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South Korea implemented many-pronged educational reforms, notably to transition from heavy reliance on a high-stakes standardised test to more diversified assessment for university admissions. Nonetheless, this effort created another arena of competition towards meritocratic credentials--such as academic publications. The South Korean government, in 2014, prohibited high schools from documenting students' extracurricular accomplishments earned outside schools. This paper analyses the impacts of these reforms. We queried large-scale bibliographic databases with prestigious high schools' names in South Korea and retrieved publications where high school students were granted authorship between 2001 and 2021. We examine associations between school types, research topics, and the status of scholarly venues. We also show the number of papers from Korean high schoolers rose until the mid-2010s but declined after the 2014 intervention. Our findings suggest that diverse adaptive strategies can evolve as long as meritocratic ethos persists. We discuss further implications beyond the context of South Korea.

This paper aims to determine the effect of parental education, as an important measure of social origin, on the expectations of 15 year olds to complete higher education in the Netherlands. More importantly, the paper tests specific explanations for this effect. For the empirical analysis, Dutch data from the PISA 2018 survey were used. The results revealed that there is a considerable impact of parental education on the likelihood of expecting to complete higher education in the Netherlands. To a large extent, this social origin effect refers to secondary effects of stratification: students with the same school performance have different expectations regarding higher education that are strongly correlated with their social origin. Parental resources explain only a small part of the direct social origin effect net of school performance. The secondary effects remain largely unexplained after taking parents' economic, cultural and educational resources into account, suggesting that relative risk aversion drives social differentials in educational expectations.

As part of a wider study into the educational attitudes and experiences of white, working-class male pupils in the north of England, this paper explored the ways that male pupils in years 10 and 11 navigated and experienced the six-level (A-F) academic banding system present in their British mainstream secondary school (Ayrefield Community school--ACS). Following an initial four-week period of both covert and overt observations (including guided conversations), three distinct groups of male pupils emerged. Influenced in part by Paul Willis' seminal study (1977) of males in a working-class school environment, these three 'lads' groups were representative of pupils in the top, middle, and bottom academic bands and were subsequently named Performers, Participants and Problematics respectively by the researcher. Following this initial phase of observations, a total of 74 male pupils from these top (n = 29), middle (n = 26) and lower (n = 19) academic bands were specifically selected to take part in a total of 14 group interviews with the aim being to explore the lads' experiences of, and attitudes towards, being taught in academic bands, as well as their views on education and qualifications more generally. Passages from these group interviews are combined with guided conversation responses to make up the findings presented in this paper which are then explored and explained using some key concepts from Norbert Elias's field of figurational sociology alongside key academic literature linked to the use of academic banding in schools. The paper suggests that despite the fact that all male pupils at ACS were exposed to very similar working-class upbringings and social pressures as part of their wider social figuartions, members of each of the three lads' groups became part of, and were subsequently influenced by, the specific, school-based figuartions that emerged as a result of their allocation to their respective academic group. Influenced by the increasingly diverse and complex social relations within these school-based figuartions, the lads from the three different groups seemed set to achieve relative 'success' at school, albeit on route to different destinations, for different reasons, and towards quite starkly different end goals--all whilst still being very much aware of, and influenced by, the wider social figuration of which they were inextricably a part.

As contemporary research explores the social and cultural dynamics of school bullying, notions of space and time provide avenues to unpack youth-centred insights into students' bullying experiences. Furthermore, spatiotemporal analysis demonstrates the links between similar experiences, such as bullying and relationship violence, that are often siloed in research and policy. Yet, within this converging field, there are contradictory accounts, from both young people and researchers, of the school as both a non-violent space and a space filled with unseen violence. In this paper, I argue that this contradiction reveals an essential aspect of young people's experience of bullying in schools. To develop this approach, school bullying is conceptualised in this paper as 'social violence' with a momentum that can linger and become institutionalised in the architecture of schools.

This paper focuses on the perceptions of technical high school tutors in Mexico about students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in the context of global curriculum reforms and institutional hierarchies. Through two novel concepts in education, culture of poverty and cultural deficiency, the paper explores: (a) how structural constraints shape tutors' perceptions and practices with students, and (b) how tutors' perceptions contribute to reconceptualise discourses of deficit and the culture of poverty in a more comprehensive way. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews with nine tutors working in Tijuana, Mexico City and Tuxtla Gutierrez, the main themes of analysis are: tutors' working conditions, their perceptions of and relationships with students, the quality of education on offer, curricular reforms, and behaviour management. Even if systemic factors contribute to tutors' perceptions of deficit amongst students, we found valuable experiences of empathy, trust, and encouragement amongst tutors that show both their agency and resilience.

