While research on Asian American students has overwhelmingly emphasized family ties as an important contributor to student success in high school, what it neglects is how family ties can constrain students in their educational endeavors. Based on a study of 30 low-income Hmong American high school students, I argue that poverty can create…

The overarching goal of this project is to tell a genuine story of Latino students across the U.S. public school system in order to counter negative narratives about these students, their families, and communities, and to point to systemic solutions that must be considered by school administrators and teachers, school districts and states, federal…

This paper draws upon several decades of literacy research in schools in high-poverty environments to explore what matters in young people's education. In dialogue with themes from Kevin Marjoribanks' work, such as student aspirations, family environments and teacher expectations, key insights are summarised. Referring to longitudinal…

Primarily developed as an alternative to narrow measures of well-being such as utility and resources, Amartya Sen's capability approach places strong emphasis on people's substantive opportunities. As a broad normative framework, the capability approach has become a valuable tool for understanding and evaluating social arrangements (e.g. education…

By placing emphasis on equity and social mobility, the current UK education policy for England focuses on narrowing the educational attainment gap between more and less advantaged groups of young people--an approach that has strong parallels in many other Anglophone countries around the world. We argue that these policy and associated practice…

In the first volume of the "Oxford Review of Education" Jerome Bruner (1975) showed how the upbringing of the very young is influenced by poverty, and how different kinds of upbringing shape human development. He called the paper "Poverty and childhood" and baldly stated "With respect to virtually any criterion of equal…

This short document reviews research into the role of low literacy in poverty and disadvantage. It sets out evidence for the impact of parental engagement in home learning and the significance of attitudes, aspirations and literacy development. The National Literacy Trust hopes that this is a useful resource for those with responsibility for, and…

This article examines the features of second-generation rural migrants and the challenges facing them in terms of schooling and employment. There is a gap that is hard for them to step over: barriers against social inclusion. The article concludes that poverty tends to pass on to the next generation and fossilize. Therefore, it is vital to…

Children's adaptive preference and capabilities are considered in relation to literature on children's voice, agency and adult adaptation. Data collected for projects on gender and schooling in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria are analysed to show how adaptation and distinctions between absolute and relative poverty are helpful in…

This report presents data on students in the United States attending kindergarten through grade 12. The main focus of the report is on parent and family involvement in the students' education during the 2011-12 school year as reported by the students' parents. It also includes the percentage of students who participated in selected family…

This small-scale phenomenological interview study explored how seven poor, illiterate mothers in five different slum areas in a bigger city in the Punjab province of Pakistan, viewed the significance of education for their daughters with disabilities. The mothers' views were influenced by cultural aspects and behaviour patterns in the families'…

Refugee young people are an educationally diverse group. However, unlike groups such as Gypsy/Roma and Travellers, in the UK they do not attract targeted educational funding. In addition, neither the UK integration or refugee educational strategies nor the Higher Education Funding Council for England's strategic plan refer to higher education as a…

The purpose of this article is to assess six habits of academic achievement by African American male students from households of poverty whom been successful in completing a 5-A high school program of study. Despite the wealth of research that indicates a great disparity among racial and gender groups with regard to standardized assessment,…

This ethnographic account describes how poverty circumscribes the horizons of young people and how the class structure is reproduced at the societal level. A number of social theories that have considered the problems of social reproduction are explored before moving to the examination of the lives of young men in Clarendon Heights, a low-income…