The Australian school context has been something of a failed test case of trying to organise schooling around the tenets of the market as a regulating mechanism. The result has been an intensification of social stratification as the already "disadvantaged" miss out yet again in education. This short paper argues that what is needed to…

The diminished educational opportunities and subsequent life chances of many marginalized young people have been dramatic, even to the point of being catastrophic. But they are not hapless victims, nor are they passive recipients of deficit categories like "at riskness", placed upon them by the media, politicians, agencies, and some…

It is no coincidence, that disengagement from school by young adolescents has intensified at precisely the same time as there has been a hardening of educational policy regimes that have made schools less hospitable places for students and teachers. There can be little doubt from research evidence that as conditions conducive of learning in…