This paper tells a story of Israeli male high schoolers who spend their adolescent years preparing for service in elite military units in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). They dream of serving in special units and begin training at 15 or 16 years old. After years of taxing preparations, at the age of 17 they arrive at the grueling military exams. They are at their peak -- potent and energized, motivated, and in the best shape of their lives. Yet most high schoolers return from the examinations psychologically broken. Having imagined their future selves as virile commandos, they return humiliated for cowering during the tough assignments. The paper draws on interviews with 40 adults who failed the exams 10 to 15 years after the event. Using Bourdieu's theory of symbolic violence, it shows that youthful failure at 17 continues to send debilitating messages for years after the event. Those who fail continually tell themselves that they are not worthy, not good enough, that they do not have enough character or strength. Consequently, they abandon possible life trajectories and possible selves. They surrender to the exam, and then remain prisoners of a cultural ethos they have failed to embody.

In this paper -- where we will draw on data from a small scale longitudinal study of young people's post-COVID aspirations and sense of their futures in a de-industrialising city -- we will suggest that Appadurai's (2004) ideas about the 'capacity to aspire' encourages us to shift our focus from the 'aspirations' of individual young people to think, instead, about the different resources that might be at play in shaping a capacity to aspire. Departing from the detailed stories of two of the young ­people who participated in this project, we will argue that critical, post-humanist and futures oriented ontologies offer productive possibilities for reimagining the 'promise of education' in relation to young people's aspirations, their dreams and hopes, fears, anxieties and despair that emerge from the "thick of social life" (Appadurai, 2004) in which young people live, imagine who they are, and what they might become.

In extant research, the concept of student engagement refers to individual behavioural patterns and traits. Recent research indicates that engagement not only should be related to the individual but also should be anchored in the social context. This ethnographic field study of students and teachers in a Danish vocational education and training school responds to the need for more knowledge on this theme by exploring the social dynamics of engagement perceptions. Results show that teachers and students held diverging perceptions of student engagement that rested on educational goals as well as goals related to the perceived future work settings. The misrecognition of the students' perception of engagement had direct negative consequences for student performance and school attachment. The implications of the findings are discussed in detail. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper takes an interest in migrant families' educational strategies in the upper-secondary school market in Stockholm. Based on interviews with parents and children in families living in a socially and economically disadvantaged neighbourhood, the analysis shows how conversion of symbolic and economic capital and assets between national-contexts and between generations shapes educational aspirations together with notions of pride, sacrifice, and guilt. What school choice alternatives that are considered viable options depends on the composition of assets and capital within the family, but also differs between family members depending on family dynamics and family members' different social investments in the neighbourhood of residence. The paper argues that migrant biographies are embedded in a gift economy that influences families' educational expectations. Moreover, parents and children identify sociospatial boundaries in the deregulated school market but develop divergent strategies to mitigate disadvantage.

Research in education has long noted teachers' role in assisting social and ideological reproduction. Separately, scholarship has also investigated the use of extra-curricular activities in equipping disadvantaged students with social and cultural capital, to embark on social mobility. Positioned at the intersection of these two apparently disparate strands, this paper presents a case in which teachers' extra-curricular work is seen to simultaneously enact subtle socio-ideological reproduction, and the facilitation of social mobility attainment. Specifically, the paper draws on a study of how teachers in a lower-status junior college in Singapore prepare their students in applying for prestigious state-sponsored scholarships. Through teachers' extra-curricular work of "allying" and "aligning," social mobility and social reproduction are simultaneously made possible, yet also exist in some tension. Thus, this paper offers a unique sociological perspective on teachers' extra-curricular work and its significance for broader issues of meritocracy, social mobility, and social reproduction.

