Regulative discourses of primary schooling in Greece: memories of punishment

The mechanisms of discipline and power within the institution of the school constitute, in part, the relationship between society and childhood. This article traces the relationship between official regulative discourses of control and punishment practices over students in primary school. It focuses on the memories of schooling of first-year students in a Department of Primary Education at a Greek University. The concepts of power, discipline and discourse from the theory of Michel Foucault are drawn on to examine the pedagogical control over primary school pupils. The research was carried out using an open questionnaire in which participants were asked to describe their experiences of school punishment. The key findings showed that corporal punishment is dominant in the memory of the majority of research participants. The reason for the pupils’ punishment was mainly their making noise in the classroom and their poor performance in core subjects of the curriculum. These findings are significant for the sociology of education as they reveal the real and symbolic violence of school life that endures in memories of childhood, schooling and society.     

Sampling Memories: Using Hip-Hop Aesthetics To Learn From Urban Schooling Experiences

This article theorizes and charts the implementation of a learning activity designed from the hip-hop aesthetic of sampling. The purpose of this learning activity was to enable recent urban school graduates to reflect upon their previous schooling experiences as a platform for future learning in higher education. This article illustrates what these learning activities helped students learn from their urban schooling experiences, the epistemologies made available to students through sampling, and the concurrent barriers to learning that these activities also produced. These results contribute to the newest area of scholarship in hip-hop-based education with a focus on urban education.     

Reforming the Racial Curriculum: curriculum change in desegregated schools in South Africa

This article analyses curriculum changes that have accompanied the reform movement to desegregate private and religious schools in South Africa. In a context of racially segregated State schooling, the 'open' schools have admitted students of all races to what were previously white schools. An examination of the curriculum practices of these schools reveals different patterns in terms of the extent to which schools have modified their practices to acknowledge their black enrolments, and their different approaches to the political crisis in South Africa. The article suggests that the assimilationist practices of most of the open schools illustrate their limits as a reform movement; but it suggests also that they are the only schooling venture during this period that has engaged with issues of desegregation in South Africa in a sustained way.     

Australian school practices and the education experiences of students with a refugee background: a review of the literature

Schools have the potential for significant impact on the lives of Australian students with a refugee background. Many of these young people speak at least one language other than English, have previous histories of interrupted schooling or have experienced trauma during times of displacement and forced migration. Combined with the further challenges of settling within an unfamiliar cultural frame, these students experience a range of circumstances which are not present for many of their Australian-born peers. Australian students with a refugee background have diverse skill and abilities, with many showing independence and resilience. Opportunities for academic learning and development of social capital within the school context can be enhanced with relevant pedagogy and policy which draws upon and highlights the positive individual qualities that these students exhibit. Australian school practices are shaped by both state and federal education policies, which are interpreted and applied by individual schools within their own frameworks. This review considers recent literature on the experiences of Australian students with a refugee background as they participate in schooling, with a focus on the ways in which schools provide either opportunities or barriers to engagement.     

Perhaps the Decision of Some Students not to Engage in Learning Mathematics in School is Deliberate

A perceived lack of engagement of many students in middle years mathematics classes provides a challenge for educators. In this article we report a project that investigated students' perceptions of the extent to which their own efforts influence their achievement at mathematics and their life opportunities. We conducted 2 hour interviews with over 50 students, as well as collecting other data. The results suggest that a student's orientation to learning mathematics is not predicted by their achievement. Even students who were confident, successful and persistent exhibited short-term goals. It seems that classroom culture may be an important determinant of under-participation in schooling.     

Subtractive Schooling and Identity: A Case Study of Ethnic Minority Students in Vietnam

This article examines the impact of subtractive schooling, including language use in education, on the identity of a group of ethnic minority students in Central Highlands of Vietnam. Drawing on semistructured interview data, a deeper look is taken into the ways in which these students identify themselves with their languages, cultures, and social relations. Findings reveal that the subtractive power of the school language and the institutional milieu profoundly influenced their identity construction by creating the conditions for (a) the devaluation of their language and cultural identity as a consequence of the invasion of their sociocultural territory by the dominant language and culture and (b) the segregation and disunity that affected their identity construction through social relations. Although subtractive schooling apparently facilitated students’ integration into the mainstream, its invisible power forced them not only to integrate but also to bear the full burden of constructing new identities to adjust to the school environment and the mainstream society.     

