This paper examines principals' perceptions of school autonomy and leadership as part of a 3-year research project looking at the implications of school autonomy on social justice across four states of Australia (Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland). Drawing on interviews with principals and representatives from principal…

Background/Context: Although the study of elite schools has been quite popular in recent years, elite all-boys schools in the United States have largely remained outside the gaze of researchers. Purpose: Two stories are presented to identify possibilities for advancing gender justice in those schools. Methods: Drawing on interview data of…

The focus in this article is on issues of social cohesion and citizenship as they relate to students' understandings of religion and religious identity. The article draws on data gathered from a study conducted at a highly diverse English comprehensive school and is set amid broader anxieties about religion, community disharmony and national…

This paper explores issues of school autonomy within the context of the performative demands of the audit culture. The focus is on a case study of Clementine Academy, a large and highly diverse English secondary school. Specific situated, professional, material and external factors at the school were significant in shaping Clementine's response to…

This paper is set against a backdrop of contemporary concerns about Britishness. It explores the dominant view that unprecedented levels of cultural diversity within western contexts such as the UK are undermining social cohesion and are attributable to minority groups' failure to connect or assimilate with mainstream "British" (read…

This paper examines justice issues of representation, redistribution and recognition within a specialised secondary school for immigrant and refugee students in Queensland, Australia. Fraser's three-dimensional model of justice--towards the ideal of "participatory parity"--is drawn on to analyse interview data gathered from a study that…

The predominant focus in this paper is on issues of school context and, in particular, on the dimensions of context at a large English comprehensive school that enable it to thrive within the current demands of the contemporary audit culture. Featuring interview data gathered from a number of senior educators, the paper draws on Braun et al's…

This paper provides a media analysis of three interrelated sets of newspaper articles dealing with youth, schooling and violence. Understanding the media as a dominant and powerful cultural text that creates the realities it describes, the paper takes a critical view of the 'standpoint' of recent media representations of the Cronulla (Sydney,…

"Educating for Diversity and Social Justice" foregrounds the personal stories of educators who are engaging the space of schooling as a site of possibility for realizing the goals of social justice. It is a book inspired by a vision of education as a practice of freedom where young people--especially those who are marginalized--can learn…

Since the 1970s many feminists working for gender justice in education have highlighted the predominance and seriousness of sexual harassment in schools and condemned the enduring trivialization of such behaviours. This paper develops this body of work by focusing on how issues of sexual harassment are located within prevailing contemporary…

This paper draws on Matthew's story to illustrate the conflicting discourses of being a boy and being a student. Matthew is 12 years old and in Grade Six, his final year at Banrock Primary (a K-6 Australian State School). School is far from a happy place for Matthew--his tearful accounts of his combative relationships with his peers and his…

This paper presents a longitudinal insight into the experiences of "Adam," a young boy who lives with his single-parent father (a farmer and builder) in a rural working-class community on the outskirts of a provincial town in Tasmania, Australia. Adam's story juxtaposes my representations of him as an eight year old in 1999 and as a 12…

This paper explores issues in the teaching of boys within a gender just framework. It identifies the productive pedagogies model as an appropriate means by which the specifics of boys' education can be considered. It avoids essentialist accounts of boys' pedagogies to suggest that pedagogies directed towards boys have to foreground issues of…

This article examines data from two different studies concerning issues of social justice, gender and schooling and specifically the practices of secondary teachers, "Mr B", a teacher from a school in Tasmania, Australia, and "Mr C", a teacher from a school in Bedfordshire in the United Kingdom. Both teachers' practices and…