Static reading labels are problematic not only because youths demonstrate varying reading skills and identities across secondary classrooms but also because being labeled as "struggling" can undermine literacy learning. Little research has investigated how "struggling" and "proficient" readers' interactions with…

To disrupt patterns of marginalization that play out through interactions in math classrooms, teachers need to identify and address inequities in student participation, both in terms of participation outcomes and processes. In this study, I take an expansive view of participation and examine how the "quiet" participation of one 9th grade…

Frequent discussion in the field of disability research focuses knowledge on rehabilitation for students with disabilities. However, lacking is a focus on student identity development in the face of a highly stigmatizing and stigmatized label. Semi-structured interviews with four freshman males labeled with high incidence disabilities were…

Using a combination of counter-storytelling, testimonios, and Chicana feminist epistemology, I report on the findings of an ethnographic study that explores and analyzes the educational experiences of geographically isolated Latina high school students in a rural city in Wyoming. I demonstrate the labeling of these students by peers and teachers…

For over a century, genetic arguments for the existence of racial inequality have been used to oppose policies that promote social equality. And, over that same time period, American biology textbooks have repeatedly discussed genetic differences between races. This experiment tests whether racial terminology in the biology curriculum causes…

This study addressed a need for research on the association between adopting or denying the label of bully victim and students' psychosocial functioning. Participants were 1,063 students in Grades 5, 7, and 9 in a school district in the northeastern United States. Students were grouped based on their pattern of responses to (a) the California…

In this ethnographic study conducted in two classrooms in Norway, grade nine (14-year-olds) in lower secondary school and the first year (16-year-olds) of upper secondary school, attention is drawn to how classroom culture is constituted through relationships between students. Through processes of power, dominance, hegemony and marginalisation,…

Poorer outcomes for youth labeled with learning disabilities (LDs) are often attributed to the student's own deficiencies or cumulative disadvantage; but the more troubling possibility is that special education placement limits rather than expands these students' opportunities. Labeling theory partially attributes the poorer outcomes of…

Using a realist grounded theory method, this study resulted in a theoretical model and 4 propositions. As displayed in the LINK model, the labeling practice is situated in and endorsed by a social context that carries explicit theory about and educational policies regarding the labels. Taking a developmental perspective, the labeling practice…

Using ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a public high school located in the greater Barcelona area, Anne Rios-Rojas focuses on the experiences of immigrant youth as they negotiate a sense of belonging in an ever more globalized society. Rios-Rojas pays particular attention to the multiple and at times contradictory ways in which youth maneuver…

In a study of the New Orleans public schools, African American males represented 43% of the school population, while accounting for 58% of the non-promotions, 65% of the suspensions, 80% of the expulsions, 43% of the dropouts, and only 9% of the gifted and talented. African American males are denied equal educational opportunity at such alarming…