Responsibility for meeting the costs of higher education in England has moved inexorably away from the government toward the family with the introduction of tuition fee and maintenance loans. Although an important public policy issue, there is limited research on how the policy impinges on the private sphere of the family. This paper focuses on…

Particularly after the Danish political system changed to parliamentarism in 1901, a growing interest in, and expanded meaning of, culture as a pedagogical category developed in relation to state schooling, on the road to a comprehensive school system for "the whole population". This article elaborates on the role played by theological…

Despite fundamental reforms to South African education, large performance gaps still prevail between former black schools and former white schools. Nineteen years into a democracy and education in post-apartheid South Africa still retains a strong racial dimension between poorer communities and more affluent communities. Differential access to…

Low participation rates in the study of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) post-16 are a matter of international concern. Existing evidence suggests children's science aspirations are largely formed within the critical 10 to 14 age period. This article reports on survey data from over 9,000 elementary school children in…

This article deals with the discourses and practices employed by families involved in school choice processes in the city of Barcelona (Spain). It draws upon a study conducted by the authors in 2008/09, and it is based on surveys completed by a representative sample made up of 3245 families, as well as 60 in-depth interviews with families with…

We examine the relational model of inequality using samples of employer-employee matched data from manufacturing plants in the United States and Japan. We argue that gender is a salient status characteristic in both the United States and Japan, but because of differences in gender politics, wage inequality will vary more across U.S. workplaces…

The article explores cross-cultural notions of play in childhood among parents based on empirical investigations in two economically diverse residential areas in a metropolis in India. All parents had an unquestionable belief in an epistemic grounding of play in children's lives. However, parents begin to question play timings and children's…

Poverty and economic hardship remain a reality for many of America's children. Although the causes of poverty are varied, Americans strongly endorse individual responsibility as a primary cause. Because beliefs about poverty originate in childhood and adolescence, intervention efforts targeting young people may be particularly effective in…

The Labour government showed no interest in extending local democracy in the school system, in spite of a policy rhetoric of local democratic renewal. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government's localism agenda promotes the autonomy of schools from local authorities without proposing alternative forms of local democracy in the school…

Advocates argue that vouchers can make improved educational opportunity available to disadvantaged students. Critics contend that vouchers increase the risk of stratification. Researchers have found that Chile's voucher program has lead to increased socioeconomic school segregation. What has been overlooked, however, is segregation between schools…

The literature on social class disparities in health and education contains 2 underlying, yet often opposed, models of behavior: the individual model and the structural model. These models refer to largely unacknowledged assumptions about the sources of human behavior that are foundational to research and interventions. Our review and theoretical…

"Promoting Diversity and Social Justice" provides theories, perspectives, and strategies that are useful for working with adults from privileged groups--those who are in a more powerful position in any given type of oppression. The thoroughly revised edition of this accessible and practical guide offers tools that allow educators to be more…

The purpose of this article is the analysis of higher education policy in Greece during the last decade, which is tied in with the ascendancy of market orientation and the complete restructuring of the university. The formation of this policy and its main axes are studied in the context of the pertinent developments at international and European…

Conventional political wisdom has it that educational expansion helps to reduce socioeconomic inequalities of access to education by increasing equality of educational opportunity. The counterarguments of Maximally Maintained Inequality (MMI) and Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI), in contrast, contend that educational inequalities tend to…

This study provides empirical data about the role and work context of the school principal in the Lebanon. The study applied grounded theory methods in collecting and analysing the data. The data were collected through a series of open-ended interviews with 53 secondary school principals, and focus group interviews with 8 principals from public as…