In this theoretical paper, I examine the role and potential alterations to uses of social categories in qualitative research. Categories are socially constructed, imbued with power, and include race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. These categories, although constructs and subject to change, hold durability and are leveraged in much of…

In this article, I draw on my experiences as a non-binary researcher in a high school to interrogate the normative construction of adulthood. I centre the discussion on the concept of adulthood in order to interrogate a presumption within the field of education that all researchers are recognized as adults. I argue that a person's adherence to…

This critical autoethnography interprets my internal migration experience in China. Using Bourdieu's capital, field and habitus toolkit, I investigated my cultural capital transformation and habitus formulation when being educated in secondary schools and universities after internal migration to the city. Taking my lived experience as an example,…

Background/Context: Working towards social justice in education requires students' voices to be heard and understood (Mansfield, 2014). This is especially the case for students from marginalized populations. Prior research has shown the value and importance of students' voices for school retention, academic success, school inclusivity, and student…

This is a narrative inquiry into the role of professional development in the construction of teaching practice by an exemplary urban high school science teacher. I collected data during 3 years of ethnographic participant observation in Marie Gonzalez's classroom. Marie told stories about her experiences in ten years of professional development…

This article addresses how mediated discourse theory and related analytical tools can be used to explore how students write together. Considered within a sociocultural framework that conceptualises writing as involving distributed, mediated and dialogic processes of invention, this article presents an investigation of how three high school…

This paper tackles what is arguably one of the most pressing and intractable educational issues confronting western democracies--the disengagement and disconnection from schooling of alarming numbers of young people. The paper looks at the policy response in Victoria, Australia, and through ethnographic interviews with a small number of young…

This paper examines the work of a gay-straight alliance and the ways in which members use elements of queer theory to understand their own and others' identities, both to make sense of their experiences and to support their activist efforts. The analysis identifies queer perspectives on gender and sexual identity as useful tools for supporting…

Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a 13-week Gay and Lesbian Literature course, this paper explores how a high-school teacher and her students engaged with queer-themed literature. Focused on episodes around the class' engagement with two of the novels read in the course--Rita Mae Brown's "Rubyfruit Jungle" and Michael Cunningham's…

Introduction: The purpose of this study is to provide a framework for analysis from which to interpret the transformations that take place, as perceived by the participants, when commercial video games are used in the classroom. We will show how Activity Theory (AT) is able to explain and interpret these changes. Method: Case studies are…

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…

This article presents a theoretical conceptualization of mathematics homework as a social practice. Rather than considering homework as a task or an artifact, this approach frames homework in terms of the social contexts in which students participate and how students participate in those contexts. This perspective has long been suggested by…

Literacy classrooms are places of tension in the shaping of literate identities for Black male students because of classroom and cultural mismatch, racialized literacy beliefs and deficit views of Black male literacy achievement. However, research on connections between students' out-of-school literacy and academic literacy participation tells a…

This study was concerned with an examination of the heteropatriarchy as it was performed by six self-identified heterosexual male English teachers and two high school administrators in the United States and Canada. These educators explained their efforts regarding their own thinking about identity and curriculum and their attempts to teach a…

While the vast majority of scholarship on mobile media, social semiotics, and multimodality highlights work done "behind" the screen, few studies have considered the embodied processes of youth composing "with" and "through" mobile technology. This study, drawn from a larger critical qualitative connective…