth analysis into two case studies aimed at addressing the digital divide in two developing countries. A detailed description is provided for each case study along with an analysis of how successful the two projects were at addressing the digital divide in Siyabuswa, South Africa and Ennis, Ireland. The two case studies…

Politics of education researchers have long recognized the role of micropolitics in school decision-making processes. We argue that investigating micropolitical dynamics is key to an important set of school decisions that are fundamental to inequities in access to high-quality teachers: assignments of teachers and students to classrooms. Focusing…

Diverse groups of newcomer immigrant students enter high schools in the United States each year. When their numbers are small, their unique journeys to integration in school and in the receiving country remain often invisible. Focusing on six newcomer-underrepresented students, this paper examines elements of their complex pathways to social…

This article examines the effects of political, socio-economic and educational change on a South African teacher's identity trajectory. Our research was conducted at a primary school in a historically disadvantaged community in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. We applied a cultural-historical activity theoretical (CHAT) lens to explore the…

Methodologies of embodied learning, radical pedagogies and applied drama offer a lens through which to investigate the empowerment of young people with learning disabilities in Northern Ireland, thus counteracting more traditional, disempowering methods. According to Helen Nicholson, the "participatory, dialogic and dialectic qualities as…

This article compares the effects of family background and school resources on fourth-grade students' math achievement, using data from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In order to ameliorate potential floor effects, it uses relative risk and population attributable risk to examine the effects of family…

The OECD report "Equity, Excellence and Inclusiveness in Education" (Schleicher, 2014) highlights the disparities in attainment and opportunity between children in many countries across the world putting them at risk of marginalisation. This article draws from both sociological and psychological theory to forward a new theoretical…

Research on drug markets indicates that they are not randomly distributed. Instead they are concentrated around specific types of places. Theoretical and empirical literature implicates routine activities and social disorganization processes in this distribution. In the current study, we examine whether, consistent with these theories, drug…

Since the 1980s, numerous education reforms have sought to dismantle centralised bureaucracies and replace them with devolved systems of schooling that emphasise parental choice and competition between increasingly diversified types of schools. Nevertheless, the "Finnish variety of "post-comprehensivism" continues to emphasise…

This is an article about secondary schools in England, and what type of school is fair and efficient for a national education system. It discusses what "fair" could mean in this context, summarises some key policy revisions since 1944 in this light, and reminds readers of the damage caused by unfairness within education. Most notably it…

Mathematics teachers have recently begun to stress the need for teaching models and modeling approaches that encompass cognitive and meta-cognitive thought processes for every level of schooling, starting from primary school through to higher education. The objective of this study is to examine modeling processes with the help of modeling…

Community schools are becoming increasingly popular. They aim to enhance children's educational performance by offering extended educational and social services. As community schools mainly focus on disadvantaged children, this study evaluates the effects of community schooling on the educational outcomes of these pupils. We focus on care pupils…

This article takes its point of departure in ethnographic data from what in Sweden is called the Individual Programme (IP). This programme was for upper-secondary school pupils who were not eligible for one of the country's academic or vocational programme. Its main formally expressed goal was to enable students to become eligible for these…

Many young people in the youth justice system in England and Wales are educationally marginalised and systemic barriers to their engagement with education persist. This article presents an analytical framework for understanding how education and youth justice practices shape young people's educational pathways during their time in the youth…