What happens at home in the early years of a child's life is not only key to their success in education, but their success in life. A positive early years home learning environment can predict higher levels of vocabulary, spelling and literacy in young children. The home learning environment has an influence on a child's intellectual and social…

This book confronts one of the most enduring and controversial issues in education--the nexus between poverty and underachievement. The topic has become a key contemporary battleground in the struggle to raise standards. "Living on the Edge" maps and compares a number of competing explanations, critiques inadequate and deficit accounts,…

This study used longitudinal data from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) to examine the role of neighbourhood quality, assessed when cohort members were aged five, in boys' and girls' school leaving age. It was expected that, since context is in general more strongly predictive of boys' rather than girls' behaviour, neighbourhood quality would…

More than five decades after Brown v. Board of Education and four decades after the Civil Rights era, racial prejudice remains a national problem cutting across social class and culture. Although schools may seem ideal places to teach children about tolerance and harmony, there is little consensus on how to best reduce negative sentiments and…

The American economist, Frank Knight (1921), introduced risk as far back as the early 1920s with his analysis of profit legitimisation. In the profession of law, by the latter part of the 19th century risk had entered into mainstream social law in Europe (Ewald, 1991). Risk discourse seems to have regained popularity since the 1970s. Despite the…