This paper examines the implications of "social difference" for schooling in African contexts. It highlights theoretical and philosophical engagements with "difference" that could help explore and search for viable educational options in Africa. The paper engages voices of university students interviewed in a longitudinal…

The study examines the relationship between social inequalities (stratificational, gender and other disparities) and schooling, including academic attainment, longitudinally, in Slovenia. The issue is indicated most clearly at the tertiary education level. The basic finding is the parallel between educational expansion and the diminution of social…

Consistent with the Williams v. California suit, our focus in this article is on educational equity, particularly the interface between equity and school organization. We concentrate on two structural issues, school size and school overcrowding, and one specific school structure, schools-within-schools. We organize the article as an interpretive…

This paper is based on findings of a longitudinal study examining the broader systemic and structural processes of schooling for local youth in Ghana. Specifically, the paper examines how Ghanaian schools address the question of difference and diversity within the student population. Particular focus is on ethnicity and gender as sites of…

Over the past several years, numerous reports have reported data documenting declining participation in physical activity among youth. We argue that the gender, race and social class differences in these data have not been an important consideration, and that understanding the implications of these differences is crucial for improving physical…

Through a discourse of diversity, specialism, equality and choice, selective schooling is again on the UK education agenda. A previous selection policy operated between 1944 and 1964. The argument that some children are more suited to a vocational education and others to an academic one is evident now and then. This paper focuses on the…

Discussions about religious aspects of diversity are often absent from research. Similarly, topics such as religious forms of prejudice and religious dimensions of identities have not been fully explored in the context of teacher education. Too often, in the schooling context, what religion is and what constitutes an authentic religious identity…

In this paper I will attempt to consider emotions in the context of three womens lives, whose passion for education brought them together and then tore them apart along axes of difference defined by race, class and age in apartheid South Africa. I am looking in particular into the correspondence between Lily Moya, Mabel Palmer, and Sibusisiwe…

A representative sample of 7-14-year-old young people in southeast Brazil (N=1251) was assessed using standardized parent and youth interviews, thereby identifying an "at-risk" group of young people who met one or more DSM-IV criteria for anorexia and/or bulimia nervosa. These young people were compared with an age and gender matched…

Purpose: This article analyses how higher education institutions (HEIs) have responded to government policy to increase the participation rates of students from lower social classes through their admissions policies. Design/methodology/approach: The article uses documentary evidence and interviews with institutional policy makers to examine HEI…

Intended to address classroom diversity that covers race, religion, language, economic status, and physical and mental abilities, this book argues that public education is going to reach a point where it will not work unless the growing diversity in schools is thoughtfully examined. The book suggests many easy-to-implement activities for use in…

This paper reviews the book "The Bell Curve" by Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Alan Murray. The paper asserts as the book's main points and implications: (1) one's socioeconomic place in life is now determined by IQ rather than family wealth and influence; (2) ruling white elites, who have…

To better plan parent education programs for families from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, the Parent As a Teacher Inventory (PAAT) was used to identify similarities and differences among 114 Anglo-, Black- and Mexican-American mothers from upper, middle, and lower class intact homes in greater Phoenix, Arizona. Each of the…

Explores the variable of social distance between teacher and learner by observing the pattern of interaction between Anglo- and Mexican-American mothers and their own preschool sons, boys from a similar background, and boys from a different ethnic and social class background. (Author/SDH)

Theories of taste are efforts to understand the processes of signification by which cultural forms take on meaning, and how subjects are inserted into such processes. One of these theories is the notion of "taste cultures," set forth by Herbert Gans in the 1960s and continued by George Lewis into the 1980s. A taste culture is an…