To be a marginal student is to experience a strained, difficult relationship with the school environment. It is crucial to understand marginality and to analyze its extent in today's schools. The more intractable problems of school learning are most effectively addressed at an early stage when the relationship between individual and school…

This book examines the conditions for learning from the perspective of those students for whom schools are not productive and satisfying settings. Both current and desired characteristics of school environments are examined from the standpoint of their effect on marginal students. Questions probed include how difficulties begin and why individuals…

This study reports similarities and differences in perceptions of adolescent students toward selected conditions that characterize the curriculum of sampled alternative schools. Data were collected from students who were disconnected from alternative school environments and from students who were involved and productive in these settings. The…