Bourdieu argued that class-based inequalities influenced educational outcomes and this paper illustrates the relevance of Bourdieu's concepts in understanding one specific community. A wider study by the authors used the concept of habitus to identify factors which impacted on the participants--predominantly white working-class mothers'--perceptions of their engagement with schools. This paper provides two selected case study examples from the wider study which describes the ways these mothers interpret different habitus in relation to education and discusses how habitus can inform understandings of different parental perceptions towards education and how this affects engagement. Schools can use this insight to ensure that parents from such backgrounds feel better able to engage with their children's education. Schools use this insight to inform to ensure that parents from such backgrounds feel able to engage with their children's education, both at home and in school.

Over the past few years, the civics curriculum for Israeli high-schools has become the centre of a heated political debate. Following this debate, in May 2016 a revised official textbook was introduced. This paper draws on an in-depth analysis of the revised official textbook, comparing it to the previous official textbook published in 2000. The analysis focuses on the discursive changes that took place regarding the ways in which the revised textbook conceptualises Israeli citizenship. A particular focus is placed on how the revised version of the official textbook often prioritises the ethno-national model of the nation state over and above the commitment to democratic values, including minority rights. The main argument of this paper is that these changes are a reflection of the penetration of a neo-Zionist discourse into the civics curriculum.

This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of the 'panopticon' in educational research, problematising its validity and offering a fresh conceptualisation of teacher surveillance. The school as a 'panopticon' is a well-established concept which helpfully enables a consideration of aspects of high-stakes accountability. The present paper explores the question of how contemporary teachers perceive themselves to be subject to scrutiny and the consequences of this surveillance. It is argued that whilst the panopticon (and its variants) remain very valid notions for understanding performativity in contemporary schools, that a complementary metaphor can be offered which enables a fuller consideration of the 'unseen' behaviours induced by a high accountability environment.

This paper examines the effects of different forms of tracking on learning inequalities in compulsory education. We use longitudinal monitoring of four cohorts of students over a four-year period, from their entry into secondary 1 education until they enter secondary 2 education. Our data include 18,706 students. We use multilevel regression analyses to test the effects of different forms of tracking after controlling for students' sociodemographic and academic characteristics, and for contextual factors. Our results suggest not only that the effect of tracking is a composition effect or a peer effect, but that tracking "per se" explains a significant part of the variance in learning in the two educational contexts in our study. Our results confirm that educational policies and institutions play a pivotal role in the construction of learning inequalities and social reproduction through school in contemporary societies.

Teachers' evaluations of students do not consider only academic competence, but are imbued with social considerations related to individual teacher and student characteristics, their interactions, and the surrounding context. The aim of this paper is understanding the extent to which teachers grade girls more generously than boys, and which characteristics of teachers and classrooms are likely to reduce this gender grading gap. We use Italian data from INVALSI-SNV, providing information on 10th-grade students linked with their teachers. The analysis relies on grade equation models in multilevel regression analysis, with students as first level, teachers/classrooms as second level, and schools as third level. Results show that, when comparing students who have identical subject-specific competence, teachers are more likely to give higher grades to girls. Furthermore, they demonstrate for the first time that this grading premium favouring girls is systemic, as teacher and classroom characteristics play a negligible role in reducing it.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the 'equalising effect of schools' in general and two concrete interventions that have been carried out recently in Sweden in particular. The first of these interventions is the closing down of schools in deprived neighbourhoods and moving pupils to other schools. The second is 'empowerment'--i.e., creating an inclusive and supportive pedagogical school environment for students with working-class and immigrant backgrounds. As findings from previous Swedish studies regarding the first intervention show, an equalising effect will not be achieved without considering the 'school climate' of mixed schools. The findings from this case study of a school located in a deprived suburb of Stockholm County indicate that even schools in these areas are able to equalise educational opportunities through building an alliance between students, parents and community activists on the one hand and bi-class and bi-cultural brokers like teachers and social workers on the other.

This study sought to gain a deeper understanding of the spatiality and spatial justice of guidance counselling in basic education. The spatial framework was applied to analyse the recognition of diversity and adolescents' positioning in guidance counselling (lessons, excursions and information events). This study used a phenomenological research approach based on fieldwork, observations and lifespan interviews conducted with a class located in a disadvantaged urban neighbourhood in Finland. The outcomes reveal how adolescents adjust or take counter positions to prevailing expectations attached to their neighbourhoods. The transition to upper-secondary education was geographical, social and cultural, and the guidance counselling was able to provide inclusive and affirmative support for transitions. Simultaneously, guidance is vehicle for cultural adaptation to the working-class position and tend to lack a recognition of the diversity and counter positions of adolescents. This paper discusses the multicultural competence of counsellors and the potentiality of group-based guidance.

