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Pathways to higher education can appear opaque and unattainable to rural adults, despite the affordances provided by modern broadband and increasing provision of university online learning options. This paper describes an innovative partnership model that connects rural adults to university and technical and further education pathways through 'warm connections' developed between staff in rural libraries and 'neighbourhood houses', and people working in university outreach and preparation programmes. Through the Warm Connections project, local staff were provided with training and on campus experiences that equipped them to have conversations with rural people about what university is 'like' and what it takes to get a place in a university course. Rural community staff reported being confident in providing customised front-line information and advice to rural residents and were able to direct enquiries to appropriate people in tertiary institutions. Some staff themselves enrolled in and successfully completed university short courses, providing role models for their communities. The project reduced the socio-economic distance between rural adults and tertiary education. It successfully built social capital networks of 'warm connections' between tertiary institutions and rural communities, although the longevity of those networks will depend on continuing effort by tertiary institutions to maintain and refresh connections.

The Emotional Literacy Support Assistant (ELSA) programme is an evidence-informed intervention delivered by teaching assistants and supervised by educational psychologists. In this research, semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate the impact of the ELSA programme on wellbeing from the perspective of pupils. A thematic analysis of the data set identified the following themes: "Feelings and Emotions", "Engagement", "Resilience", "Hopes and Aspirations" and "Relationships". The findings suggest the ELSA programme has a perceived positive impact on multiple components of pupil wellbeing. These components include positive emotions, negative feelings, engagement, resilience, optimism, accomplishment and relationships, as described by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Seligman's "PERMA model". The positive wellbeing changes experienced by the pupils occurred through strategies, talking, and forming a close relationship with the teaching assistant. Overall, this research provides evidence to suggest a positive impact of the ELSA programme on pupil wellbeing.

This paper explores how left behind children (LBCs) of emigrant women experience and make use of familial and educational investment on 'getting ahead' in thinking about their futures. On the one hand, these efforts of Filipino families figure in the imaginary of transnational migration as the ticket to better life. On the other hand, it surfaces in Philippine education's desire for global competitiveness through educational reform. This paper argues that these attachments to 'getting ahead' in life and in education have resulted to LBCs being 'left behind' in physical, structural, and figurative terms. They grapple with these failed promises by tapping into local collective solidarities and breaking away from previously circulated imaginaries of the good life in assessing potential mobile futures.

In this paper, I analyse the narrative positioning in two semi-structured interviews with volunteer interpreters in a counselling centre for refugees run by an NGO in Vienna, complemented by ethnographic descriptions of volunteer work in the counselling centre drawn from long-term participant observation. As a substantial part of the volunteers working at the counselling centre consists of (current and former) clients of the NGO, asylum seekers themselves, 'work' and 'citizenship' are deeply entangled in their positioning. The analyses of how past and future trajectories are co-constructed in the interviews, and of how the participants position themselves in and through the interview narratives, show that linguistic volunteer work becomes a site of investment and speculation on citizenship (conceived both as a moral and a legal 'object'). As the paper demonstrates, volunteer work promises to yield symbolic and social capital -- including language -- required for success in the 'markets' of citizenship (e.g. in the asylum procedure) and, contingently, later on, in the national labour market.

Meritocracy is used by governments in many societies as an 'effective' way to represent social justice and legitimise -- explain away -- class inequality. By focusing on a small number of working-class students who achieve academic 'success' and have reached elite universities in an ideal meritocratic environment -- Chinese schooling -- this paper aims to discuss the relation of meritocracy to upward social mobility and class domination. Our analysis raises questions about the notion of 'success' in a meritocratic environment and suggests the operation of a new form of symbolic domination in relation to these working-class high-achievers. Through their 'successes' at school, they are distanced from their working-class localities and histories, while they also remain outside of the middle-class sensibilities that they aspire to -- they become a 'third class' whose core values reside in meritocracy itself. There is no transcendence of class here rather a different form of distinction and exclusion.

Several areas in the UK allocate children to secondary schools based on exam results at age 11. While many studies have investigated how attending academically selective schools affects pupils' subsequent educational attainment, we know very little about how grammar attendance affects other outcomes, such as pupils' self-confidence, academic self-esteem and aspirations. We investigate this by applying propensity score matching techniques to rich data from the Millennium Cohort Study. Results show that attending a grammar school has very little impact upon pupils' socio-emotional outcomes. Expanding grammar schools is therefore unlikely to benefit pupils in this respect.

