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The ways in which young boys, masculinity and academic achievement intersect to impact upon boys' disposition to and experience of schooling is relatively under-researched. Drawing on data from an ethnographic exploration into children's gender and sexual identities in their final year of primary school (aged 10/11), this paper sets out to illustrate how the discourses of hegemonic masculinity operate to shape and form boys' learner identities. The first half of the paper explores the processes and strategies by which different boys' negotiate the tensions between the perceived feminisation of academic success and/or 'studiousness', and the need to project a coherent and stable hegemonic masculinity. The remainder of the paper examines the increasing pressures of hegemonic masculinity upon high-achieving boys, and the extent to which some boys managed to carve out and maintain alternative masculinities. The implications for current and future interventions and initiatives, directed at boys' attitudes and experiences of schooling and schoolwork, are briefly outlined in the concluding sections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a long-standing concern within the sociology of education for ameliorating educational inequality, the challenge of improving educational opportunities for disadvantaged students remains deeply entrenched. While ‘macro’ issues such as segregation and systemic inequalities in school funding and access to qualified teachers must be addressed as matters of social and educational justice, Basil Bernstein's novel focus on ‘relations within’ education as the site of pedagogic discourse offers teachers and those working inside school systems a particularly powerful vision for promoting more equitable outcomes for students. This paper examines this assertion through a case study of the ‘mixed’ pedagogical practice of a successful teacher in a fifth-grade urban classroom in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The notion of ‘competitive excellence’ is an enduring cornerstone of UK educational policy. Most recently, expanding and adapting New Labour’s Academy project with the introduction of free schools, the Coalition’s approach advances and embeds competitive market-based forms of community engagement in education. Responding to this policy paradigm, this paper draws upon history in order to open up the notion of excellence. Through examining alternative practices of achievement and success in histories of community education, I aim to disturb the unquestioned attachment of educational excellence to the ideals of competitive meritocracy. Comparing across two community educational movements – Socialist Sunday Schools (established 1892) and Black Saturday Schools (established 1968) – I explore how achievement and excellence have been mobilised to very different educational aims. In distinct times and circumstances, both of these community initiatives practiced versions of educational achievement that challenged dominant knowledge hierarchies and underlying assumptions of incapability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present paper examines whether there is significant variation in schooling outcomes between Scottish secondary schools, and if so, how much is associated with pupil intake, and how much is associated with the schools they attend It also examines whether schools vary in their effectiveness for different types of pupils, and whether schools tend to be superior, or inferior, across three different outcome measures The study employed a subsample of data from the 1977 Scottish School Leavers Survey on over 700 pupils from 15 schools in one administrative division These data were linked to data on the verbal reasoning quotients of the pupils, derived from a test administered to them before they entered secondary school For each of the 15 schools we estimated the expected scores on measures of English, arithmetic and overall attainment for pupils with below average, average, and above average ability, controlling for pupils' verbal ability, gender, prestige of father's occupation, mother's education, and number of siblings The study shows there was wide variation in schooling outcomes between secondary schools in the division, even after controlling for family background characteristics and pupil ability prior to entering secondary school There were few schools that were particularly effective for low ability pupils, but not high ability pupils and vice versa Schools tended to be effective, or ineffective, across all three outcome measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers moral agendas projected onto parents that mobilise them to supplement school literacy education with private tutoring. The theoretical frame draws on the concepts of responsibilisation as emerging market-embedded morality, ‘nudge’ social policies, edu-business and hidden privatisation in education. This framing is applied to two empirical moments: firstly, debates around the Australian government’s ‘Tutorial Voucher Initiative’ of 2004; and secondly, tutoring advertisements and items in school newsletters collected in early 2016. In the first moment, parents were somewhat reluctant to take up free supplementary tutoring; in the second, private literacy tutoring is increasingly normalised and legitimated as parents are nudged to supplement the work of the school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience research has increasingly gained ground in the field of education research, due to its potential for ameliorating inequalities. This article deals with the emergence of educational resilience, with particular attention to parental network structure, by employing a Bourdieusian social and cultural capital approach. While much of the literature discusses resilience normatively as a personal trait, this article frames it as an outcome of larger societal processes. Drawing on a comparative study of the experiences of resilient student–mother and dropout–mother pairs living in inner-city areas of Istanbul, the article illustrates that the emergence of resilience is strongly linked to resources such as parental networks and that parental networks significantly differ along the nexus of ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pupils of White and Black Caribbean descent make up the largest category of mixed heritage pupils in the United Kingdom. As a group they are at risk of underachieving and are proportionally over‐represented in school exclusions. Yet little is known to date about the barriers to their achievement. The common‐sense explanation for their underachievement is often in relation to the perception that mixed‐heritage people are more likely to have ‘identity problems’ and low self‐esteem because of their mixed backgrounds. In some cases, this view is further compounded by low teacher expectations associated with the socio‐economic background and household structure of some mixed heritage pupils. By drawing on qualitative data from recent research,1 this article will explore the barriers to achievement faced by White/Black Caribbean pupils in English schools. We argue that although White/Black Caribbean pupils are likely to experience a similar set of barriers to achievement as Black Caribbean pupils, there are important distinctions to be made. The specific barriers to achievement identified for White/Black Caribbean pupils derive from socio‐economic disadvantage, low teacher expectation linked to misunderstandings of mixed heritage identities and backgrounds, and the behavioural issues and attitudes towards achievement linked to peer group pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on studies issues of gender differences in primary schools. It examines how the group dynamic is affected by altering the gender composition. The author of the article sets up a research worked on an identical craft, design and technology task. There already exists research to show that the impact of gender is not uniform and consistent. It seems possible that working-class girls have had a socialization that makes them more prepared to adopt a role of "little mother" than the middle-class girls, whose conditioning takes in greater possibilities and wider horizons. Class, race and academic achievement are all categories that crucially interrelate with concepts of gender. The research was carried out with two groups of four children from the first year junior class of the school in which the author teach. Each group was set the same design Technology task and presented with the same range of materials. The findings support the view that the impact of gender on girls is not uniform and consistent across boundaries of race and class but that the three categories are inextricably interwoven.