This paper reports the experiences of staff, parents, governors and students at a secondary free school in the West Midlands of England in relation to the inclusion of students with special educational needs (SEN). The paper is based on a qualitative research project carried out at a school that opened in 2015, with the explicit aim of examining the extent to which it developed as an inclusive school, particularly for children with SEN. In the paper, we draw on the classic distinction between 'education' and 'schooling' to identify tensions and overlaps between process and outcome oriented practices and examine the views of different stakeholders on how such practices impact on inclusion. By focusing on the day-to-day practices of the school and linking them to broader notions of schooling and education, we provide a complementary perspective on the current research on free schools, which is overwhelmingly quantitative and focused on admissions.

This paper theorises empirical findings from a school in the north of England in order to contribute to theoretical understandings of racial microaggressions, particularly micro-assaults. In so doing, the paper argues that during the teaching of Black History, micro-assaults were articulated as racist humour and stereotyping, to increase tolerance for disparaging Black people and for justifying their unequal treatment. White teachers and their students were complicit in engaging in anti-Black racist humour and stereotyping, but from a Critical Race perspective, the paper argues that Black students' participation is best understood as a coping mechanism for reducing Racial Battle Fatigue (RBF) as a consequence of Mundane Extreme Environmental Stress (MEES).

This paper examines how pupils' aspirations towards higher education (HE) are shaped and reinforced in Chile. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical framework and building on relevant scholarship focussed on HE decision-making and choices, it introduces two dual-headed conceptual tools which allow a grasp of relevant differences between social classes: firstly, "channelling micro-practices" and "pushing micro-practices"; and secondly, "horizons of reference" and "horizons of potentialities." Through analysing forty-six semi-structured qualitative interviews with pupils from thirteen different secondary schools, this study shows that HE aspirations in the dominant class are experienced as the natural pathway towards university; in the intermediate class, the possibility of HE is taken as a demand of society; while for those in dominated positions, aspirations are rather influenced by uncertainties regarding the future.

This paper explores the first-hand accounts of disablist school violence experienced by young people with dwarfism during their secondary education in the United Kingdom. A narrative, qualitative methodology was utilised, which turned nineteen young people with dwarfism into the storytellers of their schooling experiences. Drawing together a poststructuralist approach to bullying and Critical Disability Studies, it presents and discusses stories of physical, cultural and systemic violence they experienced, as well as their resistance to it. In doing so, it challenges dominant discourses around disability and school violence, including the representation of disabled young people as 'passive victims' of school violence or disability being the trigger of such violence. Finally, it provides a sociological analysis of such violence, shifting the focus from the individualistic blame to the cultural, institutional and systemic underpinnings of such violence and the role of disablism in its perpetuation.

This paper draws upon Foucault's problematisation of "governmentality" analysis to explore teacher interviews from Australian secondary schools, where student voice was 'enacted' within a teacher assessment reform strategy. By bringing teacher voices into relation with theory, it illustrates how the current 'sociality of performativity' is situating student voice-based assessment initiatives as power apparatuses of teacher surveillance that shape teacher-student relationships. The analysis portrays teachers' responses to such 'techniques of power', employing forms of "auditable commodification," "physical proximity," and "reflective practice" as a means of managing student voice 'risk'. In so doing, the teachers relegated teacher-student relationships to the margins, struggling to profess an ethic of care; paradoxically disadvantaging students through voice initiatives intended to advance them. Demonstrating how affective fundamentals are eclipsed by performative-invested practices, the analysis highlights the discursive policy contestations of rapport and performance that should be taken into consideration in future implementations of student voice-based assessment initiatives.

Some Indonesian teachers have entangled alternative versions in their teachings on the 1965 affair, a controversial vicious and political event in Indonesia, to counterbalance or even contest the communist coup narrative in the history lesson curriculum and school textbooks. Employing the sociological tools of Margaret Somers, this paper dissects the stories of eleven high school history teachers about what enables them to teach multiple interpretations of the 1965 affair. The inclusion of different accounts in their teachings is navigated by various narratives of the affair that they acquired or fabricated in certain socio-historical and political settings. However, teaching is far from an independent pedagogical action. Accordingly, the extent to which each teacher could easily teach multiple versions was related to surrounding actors inside or outside of the school and their narratives of the 1965 affair and communism, as well as perceived absence of any institutional practice to veto such teachings.