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.

In the wider context of national growth and investment in higher education in China, more mature students seek to gain access to university education. Considering the far-reaching socioeconomic and political shifts in contemporary China and its higher education sector in particular, this study explores the experience of mature university students in this country and poses the seemingly simple question as to why these students did not pursue higher education when they were school-leavers, but chose to study at a mature age. Drawing on biographical interviews with 20 Chinese mature university students, the paper explores their aspirations, motivations and tribulations behind embarking on higher education. Revisiting Bourdieu's ideas on 'inherited' and 'acquired' cultural capital and examining the related Chinese cultural notion of "mianzi" ('face'), it is argued that family and social networks are decisive factors in mature students' orientation towards higher education.

This goal of this study was to develop a quantitative measure that captures the dimensions of youth purpose (intention, engagement, and prosocial reasoning; Damon, Menon, and Bronk, 2003), focusing on students' life goals and aspirations. We tested the construct validity of our new measure using bifactor exploratory structural equation modeling (B ESEM), assuming that the construct of youth purpose may be best measured as a G factor that allows items to freely cross-load in the model (Morin, Arens, & Marsh, 2016). The G factor model was better fitting than a traditional confirmatory factor analysis or ESEM. Additionally the G factor was correlated with aspects of students' civic engagement and mastery components of academic achievement motivation. Suggestions for future research are discussed.

Residential schools for indigenous students are rarely conceptualised as "castles of hope," but because of the difficulty of providing quality education in rural areas, they remain an option, or a necessity, for many indigenous students. Although most contemporary residential schools differ from those that purposefully sought to annihilate indigenous cultures and languages, their existence remains problematic because students grow up in institutional environments that typically favour integration into mainstream culture over maintenance of indigenous cultures. This article is based on ethnographic research conducted in 2014-15 in a large residential school for indigenous students in Odisha, India. Erving Goffman's (1961) "total institution," provides a useful frame to examine data collected on students' experience because it focuses on institutions that separate groups of people from their communities for an expressed purpose. This case illustrates how a total institution (1) shapes students' identities and aspirations toward institutional goals, (2) separates them from the wider world, (3) encourages sacrifice and loyalty by promising hope for a better future, and (4) establishes institutional systems that maintain order through shared responsibility and commitment to the institution. Although students at this school are separated from their families and communities and learn a set of behaviours critical to the smooth functioning of the institution, the data indicate that they and their families accept the sacrifices associated with institutional schooling because of the promise of becoming societal change agents, comfortable in both indigenous and mainstream India.

Enrollment at university can be based on personal interests (intrinsically motivated) as well as financial prospects (extrinsically motivated). I investigate whether and how these qualities of motivation for enrollment influence achievement motivation and well-being of university students at the beginning of their studies. Thereby, I relied on data from a longitudinal study in which university freshmen were questioned at the beginning and end of their first academic year. The results of the study indicate that intrinsic motivation for enrollment facilitates the development of a learning goal orientation and retrospective satisfaction with choice of major. Extrinsic motivation for enrollment was related to impaired study satisfaction over time and enhanced thoughts about dropout. These prospective effects were robust when controlling for initial individual differences in achievement goal orientations, life satisfaction, and GPA. The presented research provides new insights regarding how educational decisions affect achievement motivation and well-being in educational contexts over time.

One of the challenges that today's universities face is to ensure that their graduates find employment in line with their attributes. University students' employability capital depends on many personal factors in individuals such as human capital, social capital, cultural capital and psychological capital. However, there is no consensus on how to measure employability capital, and the scales developed to date have not been properly validated. The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate, at the confirmatory level, a set of instruments for measuring the factors of employability capital of university students. We conduct three studies based on three samples of 816, 1,082, and 1,088 students. These studies show the structure of the scales resulting from checking content validity, dimensionality, and reliability, as well as convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. Moreover, the results show that psychological capital is the most relevant of employability capital followed by social capital, cultural capital and human capital.

Guided by the social-ecological perspective, this study aims to explore how various social climates are associated with school motivation and the future orientation of 597 African American adolescents. We examined the direct and indirect effects of parent factors and school climate on future orientation through school motivation. School motivation was positively associated with a future orientation. Perceived parental expectations and teacher support were positively associated with their school motivation. However, bullying victimization was not negatively associated with school motivation, although greater perceived parental engagement and bullying victimization showed a more positive future orientation. Implications for research, practice, and policy are discussed.

