A central element in the writing of marginal subjects is the personal and autobiographical voice they use to write about themselves and their experiences. This article uses a personal voice- autoethnography - to examine, in a multi-layered manner, one-stop of the author's educational biography and her path, as a working-class Mizrahi woman, to…

Searching for development paths and suitable educational policies, postcolonial governments often turned to the experiences of other countries and sought to adapt these to their own contexts. Research on such processes has largely neglected the resulting entanglements between postcolonial and European socialist countries, and between different…

This book examines the structural and cultural factors that explain the persistence of an attainment gap between white and Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students in UK universities. So-called 'deficit' approaches have long represented the orthodoxy in higher education strategy-making, yet they overlook the structural and institutional…

While the literature on the experiences of working-class Students of Color at selective, historically White institutions has grown significantly over the past twenty-five years, how this student population is making sense of their social class identity as they gain access to dominant cultural and social capital at their institutions remains…

Are scenarios in which disadvantaged students prefer not to attend (certain) universities a concern from the perspective of an egalitarian theory of justice? I consider this question from the respective perspectives of two prominent approaches to equality: distributive theories, which focus on the fairness of inequalities in outcomes, and…

Bourdieu's theories enable us to conceptualise and understand why some people participate in higher education and some do not. Focussing on the working class as the marginalised social group in HE, Bourdieu demonstrated how education perpetuates inequality and lack of opportunity. The theories, or "thinking tools" as he called them,…

This paper presents new findings on the experiences of Indian mothers in the roles they play in their daughters' higher education (HE) subject choices. Whilst there are existing studies on White British mothers and parents more generally in terms of parental involvement in education, and a growing number of papers presenting results on Bangladeshi…

Young people in Irish schools are required to choose whether to sit secondary exam subjects at higher or ordinary level. This paper draws on a mixed methods longitudinal study of students in 12 case-study schools to trace the factors influencing take-up of higher level subjects within lower secondary education. School organisation and process are…

This interview conducted with Henry Giroux begins by probing Henry's childhood, upbringing and undergraduate years to discover where his sense of social justice took hold. It also questions Henry about his working-class background and the major influences on his thought, including his relationships with Paulo Freire and Howard Zinn. The interview…

One of the outcomes of the "Bradley Report" (Bradley et al. 2008) is that Australian universities have a new incentive to enrol students from low socio-economic status. Consequently, a flurry of interest is growing around knowledge concerning the targeting, recruitment and retention of low socio-economic status (SES) students. Working…

In a recent paper on gender inequality in higher education Buchman and DiPrete (2006) assume that the decrease in the gender gap in college completion in the US can partly be explained by changes in the allocation of familial resources in favour of women. However, they do not test this hypothesis empirically. In this paper I examine the effects of…

This paper is about changing concepts of equity in UK higher education. In particular, it charts the moves from concepts about gender equality as about women's education as a key issue in twentieth century higher education to questions of men's education in the twenty-first century. These changing concepts of equity are linked to wider social and…

This article investigates the role of autoethnographic research as the methodological tool of choice for a Chicana who positions herself along the liminal perspective. I posit that "testimonios", autobiographical educational experiences, must be used as valid ethnographic research to contribute to existing knowledge around issues of…

An open admissions policy for the City University of New York was approved by the University's Board of Higher Education in 1969, ushering in a new era of greater access to college for the city's poor and working class Blacks, Latinos, and white youth. This policy change was made in response to demands from students, civil rights organizations,…

This article argues that there is a pervasive class bias in law schools and that efforts to improve law school faculty diversity should include recruitment of faculty from working-class backgrounds. (DB)