Ofsted, the inspection authority in England, has told schools to ensure that all students have access to cultural capital, taken as a canon of music, literature and art. In this paper, we trouble this guidance by analysing conversations with 1447 senior secondary students. The students reported that the arts offered considerable personal benefits, as well as creative self-expression (visual art) and vocational and networking skills (performing arts). By bringing Bourdieu to the dataset we offer a field analysis that shows how arts cultural capitals might follow the logics of the education field. We speculate that, despite the likelihood that these elite cultural capitals were not of equal value to all students, arts capitals and dispositions might support wider resistances to logics of practice in other fields.

This article responds to criticisms, put forward by Harrison and Waller in this issue, of an earlier paper by Noble and Davies. In particular, we argue that our interpretation of earlier quantitative research is correct, that Harrison and Waller have misconstrued the purpose of our previous paper and the analysis it contains, and that they (mis-)attribute to us a series of propositions and standpoints that are not in our paper. In the light of increasing policy interest in the extent to which providing information can lead to "more well-informed choices" about participation in higher education, we remain of the view that researching the role of cultural capital in the students' "immanent choices" is a matter of considerable importance.

Much of the research examining students' university choosing in England focuses on rates of access to 'elite' universities for high-attaining state-educated students. By contrast, the experiences of students applying to 'new' universities remain under-researched. This paper considers moderately attaining 16-18 years olds as a "discrete group" and highlights how a combination of England's Higher Education (HE) policy and school performance measures may influence levels of support for students' university applications. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a London state school, it finds that support for students' university applications was differentiated in ways which overwhelmingly disadvantaged moderate attainers. A competitive school market, combined with a policy focus on 'fair access' to 'elite' institutions, meant high attainers' university applications were consistently prioritised. Some teachers were found who navigated dominant HE discourses, drawing on an ethical teacher habitus and their social and cultural capital to support students applying to less prestigious universities.

Current reforms in vocational education and training (VET) are characterised by a constant striving for quality assurance and improvement. To this end, a powerful reform network has emerged that shapes the subjectivation processes of teachers. Drawing on Foucault (1980), we term this complex formation a 'dispositive'. The paper introduces "dispositive analytics" as an innovative approach for educational research. Taking Austria as an example of a 'broader understanding' of VET (Avis 2014) we address the question of how VET teachers' subjectivity is shaped by the quality dispositive. The study investigates subject positions that refer to the ways teachers should be and act. Furthermore, qualitative interviews with VET teachers were conducted to examine which dispositional quality logics they tend to internalise and which forms and strategies they express to subvert the quality dispositive. The analysis reveals that the current reform network creates tensions in the subjectivation processes leading to experiences of de-professionalisation.

It has been argued that a transnational elite class is emerging, and that elite schools are 'choreographing' this process. This article nuances this developing theoretical framework with empirical data from an economically elite boarding school in Switzerland. It demonstrates that young men and women at this site linked to a global economy whilst refracting geopolitical tensions in their interactions with one another. This draws our attention to the multi-sited understandings that elite young people develop, despite the widespread assumption that in modern globalisation, wealth can break down cultural and juridical borders. This paper thus importantly contributes to an emerging discussion about the possibilities and constraints of transnational class formation at elite schools. In particular, it suggests that different kinds of elite schools may fill different kinds of roles when it comes to such processes.

This paper examines the importance of "self-determination" and "hard work" found within interviews with a group of young people in Manchester, England. The author suggests that moments of apparent contradiction within the interviews have much to offer, particularly when analysed in relation to discussions of inequality and political economy. Data from this paper show that while the young people mostly spoke about work choices in primarily individualistic ways, they used the recession as a means to acknowledge that acquiring jobs simply cannot just be about "choice" or working hard, but is also configured by the market and structural inequality.

In this paper, I draw on a study of school leaders' experiences of inspection to argue that repeated changes to school inspection policy in England constitute a post-panoptic regime. Thinking with and against Foucault, I elaborate post-panopticism, here characterised by: subjects' visibility; "fuzzy" norms; the exposure of subjects' failure to comply; the disruption of identity-constituting fabrications; its dependence on external "experts"; and its neo-conservative devalorisation of the interests of the socio-economically disadvantaged. The paper argues that post-panopticism depends on subjects having become disciplined through panopticism, whose apparatus it employs, and reveals the state's explicit exercise of power.