The achievement of equal access to educational opportunity is an international policy imperative that remains as elusive as it is desirable. Despite a plethora of inclusive policies and initiatives in Scotland such as "Getting it Right for Every Child" (2008 & 2012), "Curriculum for Excellence"(2009) and the "Scottish Attainment Challenge" (2015), significant numbers of young people cannot be said to experience equal access to educational opportunity. This paper draws upon complementary sociological and philosophical perspectives to explore why such barriers to equality of educational opportunity persist, before suggesting ways in which serious engagement with such theory might counter deficit assumptions in play and offer possible new ways forward. The point of departure is Bourdieu's typology of various forms of social capital which highlights how possession of capital is advantageous to upper-and middle-class families, whereas lack of such capital serves to restrict educational opportunities for young people from working class and disadvantaged backgrounds. Such an analysis argues that reproduction of social conditions, styles of thinking and decision-making, coupled with oppressive societal structures, all serve to disempower young people and impact negatively upon their educational attainment. This paper explores a variety of ways in which theory might challenge and interrupt assumptions informing discourses associated with inequality and their associated remedies. Through engaging a series of problematics within current framings of inequality, the paper argues that a more sustained engagement with theory offers the possibility of more nuanced understandings of inequality and a provocation to imagine otherwise. Engaging in such imaginative work might, moreover, enable the barriers to equality of educational opportunity to be better addressed.

In urban centers, many residents commute to work and are exposed to visual input displayed on cars around them. License plates become a space utilized by advertisers to display advertising messages. This is an instance of the presence of language in the public space, or the "linguistic landscape" of an area. The purpose of the present study is to analyze linguistic and visual elements of license plates in the Israeli linguistic landscape. The study positions the license plates as a medium that conveys messages reflecting Israeli society and culture. We focus on the advertising texts on license plate frames and examine the messages they carry about the car and the car owner. Through a content analysis of such texts, findings point to varied linguistic-visual elements in the license plates from a linguistic landscape perspective, such as the presence of languages and the flag, including the empowerment of the car company and the car itself, the driving experience, driver's superiority and dream realization, and the personal relationships between the driver and the car. We conclude that today cars are not only vehicles taking us from place to place, but are also associated with power, emotion, freedom, superiority, and self-expression.

This paper explores the life experiences, identities and trajectories of young Dubai-born Indians living in the Arab Gulf. It seeks to contribute to an emergent body of research on the formation of diasporic identities and forms of belonging among South Asians in the Gulf, which underscores the ways in which migrants articulate forms of cultural belonging in a context where they are denied the right to citizenship. Building on the notion of the 'educated person', the paper argues that education constitutes an important, yet overlooked, basis for forms of cultural belonging in Dubai.

The study of international student mobilities (ISM) has increased substantially over the last two decades. Following trends in institutional and policy debates on the broader internationalisation of education, researchers have paid considerable attention to questions about why, where, how and under what circumstances people engage in educational migration. As the field of ISM has matured, however, it has also taken shape around distinct frameworks wherein little cross-fertilisation appears to be occurring and where a series of normative narratives have emerged. In this paper we evaluate the extant scholarship on ISM and argue that there are significant blind spots in current research and that there is a need for a greater focus on interdisciplinary conversations that can address the changing characteristics of educational migration internationally. In particular, we argue that researchers have remained preoccupied on researching international students at particular points in time, have over emphasised the centrality of privilege and youth and been too focused on Westward mobility. In concluding, we set an agenda for future research on ISM that addresses three key challenges: analysing the connection between imagination and action; the relationship between life course, privilege and precarity; and accounting for the recent diversification and stratification of ISM.

Recent decades have seen an exponential growth in the field of international schools, and a concurrent rise in the number of young Anglo-Saxon teachers overseas. Such mobile teaching careers have largely been presented in terms of emphasising exploration, travel and lifestyle-related migration. While acknowledging such factors, we also draw attention to financial constraints, and in particular, to the challenge of personal debts, which weighs heavily over many Anglo-Saxon teachers. We therefore discuss international teachers' mobile trajectory in terms of a balancing act of negotiation between lifestyle and financial factors and point to a strategic trade-off between the two. Moreover, by emphasising the neglected aspect of indebtedness, we argue that, while a key point of appeal for such teachers' participation in the international school sector lies in the ostensible participation in the carefree, privileged environment of lifestyle migration that would have been out of reach for them otherwise, in reality, such horizons of opulence are limited, as teachers are locked into a precarious system that offers little protection and is highly unpredictable. In this context, the accumulation of professional experience provides only a limited pathway for assuming control over one's future destiny/destination -- be it professional, geographic, or financial -- and at times may even backfire.

