Teachers encounter countless obstacles to ensure their needs are met when represented by the traditional union-administration working relationship. Unions hold established opinions and ideas on school policy about matters in the public school arena. The tradition of unions and district officials keeping one another placated in an adversarial…

The author's career experiences--as an impartial observer of community building, as an advocate working from within urban communities, and as a catalyst working from the outside--have given him a unique perspective into the dynamics of institutional/community engagement. "Basically, they have left me with three overriding convictions. First,…

This paper explores a "critical incident" in relation to a Further Education Funding Council inspection during 1995. The FEFC's short lived and under-researched "project" is discussed against the background of the Major Government's "Back-to-Basics" policy. The FEFC, through its inspection regime and the ways in which…

This paper examines three key education policy documents from Scotland, England and Wales in the eight years after devolution. A close textual analysis of the language of each document is undertaken, which is supported by the authors' insider knowledge of these countries. Findings are presented from analysis of a group of selected words, as well…

In this paper we explore whether power issues enhance and/or inhibit retention of foundation-learners in vocational education in Aotearoa New Zealand. After surveying reasons given for early departure in the retention literature, the paper offers Foucault's notion of governmentality as another possible factor in early departure. The paper explores…

Social justice might be considered too complex a topic to address with 6- and 7-year-olds, particularly through mathematics. How would first-graders understand social justice? The author believes that by focusing on inequality in relation to power and access to resources, freedom, and diversity, children could understand social justice issues. The…

In this introduction, we situate the theme issue within a growing body of research on Indigenous youth language practices, communicative repertoires, and ideologies, articulating points of intersection in scholarship on Indigenous and immigrant youth bilingualism. Our geographic focus is North America. Ethnographic studies from the Far North to…

What do actors have in common with bigots, bullies and their victims? They play the same script over and over. This article discusses how social justice theater can teach students to take the story into their own hands. It describes Forum Theater, a dramatic method that sets up tightly scripted dramas of power and difference, then encourages the…

Building on theories of youth identity transitions, this study maps a process of negotiated identity among incarcerated young men. Data are drawn from ethnographic study of three juvenile correctional institutions and longitudinal semistructured interviews with facility residents. Cross-case analysis of 10 cases that finds youth offenders adapted…

This paper explores the use of an "anti-CV" (anti-Curriculum Vitae), or identity portfolio, as a data collection instrument in research with young people. We analyse four visually based anti-CVs created by participants in a project on youth transitions, exploring their use of symbolism and space to show how these young people reworked public…

For many researchers, the concept of a power imbalance is central to the understanding of bullying, and its presence in the bully-victim relationship is a prerequisite condition that needs to be fulfilled before bullying is deemed to have taken place. Despite the concept's central importance in many definitions of bullying, the nature of the power…

In this article, the authors explore the analytic connections between the scholarship on Black teachers and the development of the concept of critical pedagogy. In particular, the authors conduct a detailed analysis of both of these discourses and then explore the work of two African-American male teachers in an urban school in Los Angeles. The…

The article discusses the narrative of four women in academia spanning a ten-year relational journey. As a performance collaborative autoethnography, it explores and presents theories of subjectivity and transitional space. Through journals, e-mails, and dialogue, the authors are "trying on", "being in", and "becoming" feminist poststructural…

This study examined the impact of key variables in coalition communication networks, centralization and density, on the adoption of evidence-based substance abuse prevention. Data were drawn from a network survey and a corresponding community leader survey that measured leader attitudes and practices toward substance abuse prevention programs. Two…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to review two accounts of the history of workplace learning and training in the USA that emphasize issues of power and control in the determination of what training occurs, and place these issues at the center of their analyses. Design/methodology/approach: The two texts are reviewed and a constructivist paradigm…