This paper examines how young people account for choosing mathematical subjects, and how these processes sustain, or not, their continued participation. It draws on a 2-year qualitative study of 24 young people's accounts of following advanced mathematical pathways within a widening participation programme. Working within a post-structural framework, I combine two arguments: firstly, that local discourses of time, age and maturity position contemporary adolescence as a time of 'becoming' that aligns personal aspirations with mathematical progress, and secondly that students' accounts of choice and aspiration require multiple imaginings of present and future selves. I identify distinct discourses -- "moving/improving" and "getting ahead" -- that structure the intelligibility of participation in mathematics and further mathematics respectively. I argue that tracing the alignments between students' accounts of themselves and/ in mathematics offers potential to understand emergent practices in mathematics participation but also how exclusions are re-inscribed along classed and gendered lines.

Despite the overwhelming focus on young people who are at either end of the educational or social spectrum in policy and research, vast numbers of young people do not reside at these extremes. Consequently, there have been calls to focus more closely on young people who reside in the 'middle.' This paper considers the utility of the concept of a 'middling' category through examining four selected case studies of young people as they anticipate their transition onto a range of post-18 education, training or employment pathways. It highlights the ways in which intra-class fractional positioning, academic attainment, personal biographies and serendipitous moments intersect and interact to frame young people's decisions about their post-18 pathways. Attention to these multidimensional elements, over a reliance on categories which position young people within sharp social or academic groups, is crucial for fully understanding young people's decisions.

This paper investigates patterns of social reproduction of science education outcomes for high school students in Israel, specifically by examining the relationship between one aspect of science capital -- as measured by having a scientist in the family -- and SES with three measures of science education success: interest in science; science self-efficacy; and aspirations to pursue science at university. Regression analyses of questionnaire data (N = 380) from 14- to 18-year-old high school students yield differences between Jewish (majority) and Arab-Palestinian (minority) students. Specifically, regarding aspirations for university science, having a scientist in the family and higher SES are positively associated with better outcomes for Jewish students only. The analyses highlight the potential advantages of employing theories of social reproduction and science capital to explore inequalities in science education, which in this case is used to identify additional challenges in increasing minority student uptake in postsecondary science.

This article contributes to ongoing discussion of the Bourdieusian concept of cultural capital and current attempts to elaborate this concept and its derivatives. The paper identifies "identity capital", the capacity to create a narrative of social and self-awareness by constructing a flexible sense of self. This concept explains findings from a longitudinal ethnography with nine children and young people over a 13-year period from pre-school to the age of 17. Analysis of the data shows that this particular capacity is developed through certain kinds of privileged discourses and the opportunities provided within socially advantaged schools and families. Two case studies are selected to reveal how identity capital interacts with other identifiable forms of capital that compound and entrench each other. The paper concludes by arguing that deficiencies in identity capital could be addressed within schooling in order to support the creation of this important resource.

Over the past decades, many art advocates have argued for the intrinsic value of learning in the arts. Nevertheless, the arts continue to struggle to find a secure place within the school curriculum. Concerned about the arts' impact on classroom practice, this paper aims to cast light on diverse realities constructed by art teachers as insiders in marginal contexts. This will be done by reviewing a critical cultural inquiry into art education practice in South Korea. Two interpretive analyses of individual teachers' life stories have disclosed the practitioners' relationships to established power dynamics between the dominant practice and a developing alternative practice network within the system. The discussion focuses on the inherent contradictions and opportunities identified within the context of Korean education. This paper provides cultural resources for conscious professional transformation of practitioners and contributes to broader discussions on the socio-educational status of art in education.

This paper draws on social capital theory to discuss the way social class plays out in the friendships of teenage students. Based on data from individual interviews and focus groups with 75 students in four London secondary schools, it is suggested that students tend to form friendships with people who belong to the same social-class background as them. Social-class "sameness" is considered to be an element that importantly exemplifies the quality of their friendships, and hence close, inter-class friendships were significantly less common than close, intra-class ones. In addition, class differentials were evident and often reproduced by students, even in the context of the rarer inter-class friendships. This paper concludes that social class is of continuous importance in teenagers' lives and despite some agentic negotiation of class boundaries, as in the case of omnivorousness, students' friendship networks are dynamically informed by class inequalities.