What can we do to support reading for young adolescent students?

Young adolescents are at a critical stage in their schooling. They are consolidating and improving their reading skills. By exploring what supports these 11- to 13-year-old students in reading from a wider systemic perspective, educators and policy-makers can better understand the complex factors which support reading development. This article presents a conceptual framework model to illustrate how teachers, principals and wider support agencies can effectively interact with the students and their parents. The framework highlights the impacting roles of ministries of education, governmental policies, and how study at postgraduate level can support reading development for these young adolescents.     

‘How do I cope with that?’ The challenge of ‘schooling’ cultures in further education for trainee FE lecturers

The development of professional identity amongst lecturers training to teach in further education (FE) colleges in England involves processes of adaptation. These partly take place during teaching placement in FE, as trainees navigate between their own anticipated professional identity and the identities which they feel under pressure to assume as they engage in their work with students. This article explores these processes of development, focusing in particular on the identities that trainee lecturers develop in their work with disengaged 16–19 year‐old students. Using case studies of two trainee lecturers, the article explores the way in which they are pushed towards adopting what they see as a ‘pedagogic’, ‘teacherly’ identity, which they had previously associated with schoolteachers, in their work with such students. The article suggests that the notion of ‘schooling’ identities and cultures, whilst contrasting with the vocational habitus proposed by others, is a useful way to explore how cultures and identities in general FE are created through similar processes of identity construction and reconstruction.     

The limits of critical pedagogy: teaching about structural obstacles to students who overcame them

This article focuses on efforts to critically analyze the social reproductive functions of schooling with a group of pre-service teachers in the US–Mexico border region, and on students’ reactions to these efforts. The students – all female, predominantly Mexican-American – had experienced both educational discrimination and academic success, and heavily invested in the dominant view of schooling as a meritocracy where individual talent and motivation regularly overcome structural obstacles. We argue that the students’ ideologies and experiences of class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and language predisposed them to resist analysis of systemic inequalities in schools; we also examine the implications of this resistance for their future success as teachers. We conclude with recommendations for balancing structural pessimism and strategic optimism in the classroom, and for bringing students’ personal and social histories to bear on the contradictions between schooling’s promise of social mobility and its tendency to reproduce social inequality.     

Local unemployment and the timing of post-secondary schooling

Using Danish administrative data on all high school graduates from 1984 to 1992, I show that local unemployment has both a short- and a long-run effect on school enrollment and completion. The short-run effect causes students to advance their enrollment, and consequently their completion, of additional schooling. The long-run effect causes students who would otherwise never have enrolled to enroll and complete schooling. The effects are strongest for children of parents with no higher education.     

Taking on Bourdieu’s ‘destiny effect’: theorising the development and sustainability of a socially just second-chance schooling initiative using a Bourdieusian framework

This article aims to theorise a storyline account of a collaborative three-year action research project into schooling re-engagement using a Bourdieusian framework. In the article we discuss how we (two teachers and a social worker) developed an alternative senior secondary school that re-engaged a sizable minority of marginalised young people back into formalised learning and consider how this school became a significant and sustainable educational alternative. Our work during this developmental period drew us into community-based activism enacting socially just curricular and pedagogical experiments. Through networked political action for schooling justice in concert with critical friends (our university partners), the marginalised young people we worked with and supportive regional youth stakeholders, we reconstructed our professional habitus as professionals into a more enabling rendering and strived to proffer through our relational, pedagogical and curricular work with students more of a transformative habitus. Our curricular and activist work inside the community extended the field of schooling relations into a more socially just orientation. This more enabling community field merged with our schooling field and enabled us to source political capital engendering secure, recurrent school funding and a purpose-built schooling facility. We claim that the market logics of schooling significantly influenced our beginning enrolment growth trajectory, and discuss how these logics compromised our ability to break through Bourdieu’s notion of the ‘destiny effect’. Since its inception in 2003, the Second Chance Community College has offered a comprehensive senior secondary schooling programme for more than 1000 young people. Throughout its 12-year history, the majority of students have gone on to secure work, apprenticeships and tertiary study but only 10% of students have successfully completed their final year of schooling.     

