Getting there and staying in: first-generation indigenous students’ educational pathways into Chilean higher education

Drawing on a total of 26 life history interviews with indigenous students in higher education, the article examines the role of activating valued resources and personal strategies to navigate unequal pathways into higher education. In Chile, the historical inequalities for indigenous people’s access to higher education are beginning to be reverted, but these changes misrecognize ongoing disadvantages in regard to experiencing university life. Selection choices regarding the institution and course are based on restricted information sources and prior knowledge, whilst the capital required to succeed is heavily biased toward higher socioeconomic backgrounds. This notwithstanding, students’ transitions into higher education are marked by spontaneous adaptations to work routines, managing crises, and the activation of other resources for ‘staying in’. Emphasis is placed on the resilience expressed by these young people, as the first-generation from their families to access higher education, to negotiate cumulative disadvantages from low-quality educational establishments and poverty.     

‘It's almost like a White school now’: racialised complexities,Indigenous representation and school leadership

Drawing on a broader study that focused on examining principal leadership for equity and diversity, this paper presents the leadership experiences of ‘Jane’, a White, middle-class principal of a rural Indigenous school. The paper highlights how Jane's leadership is inextricably shaped by her assumptions about race and the political dynamics and historical specificities of her school community. A central focus is on Jane's tendency to deploy culturally reductionist understandings of Indigeneity that position it as incompatible or incommensurable with White culture/western schooling. The paper argues the central imperative of a leadership that rejects these understandings and engages in a critical situational analysis of Indigenous politics, relations and experience. Such an analysis is presented as imperative to supporting representative justice in that it moves beyond merely according a voice to Indigenous people to a focus on better understanding, problematising and remedying the racial relations that contribute to Indigenous oppression.     

比较教育研究的宏观文化场构想

随着国际一体化逐步延伸到经济合作以外的领域,以国家教育体系为单位的比较传统面临前所未有的挑战,在席明纳基础上构建的比较教育研究的宏观文化场,具有类似布迪厄网络场域综合意义上的逻辑圈层属性,其中的学术实践者的关系即是其间存在着的多重权利结构关系,这些学术实践者所代表着的某一国家、民族区域的各自不同的、且不容代替的历史传统文化资本,同时进入席明纳意义上的“资本”大流通、大循环,这必然产生大创造。     

家庭教育共同体的内涵、特征及实践

家庭教育是个体发展的基础,是贯穿于一生的教育,具有不可替代的作用与价值。基于教育社会学视角,家庭教育场域、惯习和家庭文化资本构成家庭教育的要素。家庭教育中的个体在实践活动中,通过家庭教育场域等要素的彼此关联与协同作用,形成家庭教育共同体,并促进家庭教育中个体的成长与发展。家庭教育中的个体在实践活动中与家庭教育场域、惯习、家庭文化资本深度融合,体现体验性、交互性和发展性的特质。创设以孩子为本的家庭教育场域,培育引领示范的惯习,获取优势的家庭文化资本,进一步助推家庭教育共同体的形成。     

Troubling notions of risk: dissensus,dissonance, and making sense of students and learning

This article troubles constructions of ‘at-risk students.’ Utilizing Rancière's discussion of dissensus, the author first argues that what is at risk are not students but contemporary common sense notions of schooling. From this perspective, students' labeled as ‘at risk’ ways of knowing and being that interrupt ideas and ideals about the purpose and function of schooling. In order to make this argument, the author links Rancière and others' discussions of the importance of dissensus to questions of sense-making, the dangers of resonance in consensus, and the possibilities in the dissonance of dissensus. These assertions are then further complicated by the assertion that education is a necessarily risky endeavor and that all students should be placed at risk of learning. Understanding all students as at risk is significant as it simultaneously provides a space for students' complex constellations of identity to be treated with dignity in learning experiences and creates a less punitive context in which differences are less likely to be conceptualized as deficits.     

Whose public,which public? The challenge for public education

Contemporary campaigns for public education rest upon an assumption that public schools are fundamental to an equitable and inclusive society. In this paper, I reflect on this presumption by exploring the inherent tensions of the meaning and practice of ‘public’ education, especially when the ‘public’ in public schooling is linked to political contestation and change in relation to the nation state. In particular, this discussion considers the ways in which the contemporary heightened racial politics of fear of ‘Muslim radicalisation’ structures the ways in which the state creates boundaries surrounding ‘public’ schooling. Here, analysis of recent governmental attempts to addresses the concern of ‘radicalisation’ in schools reveals the difficulties the nation state faces in defining what exactly is the ‘public’, and demonstrates how the politics of race and fear become overarching logics in the constitution of the Australian ‘public’. These logics risk creating exclusions and boundaries in public schooling, which, I argue here, have repercussions for the defence and claim to public education more broadly.     