A priority toward creating "active" citizens has been a feature of curricula reforms in many income-rich nations in recent years. However, the normative, one-size-fits-all conceptions of citizenship often presented within such curricula obscure the significant differences in how some young people experience and express citizenship. This paper reports on research that explored the citizenship perceptions and practices of New Zealand social studies teachers and students from four diverse geographic and socio-economic school communities. Attention was drawn to the scale of their citizenship orientations and participation (local/global). Drawing on Bourdieu's conceptual triad and his species of capital in particular, the author posits that the differences observed between school communities can be usefully explained by a concept of "participatory capital." The paper concludes with some reflections on the implications for young people who fail to access the "symbolic" global participatory capital associated with much contemporary citizenship education.

Sex education is a politically contentious issue in many countries, and there are numerous, competing ideologies relating to the most appropriate methods to teach young people about sexual and reproductive health. This paper examines policy and practice in Uganda in light of two contrasting ideologies, namely morally conservative and comprehensive rights-based approaches to sex education. After a brief description of these approaches, findings from a preliminary qualitative study among teachers working in a non-governmental organisation-run secondary school in Uganda are discussed. Teachers' responses are analysed against the background of current Ugandan sex education policies. The paper considers the implications of the conservative morality informing both Ugandan government policy and teachers' implementation of sex education at the focus school. It is argued that, in the light of young Ugandans' attitudes towards and often varied experiences of sexuality, a comprehensive rights-based approach to sex education may be more appropriate in the described setting.

This paper argues that languages, increasingly marginalised in schools in English-speaking countries, are gaining "elitist" ground as part of the "value-added" marketisation of schools and parents' desire for their children to gain "positional goods" through schooling. In arguing our case, the paper draws on survey and other data derived from second-language immersion programmes in two Queensland secondary schools, where key learning areas such as mathematics and science are taught through the medium of another language. As a corollary, we also argue that some schools--in our case, government schools--are using their immersion programmes as markers of distinction in a period of post-comprehensive schooling and emerging school markets, which includes both government and non-government schools. There is also a global policy context to such programmes in respect of countries such as Spain, China and Germany supporting the teaching of their respective languages in nations around the world. (Contains 1 figure.)

Referring to the experiences of three Muslim refugee girls recently settled in Australia, this paper examines issues of schooling and empowerment. The paper draws on teacher and student interview data from a study that investigated inclusive approaches to addressing issues of cultural diversity in a secondary state high school in Queensland. The paper foregrounds the girls' highly positive views of their experiences at the school; views that reflect the girls' access to spaces of empowerment but belie the complexity and tensions involved in how empowerment was understood and approached by educators at the school. Theorising empowerment through poststructural understandings of agency, the paper examines conditions and ways of understanding that make possible spaces of empowerment for the girls. In particular, the paper argues for a reflexive approach to empowerment that is informed by an understanding of the framing discourses shaping minority student identity and a critical reflection on educator and school positionality.

This paper draws on data from a research project investigating gendered identities and interactions of high-achieving students in Year Eight in England (12-13 years old), particularly in relation to students' "popularity" amongst their peers. As part of this study 71 students were interviewed from nine different schools in urban, rural and small town locations. From an analysis of participants' conceptions of the characteristics of "popular" and "unpopular" students, this paper looks in depth at notions of in/authenticity and how it is perceived and judged in relation to the self and others. In particular, the paper focuses on the genderedness of such discourses of in/authenticity as constructed by these students, and relates such concerns to theorizations of "impossible" femininity. (Contains 3 tables and 2 notes.)

This paper presents some results of a qualitative study carried out in a secondary school in the city of Buenos Aires (Argentina). It examines how two students from poor families responded to, and viewed, aggression by peers at their school. This paper argues that the examination of students' narratives about aggression (based on classism and sexism) illustrates the analytical usefulness of the moral dimension of social life to unpack crucial aspects of the micro politics of class and gender and processes of identity-making. Following Sayer, this article maps students' responses to immoral sentiments and misrecognition: the search for respect and respectability, and moral boundary drawing. It demonstrates that these reactions are entangled in students' class and gender identity-making. It also shows how "victims" are able to regain respect. However, the individualized nature of these processes and the spirals of aggression they instigate demonstrate the fragile and temporary nature of this achievement. (Contains 15 notes.)