Soziale Ungleichheiten in der Kompetenzentwicklung in der Grundschule und der Sekundarstufe I

The article focuses on the question how competencies of students with different social backgrounds develop during elementary and secondary school. In particular, it addresses if achievement disparities which exist before school entrance increase, remain stable, or even diminish during schooling. The article draws on both national and international studies with longitudinal designs examining the achievement development of students of different social backgrounds during primary or secondary school. Although the results are mixed to some extent, a large part indicates that differences in achievement increase during the time of schooling. The evidence seems more consistent for achievement development during elementary school. Additionally, there is some indication that schools and features of the educational system contribute to increasing achievement disparities between students of different social backgrounds.     

Situating secondary schooling in the transnational social field: contestation and conflict in Greater Toronto Area classrooms

This article situates secondary schooling within the evolving transnational social field. Drawing on 43 interviews with teachers and former students with transnational connections in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Canada, I examine how transnational practices and dispositions fit within existing curricular and pedagogical frameworks in secondary schools. It is suggested that the ‘ways of being’ and ‘ways of belonging’ for transnational students are in conflict with the teachers’ views on how students ought to act and feel within classroom settings. When transnational secondary students travel to their sending societies for ongoing periods, the data reveal disconnections at school that threaten the dominant classroom norms. When there is sustained direct contact with multiple countries, including both travel and new modes of communication, this may create knowledge and vivid experiences for transnational youth who are ‘betwixt and between’, but also leads to concerns by teachers about a ‘strategic’ use of Toronto-area schools and fears about ‘dual loyalties’. Finally, many of the transnational youth find their teachers’ assumptions of schooling superiority in the Global North to be sorely misdirected, and perhaps even harmful. These discordances highlight the existence of competing systems of capital within GTA classrooms.     

Friends,foes, and self-defence: students with EBD navigating social conflicts and bullying

Students with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) are more likely to struggle than their peers, which can lead to disengagement and early dropout. Although there are alternate programmes for these students, they are rarely consulted about their struggles, or about their perceived needs. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of students with EBD from their entry in mainstream classrooms to their placement in an alternate programme. During a semi-structured interview and visual mapping activity, six participants described their schooling experiences and their depictions were analysed using an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Participants described the social process of school and emphasised the importance of relationships with peers and teachers, and the challenges they experienced in these relationships, which included relational, psychological, and physical aggression. Findings highlight the need to consider the reciprocal nature of bullying for students with EBD, and its influence on their schooling.     

High stakes testing and student perspectives on teaching and learning in the Republic of Ireland

There is now a well developed literature on the impact of high stakes testing on teaching approaches and student outcomes. However, the student perspective has been neglected in much research. This article draws on a mixed method longitudinal study of secondary students in the Republic of Ireland to explore the impact of two sets of high stakes examinations on student experiences. The analyses are based on surveys completed by 897 lower secondary students and 748 upper secondary students, along with 47 lower secondary and 53 upper secondary group interviews with students. Findings show the presence of impending high stakes exams results in increased workload for students, with many reporting pressure and stress. Throughout their schooling career, students clearly favour active learning approaches. However, for some students, particularly high-aspiring middle-class students, these views change as they approach the terminal high stakes exam, with many showing a strong preference for a more narrowly focussed approach to exam preparation. This article highlights how students shift from a position of critiquing exam-focused teaching methods as inauthentic to accepting such methods as representing ??good teaching??.     

