Discussions on Latino/a students' interpretation of the opportunity structure and schooling treat racial/ethnic identification among Latino/as as static, despite skin color variation. This article provides findings from interviews with six Mexican students who discussed teachers identifying them as "White-looking" or…

The need to "raise aspirations" among young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds has been prominent in UK policy debates over the last decade. This paper examines how this discourse is negotiated and contested by teachers and pupils in a Scottish secondary school. Interviews, group discussions and observations were…

Healthy social, emotional and cognitive development of deaf children depends upon complex interactions between the many individual and environmental factors associated with deafness. Deaf children and adolescents have been reported to possess greater rates of mental health problems than hearing children and adolescents. Dysfunction in one or more…

Children who spend part of their childhood in foster homes have, as a group, lower academic achievement than their peers. However, some of these children do well and succeed in higher education. Resilience is about positive development enhanced by protective factors despite adversity. Protective factors may be both positive qualities in the…

Drawing upon insights gained from the extant work on culture and pedagogy, this paper explores the ways in which, in an ostensibly meritocratic education system, ideas about students' cultural backgrounds and its relevance for teaching are interpreted, negotiated, and ultimately drawn upon to engage students in the low-progress academic tracks.…

Education is an indispensable element for the development of society. In Latin America, the point of origin of most of the undocumented immigrants to the United States, equal opportunity in access to education and educational achievement is still pending. The study presented here focuses on the analysis of the expectations of female migrants via…

This phenomenological research study explored the contributing factors experienced by Black males that epitomized their academic success in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) area of study. During this investigative project, eleven Black male students were interviewed to determine how they were able to successfully navigate…

Engagement in and transitions between academic institutions may be enhanced for African American urban youth if we consider the role of religiosity, spirituality, and places of worship. This article presents the manner by which African American university students, who attended public high schools, conveyed the influence of their religious and…

Drawing on sociocultural and related theories, 4 questions examined career and educational aspirations and expectations among 24 immigrant Latina/o early adolescents and their parents as predictors of students' grades. First, adolescents' career aspirations and expectations were correlated, and both parents and adolescents held educational…

This article examines the aspiration-attainment gap and educational resilience among children of Mexican immigrants in the midst of the post-1965 U.S. demographic transformation. Two widespread theoretical explanations are used to understand the educational disparities faced by this subpopulation: the cultural argument, which emphasizes their…

In impoverished communities in Mexico, most adolescent mothers do not attend school; but typically, they become pregnant once they dropped out. Understanding the experiences of adolescents who have had a pregnancy and continue in school is complicated since few manage to do it. The goal of this study is to describe experiences within the family…

It is a generally accepted finding in the sociological literature as well as in public discourse that adolescent mothers are less likely than their non-parenting counterparts to graduate high school and to attend college. For several decades, however, researchers have pointed out that the implied causal process from teen motherhood to academic…

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 narrative study examines how Latino parents and teachers in the Boyle Heights/East Los Angeles community create and appropriate social capital to increase student achievement. Specifically, the study explores how parents and teachers participate in two community organizations to extend resources that have the potential to positively impact…

White British pupils often maintain lower aspirations than other ethnic groups in the United Kingdom and are the least likely to remain in full-time education. Furthermore, underachievement is more prevalent among boys than girls in the lowest performing ethnic group. As a result, central to the United Kingdom's education policy is the goal of…