In this commentary, the author first examines how culture is being used in the articles in this special issue, points to the venerable histories being deployed in these usages, and explores a sense of what could be in the sociocultural and cultural analysis of science education for each article. His review of these articles led to a trope, a…

The need for multifaceted analyses of the relationship between how the United States acknowledges racism and how schooling can be structured to mitigate its negative impacts has never been greater, especially given the rising and often simplistic attention to the racial "achievement gap." In suburban, elite Pioneer City, a series of…

The use of autoethnography in social science research is becoming increasingly popular. The potential this research approach might offer to the theory and practice of outdoor education has yet to be fully examined. In this paper, autoethnography is used to explore some personal accounts of my own outdoor experiences from which I derive distinctive…

The perplexing numbers of Somali children withdrawn from schools in Norway and sent to Somalia is the concern of this study. These students are often brought back and re-enroll later as adolescents with concomitant educational challenges. The findings are critically analyzed employing John Ogbu's cultural ecology of minorities and a CHAT-based…

Professional learning is a critical component of ongoing improvement and innovation and the adoption of new practices in the workplace. Professional learning is often achieved through learning embedded in everyday work tasks. However, little is known about how professionals self-regulate their learning through regular work activities. This paper…

In the context of increasing linguistic and cultural diversity in Australian schools, it is important to consider the value of students' multilingual resources for learning. This paper reports on an ethnographic case study conducted in an Australian metropolitan secondary school where the student body represented more than 40 cultures and…

Since 2001, the Chinese government had passed a series of policies known as "the two primary responsibilities" to allow the rural migrant children to attend urban public schools. However, what the migrant children actually experienced in and after negotiating access to these schools deserves serious attention from educators, scholars and…

This ethnographic case study examines a bilingual child's academic socialization in both formal and informal academic communities. The study follows a high-achieving, bilingual student in a public US elementary school, who paradoxically is seen as a slow learner in her Korean-American Sunday school. From the academic socialization and community of…

This paper intends to show the processes and identity negotiations of white working-class boys surrounding their own learner-identity within a "raising aspirations" rhetoric. The current dominant neoliberal discourse, which prioritizes a view of aspiration that is competitive, economic, and status-based, shapes the subjectivities of…

The article reports on a study of methodological innovation involving occupational therapy (OT) students in higher education (HE). It is based on an original project which examined the experiences and outcomes of non-traditional entrants to pre-registration OT education. A feature of the original project was the application of the epistemological…

Improving the quality of education has been a central goal of the People's Republic of China since its founding in 1949. Particular concern has been focused on ethnic minority areas where educational quality lags behind that of other regions. Since 1986 the State Education Commission has been working toward the implementation of nine years of…

In Jordan, gender equality is often depicted as an important social concern in policy texts, national media, and reports by international development institutions. In these reports, "gender" is often synonymous with "women", and efforts are directed to improving parity in social and economic outcomes. This article argues that…

This article addresses the complex relationship between migration and education in the context of recent intra-European labour mobility. It considers how this mobility impacts the education and life chances of migrant students attending schools in Scotland, UK. By examining the experiences of Polish migrant children and youth at schools in…

The aim of this study is to uncover the emergence of cultural mathematical understandings and communications in young children's spontaneous pretend play. It is based on Vygotskian cultural-historical perspectives and social-semiotic theory, informed by research into "funds of knowledge" and considers how children's informal knowledge of…

This article explores a university knowledge exchange programme for small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owner-managers. Specifically, it considers why a programme designed to achieve growth in a group of SMEs through the creation of a network high in social capital may have become a constraint on the programme's effectiveness over a period of…