A consolidated sociological line of the research allows us to understand the educational advantages of middle-class pupils in terms of the dynamics of reproduction [Bourdieu, P., and J. C. Passeron. 1970. "The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relations to Culture," translated and edited by Richard Nice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Power, S., T. Edwards, G. Whitty, and V. Wigfall. 2003. "Education and the Middle Class." Buckingham: Open University Press]. However, some scholars have pointed out how this process cannot be taken for granted, highlighting the difficulties experienced by youths in reaching academic success [Reay, D., and H. Lucey. 2002. "Carrying the Beacon of Excellence: Social Class Differentiation and Anxiety at a Time of Transition." "Journal of Education Policy" 17 (3): 321-336. Doi:10.1080/02680930210127586]. Based on Bourdieu's perspective, this article will explore the links between low educational attainment, artistic passion, and high aspirations in privileged students. The research is based on in-depth interviews and focus groups with middle-class pupils in two secondary art schools in Milan. It is argued the artistic disposition acts within dynamics of negotiation among different and contrasting expectations. Creativity emerges as a source to perform gendered privileged learner identities. This study on artistic educational pathways can contribute to understanding the process-making of inequalities in creative fields.

This article reports on the effect of life-design counselling on a purposefully selected learner from an environment challenged by disadvantages. An instrumental, single-case study approach was followed and collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data proceeded simultaneously. Intervention comprised assessment and dialogues and investigated the influence of life design counselling on the contextual experiences of the participant. We focused on the four dimensions of career adaptability and on the meaning of career in the future life of the participant. The intervention enabled the participant to pursue a dream, to set goals, and to (re-)establish his career-life identity; rekindled his hope; and enhanced his self-efficacy. After the intervention, he felt more positive, less anxious, and more ready to look at the positive side of his life. Longitudinal research and quantitative studies are needed to confirm the value of the intervention described here.

Purpose: This paper analyses the transition of university students from initial perceptions of enterprise to potentially heightened levels of proclivity towards creative behaviours and future entrepreneurial activity. Design/methodology/approach: Adopting a positivist approach, an intention-based scorecard survey targeted to two cohorts totalling 75 undergraduate students leading to 150 responses at a Scottish university. These were circulated at start and end sessions of four relevant courses, to establish a measure for self-evaluation with respect to perception and proclivity. Findings: The data gathered from the Entrepreneurial Scorecard emphasised differences in perception and proclivity between the two cohorts, namely creativity, risk-taking, leadership and business aspiration. This re-emphasised the three identified themes: awareness through trait identification; autonomy through developing enterprising skills; and achievement through practicing entrepreneurial activities. This formed the basis for our novel model in supporting the entrepreneurial development of students: The Perception to Proclivity Process Model. Research limitations/implications: This study focusses on a single case and further research within other institutions and domains is encouraged to contextually test the transferability of the two key outputs--the Entrepreneurial Scorecard and the Perception to Proclivity Process Model. Practical implications: The practical output of this research is a novel tool for evaluating entrepreneurial perceptions and proclivity through the scorecard. This study adds to the existing research base around entrepreneurial intention and action whilst providing a new model for a guiding framework for the entrepreneurial student and educator journey. Originality/value: This paper's approach outlines many themes and inherent questions of concern to enterprise educators and university management towards the creation, maintenance, or development of an enterprise course or programme. This research introduces the concepts of entrepreneurial perception and entrepreneurial proclivity, explaining the important role they play in developing students. Additionally, the scorecard has potential for application in a longitudinal context as a means of establishing potential shifts in entrepreneurial perception and proclivity. However, the application is not limited to the scope of higher education, with clear potential to apply this tool and approach within other domains.

There has been increasing debate about the role early childhood education and care (ECEC) plays within local and wider communities. This article reports on a small-scale case study that explored the views of teachers, management and parents from a privately owned ECEC centre in New Zealand about the notion of community. Rogoff's planes of sociocultural activity have been used as the theoretical framework for generating and analysing data. Findings highlight that while the business model of this centre shaped its orientation to community, the participants expressed diverse views about community, emphasising the importance of connections between people and place both within and beyond the centre. We argue that viewing the ECEC setting as an extended family rather than a community may afford greater recognition of broader emotional and social benefits of participating in ECEC for children, their families and society as a whole.