In this paper we describe some of the complexities involved in the construction of a sample of "ordinary" schools. We outline the policy context in England that produces pressures to resist "ordinariness". The paper then explores two theoretical tools, fabrication and rhetoric, that are deployed in an analysis of some key artefacts of fabrication from schools in England. Through an examination of artefacts such as school brochures and websites, this paper asks whether there are any "ordinary" schools in these performative times? (Contains 1 note.)

Based on interviews with and questionnaires completed by upper secondary school pupils (n = 27) from academic and vocational programmes, respectively, the present paper focuses on some of the social and individual conditions that precede the individual decision-making process in education transitions. The paper shows that an organic view of decision-making is in better accordance with observations than is a hierarchical view, and thus supports previous research claiming that pragmatic rationality (based on habitus and reflexivity) plays a more important role in students' decision-making processes than does instrumental rationally. (Contains 12 notes, 6 tables, and 3 figures.)

This paper reports on a study of students choosing the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma over state-based curricula in Australian schools. The IB Diploma was initially designed as a matriculation certificate to facilitate international mobility. While first envisaged as a lifestyle agenda for cultural elites, such mobility is now widespread with more people living "beyond the nation" through choice or circumstance. Beck and others highlight how the capacity to cross national borders offers a competitive edge with which to strategically pursue economic and cultural capital. Beck's "border artistes" are those who use national borders to their individual advantage through reflexive strategy. The study explored the rationales and strategy behind the choice of the IB Diploma curriculum expressed by students in a focus group interview and an online survey. This paper reports on their imagined transnational routes and mobile orientations, and how a localised curriculum limits their imagined mobile futures. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

Schools represent the primary setting where refugee children learn about Australian life and culture. They serve as a broad context for acculturation not only for academic development and language acquisition but for cultural learning too. This paper focuses on the after-school homework tutoring programme that uses University of Western Sydney (Australia) secondary teacher education students as tutors for African refugee students in secondary schools to facilitate their inclusion into Australian society. African refugees may receive lower returns for education in comparison with other Australian migrants. Using Bourdieu's theory of social capital and cultural reproduction as a conceptual framework, this paper discusses the part played by schools in constructing barriers that prevent under-represented groups such as refugees participating in the education process. It aims to explore the success of community engagement programmes like Refugee Action Support, which is designed to act in the interests of others (refugees) characterized as socio-culturally disadvantaged.

The present paper explores the conceptual limitations of the bully discourses that ground UK anti-bullying policy frameworks and psychological research literatures on school bullying, suggesting they largely ignore gender, (hetero)sexuality and the social, cultural and subjective dynamics of conflict and aggression among teen-aged girls. To explore the limitations of bully discourses in practice, the paper draws on a pilot, interview-based study of girls' experiences of aggression and bullying, illustrating how friendships and conflicts among the girls are thoroughly heterosexualized, en-cultured and classed. Drawing on girls and parent interview narratives, I also trace some of the effects of bully discourses set in motion in schools to intervene into conflicts among girls. I suggest these practices miss the complexity of the dynamics at play among girls and also neglect the power relations of parenting, ethnicity, class and school choice, which can inform how, why and when bullying discourses are mobilized. (Contains 9 notes.)

The title of this article comes from the editorial written for this journal by Olive Banks, Len Barton, Roger Dale, David Hargreaves, Roland Meighan, Ivan Reid and Graham Vulliamy (Banks et al. 1980, 4) that appeared in its first issue, and set out its remit. The seven scholars who wrote that editorial pledged to "publish high quality work of any theoretical orientation." Three major themes are addressed in this paper: Olive Banks's contribution to sociology of education up to 1973; the fate of her work after 1973; and her work as a case study of the troubled relationship between sociology of education and sociology itself. Two important works by Olive Banks form the core of the paper. Banks and Finlayson (1973) "Success and Failure in the Secondary School," and her textbook "The Sociology of Education" (Banks 1968, 1971, 1976). Banks (1955) Parity and Prestige in English Secondary Education is the subject of another paper in this volume (Edwards, 2008, this issue): a recognition that it is her most important work. Before focusing on the three themes used to structure the paper, there is a brief contextual section.