School systems across the world are facing a plethora of global changes that dictate rethinking instructional practices and professional leadership roles. School reformers are constantly facing the challenges dictated by the universal culture that exerts a huge power on learning and teaching, and leading. This article introduces a comprehensive…

The paper arises from my PhD thesis on the learner biographies of retail and motor vehicle maintenance apprentices in Germany and England which explores the interrelationship of social structures and individual agency in identity formation over time and in particular learning environments. The paper reports initial findings, focusing largely on…

Children want to succeed academically and attend college but their actual attainment often lags behind; some groups (e.g., boys, low-income children) are particularly likely to experience this gap. Social structural factors matter, influencing this gap in part by affecting children's perceptions of what is possible for them and people like them in…

This dissertation reports on a study investigating the identity of first-year university students as writers. The longitudinal project explored how students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds construct their identities as undergraduates and as academic writers in their first year. The research was qualitative and interpretative, and used…