Drawing from 34 in-depth interviews, we examined the senior-year transitions of second-generation immigrant (SGI) college students, who are members of the first generation in their families to grow up in the US. We considered the ways SGI college seniors made meaning of parental involvement and negotiated relationships with parents during this transition, finding that students' interpretations of parental involvement shaped their strategies for engaging with parents as they approached graduation. Three types of perceptions corresponded with 3 distinct strategies, ranging from prioritizing independence to prioritizing familial expectations.

A narrative therapeutic group intervention, Tree of Life, was carried out with groups of ethnic minority parents of children with special educational needs and/or disability (SEND) in a mainstream primary school. A participatory research approach was used, involving collaboration with the group of parents and involvement of a parent co-researcher. Qualitative data were collected through a focus group with six parents on their views of the sessions. The parent co-researcher carried out the analysis of the data, using thematic analysis. The main themes identified were: "Sharing", "Self-awareness" and "Change". Strengths and limitations of the participatory research project are considered. The findings are discussed in relation to the experiences of ethnic minority parents of children with SEND. They are also considered in the context of educational psychologists engaging in critical and transformative practice through using narrative, strengths-based approaches, responding sensitively to diversity and working in ways which empower service-users.

There is a gap in research on access to universities in South Africa. The research that exists focuses on quantitative methodologies, although some qualitative studies are now emerging. These research methodologies, although necessary and substantial for the development of equity measures and policies, might be less successful in their impact on the local context, on research participants and in expanding what counts as knowledge in the university. In this paper, participatory research, which has not been used to research access, is explored. The paper seeks to go beyond the instrumentalization of research participants -- especially those from low-income households -- highlighting the potential of using multi-strategy research, in which participatory elements are included as a way to foster both participants' human development and local impact. Drawing on a research project on access to higher education in South Africa, the paper demonstrates that by including participatory elements (in this case photovoice) has the potential to operationalize Appadurai's notion of the 'right to research' among undergraduates. Using data, including processes, observations, workshops, interviews, and visual narratives from a participatory photovoice project, the findings highlight how methodological plurality creates space for locally and relevant knowledge production, challenging epistemic barriers and fostering human development among the research participants.

Despite rapid growth in the popularity of massive open online courses (MOOCs), few studies have investigated learning outcomes among participating university learners. We first examined student growth in terms of knowledge, attitudes, skills, and aspirations (KASA). We then explored the relationships between learning outcomes and three learner factors: time management pattern, task persistence, and language match. A survey of 94 MOOC learners at five Japanese universities revealed growth in knowledge, attitudes, aspirations, and skills, in that order. Task persistence was most strongly associated with knowledge growth, with knowledge affecting aspirations indirectly via attitudes and skills. Learning frequency, time allocation, and participation in discussions had little impact on KASA growth. Compared with learners studying in a foreign language, those studying in their native language reported greater growth across all learning outcomes. We discuss theoretical and practical implications and offer recommendations for future research.

This paper addresses three basic questions about moral motivation. Concerning the nature of moral motivation, it argues that it involves responsiveness to both reasons of morality and the value of persons and everything else of value. Moral motivation is thus identified as reason-responsive appropriate valuing. Regarding whether it is possible for people to be morally motivated, the paper relies on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to show how moral motivation is a likely product of education that is need-supportive in modeling appropriate valuing and engaging students in the kinds of reasoning that are essential to moral motivation. Virtuous motivation that inclines people to engage in morally motivated acts is equated with being morally self-determining or achieving the right kind of integrated motivation. SDT shows how people come to be morally motivated, and the paper concludes that an identified aspiration to be virtuous may play a significant role.

High school students are expected to make choices about which subjects they study. These choices are not completely open; however, they are steered by what is on offer, previous achievement and conversations with teachers, family and friends; choices are patterned by class, gender, able-ness and race. We offer the perspective of subject choice as resistance. The paper uses student focus group data from a 3-year study of the visual and performing arts in 30 schools in England. We show that students chose the arts not only because what it might do for them in the future, but also for what it provided for them in the everyday. We suggest that the quotidian is an important aspect of choice-making, which, in the case of arts pedagogies, both accommodates the highly regulated norm and offers a counter. This analysis points to avenues for further research on subject choice as well as provides important clues for school reform.