Suzhi,Relevance, and the New Curriculum

There have been ongoing discussions about the most recent curriculum reform in China. The new curriculum aims at a more quality-oriented (suzhi) education and producing more well-rounded citizens to meet the challenges of global competition. However, it is questioned how suzhi education is possible with entrance examination still being the sole sorting mechanism. A semester-long ethnography in a rural middle school in northwest China reveals how rural students face many challenges with the new curriculum. Based on interviews, analyses of textbooks, and observations of classroom teaching, the study examines how rural students question the relevance of their curriculum and further the meaning of formal schooling. In addition to the dichotomy between an exam-oriented and quality-oriented curriculum, students are also troubled by the dichotomy between general/academic education and relevant/practical education. The study raises concerns about the urban-centered curriculum and how the rural community's absence in the picture has led to rural students' increasing disengagement in schooling and even dropout. It also reveals how the substance of suzhi education and the new curriculum have further reduced rural students' chance to move upward socially. The article concludes by pushing for discussions on how formal schooling can better serve rural children and youth.     

Model minority,self-perception and schooling: multiple voices of Korean students in China

Koreans have been successful in nesting their educational achievement in places like China, where they have earned the title of the “model minority”, due primarily to their educational success. Drawing on data from ethnographic research on fourth-grade Korean students in a bilingual Korean school, this article examines the relationship between student self-perception and attitude towards schooling underlying the model minority stereotype. Research results lead us to argue that ethnic Korean students in China do not have a shared self-perception, and so do not share a homogeneous attitude towards schooling, contrary to the stereotype of them as a monolithic group with high educational levels and shared attitudes towards learning. This article emphasizes the need to re-examine the model minority stereotype and its cultural ecological theory, and to include the voices of ethnic Korean students in the analysis of the model minority stereotype at a time of transition and change.     

Accountability and (mis)trust in education systems: Private supplementary tutoring and the ineffectiveness of regulation in Myanmar

Private supplementary tutoring, widely known as shadow education, has been viewed by many families around the world as a necessary complement to schooling. The analysis presented draws on questionnaire and interview data from secondary school students, teachers, principals, parents and other stakeholders in Myanmar. Parents displayed institutional mistrust in their perception of the inadequacy of public schooling to meet their children's needs. Organisational and interpersonal mistrust were also evident. The matters of mistrust relate to the theme of accountability in education, which requires systems for regulation and monitoring. The regulations on tutoring in Myanmar were widely ignored and were arguably worse than useless. The article is grounded in the context of Myanmar but has considerable insights for the wider literature.     

Black bodies,White rural spaces: disturbing practices of unbelonging for ‘refugee’ students

In global times, when the forced migration of refugees from war-torn countries like Sudan impacts the demography of once ethnically homogenous schooling spaces, I consider the need to better understand the geographical making of racism. This article explores the lived experience of two newly arrived Sudanese students studying at a rural high school in Australia. Using Foucaultian theory, and Foucault’s theories as they have been taken up by Judith Butler, I explore the production of educational exclusions at a rural school. I investigate the Sudanese students’ struggle for belonging against particular discourses of rural Whiteness. In the students’ rural schooling space, their Black bodies are highly visible and are discursively cast as ‘out of place’. I examine the way discourses of rural Whiteness produce schooling exclusions that implicate schools in the spatial regulation of unbelonging.     

L’accès des filles à l’enseignement supérieur au Burkina Faso: choix parentaux,parcours d’étudiantes et défis

Girls’ access to higher education in Burkina Faso: parental choices, student trajectories, challenges – What motivates parents from less well-off backgrounds to invest in extended schooling for their daughters? What drives the girls from these backgrounds to stay in the school system up to university level? Many studies on Burkina Faso’s education system show that there are still disparities between girls and boys at all levels, with the gap widening as the level of studies gets higher. Under these conditions, the prospect of pursuing higher education is less certain for girls from less well-off families. Yet, girls from these backgrounds are relatively present at the University of Ouagadougou. Based on a qualitative survey of students and their parents, this article highlights the social rationale determining the specific educational trajectories of these girls. The level of schooling of the older siblings, the girl’s positon in relation to her siblings, or concern for equity are factors in some parents’ decision to enrol their daughters in school. Parents invoke several reasons to justify sending their daughters to university, one of the most frequent being the argument that their daughters faithfully help them in return. As for the students, they mention various motivations to explain why they have persisted with their schooling and university studies, often in difficult circumstances, notably the desire to help their parents. The article also highlights the importance of family support as a factor in girls attending school and university, as well as in the pursuit and success of their studies.