The shifting financial aid system in Spanish University: grant-recipients’ experiences and strategies

In 2012 Spain inaugurated a reform of its higher education financial aid system inspired by three principles: cost-sharing, increasing academic performance and school efficiency. This reform has shifted the aim of the system from equality of access to a type of meritocracy that can be defined as class-biased, as it is only applied to low-income students who require scholarships to fund their university education. After contextualizing this changing Spanish financial aid system, the life-experiences of grant-holders are discussed, based on in-depth interviews with scholarship recipients. Our analysis shows how the hardships and constraints that these low-income students endure during their university education have been toughened after the reform. The paper concludes that the reform increases and naturalizes the social inequalities that traditionally exist between youths of different social classes when planning, accessing and staying in university, as the critical sociology of education has shown recurrently.     

The Australian middle class and education: a small-scale study of the school choice experience as framed by ‘My School’ within inner city families

With the launch of the ‘My School’ website in 2010, Australia became a relative latecomer to the publication of national school performance comparisons. This paper primarily seeks to explore the school choice experience as framed by ‘My School’ website, for participating middle-class families. We will draw on Bourdieusian theory of cultural capital and relationship networks and Australian-based school choice research in order to contribute to understandings regarding the application of ‘My School’ data within participating families. Data collection consisted of qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with five families, each based within inner-city suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria. The findings of this small-scale study indicate that participating middle-class families possessed highly developed strategies for locating and achieving enrolment in school-of-choice and therefore did not seek to apply available data on ‘My School’ to decision-making, despite each participant reviewing the available data.     

兴趣与成绩：中学生文理倾向的阶层养成

研究使用布迪厄的文化资本理论和惯习概念,探讨家庭阶层背景对中学生文理科兴趣和成绩的影响,并借此透视我国中等教育中的阶层差异固定化状况。基于对全国城市地区初二学生的抽样调查数据,以学生的文理科兴趣和学习成绩为因变量,以其家庭阶层背景和文化资本为自变量建立模型分析。结果发现,首先,在学习兴趣方面,来自较高社会阶层家庭的中学生对文科的兴趣明显高于低社会阶层家庭的学生,阶层对文科兴趣的影响主要通过家庭文化资本起作用;而在理科兴趣上,不同阶层学生间的差异并不明显,在控制家庭文化资本后可见较低社会阶层的学生对理科兴趣更强。其次,从学习成绩看,无论文科还是理科,低社会阶层家庭背景的学生都显著不如较高阶层家庭背景的学生。再次,作为一种“惯习”的学习兴趣对不同阶层学生的成绩差异有影响,但阶层差异并非主要通过兴趣影响成绩。最后,“家庭藏书量”和“父母教育水平”等文化资本对文理科兴趣和成绩的阶层差异影响非常显著,而阶层差异也主要通过家庭文化资本影响学生的学科兴趣和成绩。这些结果可能喻示着我国中等教育中已出现阶层差异固定化趋势,但阶层间教育获得的不平等仍主要源自物质资源而非内在态度和性情的差异。     

Middle-class parents’ educational work in an academically selective public high school

This article reports the findings of a study on the nature of parent–school engagement at an academically selective public high school in New South Wales, Australia. Such research is pertinent given recent policies of ‘choice’ and decentralization, making a study of local stakeholders timely. The research comprised a set of interviews with parents and teachers (n = 15), through which parents – all members of the school’s Parents’ and Citizens’ group – theorized and explained their involvement with the school, and teachers spoke about their views on this involvement. Results are organized around three themes: ‘how parents worked to nurture their children’s schooling’, ‘reasons behind parents’ involvement with the school’, and ‘communication and use of parental resources by the school’. Overall it was found that while parents were making significant efforts to involve themselves in the education of their children and with the school more broadly, the reasons for their involvement were not always consistent, but instead revealed a range of motivations for and conceptions of parents’ roles within schools, which at times were at odds with the teachers’. Through this, the study contributes to our understanding of middle-class parent engagement at an unusual and particular type of school.     

Capitalizing on crisis: venture philanthropy’s colonial project to remake urban education

This article focuses on the increased power of venture philanthropy to shape education in urban communities of color in the USA. The author situates venture philanthropy’s expanded influence in urban school districts in the nexus of urban disinvestment, neoliberal governance, wealth concentration, and economic crisis. The author argues that billionaire philanthropists are using the fiscal crisis of the state to shape education policy and governance, operating as part of the ‘shadow state’. Capitalizing on austerity politics and their philanthropies’ embeddedness in the state and advocacy organizations, venture capitalists deploy their enormous wealth and political influence to restructure urban school districts that predominantly serve low-income African American, Latino, and other students of color. The goal of their neoliberal agenda is to restructure education to serve economic competitiveness and to open up the public education sector to capital accumulation. The fusion of the state and capital, through the interrelation of venture philanthropy and government at all scales, to impose policies of disenfranchisement, public school closings, privatization, and appropriation of Black urban space, constitutes a new colonialism. The article illustrates this dynamic through case studies of Detroit, Philadelphia, and Chicago.