Latinos are one of the fastest growing and most racially diverse students in American schools. Driven by immigration, they account for more than 24% of the kindergarten to high school population. Despite their numbers, the achievement gap between Latinos and their non-Latino peers remains wide since they have the highest rate of dropout. Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, we find that Latino students who attend more than one school during their academic career are more likely to dropout than those who do not. We also find lower rates of dropout among children of parents who stated that they did not have difficulties interacting with school administrators due to language barriers. With regards to migration, we do not find immigrant status to be significant in dropout -- a noteworthy effect given the increases in raids and deportation by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This article reports on the effect of a community-based social support programme offered through a government-linked centre that works on the resilience of children of families from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Purposive sampling was used to select four parents (mothers) and nine school-going children (N = 13) who all benefit from and attend a community-based social support programme (drop-in centre) that targets vulnerable learners and their families. A case study design was implemented to construct data using biographical questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. The findings revealed that the socioeconomic status of families and the degree of vulnerability of primary school children are key determinants and identification strategies that are used by schools to refer learners to social support programmes aimed at supporting their resilience. Moreover, the identification of vulnerable children through the school system enhances and facilitates their family's access to social support programmes.

International education achievement indicators potentially obscure students' localised experiences of school. This paper examines adolescent purpose to understand what drives students' learning experiences in high-performance schooling in Singapore. Purpose is a long-term intention to engage with the world in ways meaningful to oneself and to others. Using clinical interviews, the authors analysed students' perspectives of the purpose of schooling and learning against the tensions of preparing students for performance-focused outcomes in schools. Findings indicated purpose clusters with prevalent self-oriented academic achievement goals. About one-third of the students with forms of support had nascent beyond-the-self life goals. To think about teaching and learning in a more integrated manner, this study shows it is important to look closely into students' learning experiences, as these provide critical insights into how policies are implemented in schools, and how curricula can be made significant and meaningful in a more humanising vision of what schools might become.

This article reports on the influence of communication skills on rural students' resilience and well-being. Purposive sampling was used to retrospectively select 40 (f: n = 20; m: n = 20) Grade 9 students in a rural school that were involved in a larger youth project that aimed to deliver pathways towards resilience in rural schools through cross-cultural measures for assessments, career guidance and therapeutic interventions. The project aimed to provide academic service learning opportunities for the second-year Master's in Educational Psychology students. Secondary data analysis was employed to explore and analyse the data. From the findings, the most frequently indicated challenges the students faced included limited expressive and receptive skills in English. Although they have dreams and hopes for the future, the students' lack of language proficiency hinders their career aspirations and life beyond school. Future research should focus on ways to enhance their communicative competences.

The research explored the perception of the incorporation of 'future-self' for young people (YP) and their parents as part of transition planning when moving from specialist provision into mainstream further education (FE) and adulthood. Imagined 'future-selves' is thought to influence an individual to work towards their aspired self. The research aim was exploring the extent the YP and their parents' views were being gained using a 'future-self' approach within transition planning into FE, and as perceived by the YP as they planned their transition out of FE. Phase 1 used case study design to explore the YP and their parents' experience of planning having included the YP's vision of their 'future-self', at aged 16. Phase 2 gained views of YP approaching transition out of FE at aged 19+, towards adulthood, about the inclusion of 'future-self' in their preparation. Pupils from specialist schools and FE were invited to participate. Phase 1 had two case-studies of a YP and parent. Phase 2 included three focus groups with YP aged 19 plus. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were thematically analysed. Findings indicated that the YP are more involved in the transition planning with EHCPs, and a range of methods are applied to prepare the YP. There remain barriers limiting the options for the YP such as: lack of choice available; low aspirations of others; failure to explore holistic longer-term outcomes; overreliance on parents; and the need for more effective strategic planning for the YP. The findings indicate that applying a 'future-selves' approach may help to motivate YP to meet their aspirations as part of transition preparation and support their longer-term outcomes.

