School systems and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have long acknowledged the levels of social, cultural and epistemic conflict that has historically existed between teachers and schools, and Aboriginal students, families and their local communities. This relationship is both symptomatic and causal of the broader and highly complex field of…

Raising the proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds progressing to higher education has been a key policy objective for successive governments in the UK since the late 1990s. Often this has been conceptualised as a problem with their 'aspirations,' with the solution being seen as the provision of 'aspiration-raising' activities…

This paper engages with the continuing emphasis given to evidence-based policy and "what works" approaches in educational research, highlighting some of the continuing epistemological challenges from a post-positivist perspective. To illustrate these, it uses the case of bursaries awarded by universities to improve outcomes for students…