One element of the PARTISPACE study into spaces and styles of Youth Participation in eight European cities is presented in this article. Drawing on ethnographically informed studies of four sites in three cities, the paper analyses the ways in which young people construct and sustain alternatives to the policy-driven forms of participation, based on their yearning and aspiration for different relations than those found in ordinary life. We suggest four themes as characterising their search for community: Places where communities are born; Breaking out of the Ordinary; Differentiated Openness and Protected Zones of Experimentation. In conversation with the work of bell hooks on 'homeplaces' and Victor Turner on anti-hegemonic anti-structures, the analysis suggests that young people's self-created spaces give insights into what 'youth participation' might be and that forms of protection of such alternative spaces are an inbuilt necessity and not necessarily to be seen as exclusionary or anti-democratic.

Educators often ask how to motivate PhD students. Before addressing how to motivate students, we should know what motivates prospective doctoral students. Motivational support has been shown to lead to overall satisfaction with the educational process, better engagement, and persistence. Using the interdisciplinary field of library and information science, this research offers insight on doctoral student motivation through quantitative analysis of results from administration of the Academic Motivation Scale. The instrument measures and classifies motivation from the perspective of self-determination theory. Results suggest PhD students are motivated by several types of intrinsic motivation as well as identified regulation, a type of extrinsic yet autonomous motivation. Findings can be used by program administrators, faculty, and other stakeholders to address the "how" of motivation through better alignment of teaching practices, research activities, and student services based on students' motivation types.

This paper aims to show how imagination is an important tool in the formation of aspiration and ethnic capital for young high school students and their parents in the city of Blacktown, New South Wales, Australia. Through semi-structured focus group interviews with parents, teachers and students, data from the demographic space of the school revealed that despite the limitations in economic capital there was social and cultural capital in migrant families, which provided reinforcement for the realisation of various goals, especially through education and "hard work". The students from migrant backgrounds had an opportunity to aspire and imagine a grand future because they were able to inhabit and negotiate the field of education more easily with the strong support from the family. So ethnicity and cultural background affected not only educational and vocational aspirations but also impacted on the imagination of the parents and students.

This qualitative study furthers educational theory and research related to resilience and personal transformation. It develops connections between existing educational resilience research and change theories, and it utilizes these bodies of scholarship to propose a theory of personal transformation. Based on interviews with students who were successful in university after either not graduating from high school or graduating from non-academic high school programs, a metaphor of a Mobius strip is developed to hypothesize a theory of transformation as a means of understanding the students' journeys.

This manuscript aims to explore and delineate the common characteristics of college students with perfectionism, to promote an in-depth understanding of dynamic personality development of perfectionists from the views of life story model proposed by McAdams (1985). The researchers adopted a narrative qualitative research method. The life stories of respondents who had a strong tendency of perfectionism were analyzed. We found out that participants experienced intensive feelings of superiority and inferiority due to fluctuations of academic performance. Most respondents tended to use negative tone in describing their interpersonal relationship. Respondents hold high expectations for their future. Moreover, they tended to believe that some supernatural power controls the world and the lives. Themes of life story of perfectionists normally focused on three themes: self-control, status and success, and love and friendship. The perfectionists with negative tone usually show that they are only pursuing a powerful energy, a sense of control, and status.

The article reports findings from a small qualitative investigation into the perceptions of giftedness held by four working-class families in the northeast of England. Each family had a child identified as gifted in England's national program for gifted education. These findings include: intense hostility toward those of their neighbours they despise as welfare-dependent; the dominance of entity theories of giftedness; how the children carried their parents' vicarious ambitions; lack of interest in general social and educational equity; negative experiences of the national program for gifted education; and, low sense of actual parental agency in relation to schooling, though potential empowerment arising from the children's high attainment. The findings are discussed in relation to policy formation and theorizing about giftedness and social reproduction.

Every sphere of life has been revolutionised by science. Thus, science understanding is an increasingly precious resource throughout the world. Despite the widely recognised need for better science education, the percentage of school students studying science is particularly low, and the numbers of students pursuing science continue to decline internationally. This study establishes a new measure to investigate students' science self-concepts, motivation, and aspirations. The instrument shows sound psychometric properties in investigating secondary students' science self-concepts in different disciplines of science. Though available data show that students' science self-concepts are domain specific, it could not be shown that motivation and aspirations are.

The professional school counseling literature has proposed innovative frameworks for practice including social justice/multicultural approaches, school-wide counseling initiatives, and school-community partnerships. In this article, we propose a programmatic intervention that can be a vehicle for all three: the implementation of school-based youth participatory action research (YPAR). In this article, we profile the use of YPAR in schools, link it to components of school counseling, and identify obstacles in the initiation of YPAR by school counselors.