Learning disabilities (LD) researchers have produced a knowledge base about the academic side of LD. A gap exists concerning the experiences of individuals with LD, particularly their feeling-meaning-making about having LDs. Based on a three-year qualitative study using critical ethnographic methods, I center Sophia Cruz's experiences with LD and…

I draw on ethnographic data from a German school to explore discursive practices of educators that rationalize the illiteracy of 10-year-old, multilingual Ada. I juxtapose various moments of school life that "thickened" Ada's learner identities and find that special needs labeling often rested on pragmatic considerations of resource…

This case study contrasts sixth-grade student Antonio's perspective of himself as a "good student" with perceptions some of Antonio's teachers held related to his classification as a student with a Specific Learning Disability and an English Learner as enacted in classroom literacy practices. With Antonio's voice at the center,…

Historically, schools have been homogenizing institutions that often disadvantaged people of color and ethnic and religious minorities. In this article I examine Roma education in Hungary, focusing on (re)production of racial identities and the negotiation of ethnic labels. I distinguish two models of education as they relate to ideas of…

This study critically examines how the geopolitical configuration of identities, through the medium of the institutionalized label of "English language learners," can shape and constrain localized experiences for learners. An ethnographic video study was conducted in the context of a mathematics unit ("the transforming recess…

This article examines how broader cultural practices influence teachers teaching the Holocaust in Lithuania. This article uses the concept of the "cultural curriculum" to examine how community "stories" intersect with formal education. It finds that teachers feel they have become responsible for challenging long-standing…

This volume recognises how many researchers across the social sciences, and in comparative and international education in particular, see themselves as insiders or outsiders or, more pertinently, shifting combinations of both, in the research process. The book revisits and problematises these concepts in an era where the global mobility of…

This manuscript draws from a 2-year multiple-case ethnography on the educational experiences of Mexican immigrant families with California middle schools. The article explores the influence of the political landscape and raciolinguistic ideologies surrounding the nature and implementation of a middle school dual language bilingual program, and it…

This article reveals the findings of a participatory ethnography with post-secondary students enrolled in a large West Coast University in British Columbia who had previously been identified as "learning disabled" and thus, the "recipients" of special educational policy interventions. Instead of starting from the official meanings of the special…

Disability labels and other social categories in school arise out of an educational system which attributes learning problems, perceived weaknesses, and academic failure to individual students. Instead, this dissertation investigates how learning problems are produced and reinforced through cultural practices. Through a two-year, cross-context…

This case study examines José, a bilingual Latino fifth-grader, and his complex and dynamic engagements in "travesuras" (mischievous behaviors). José's "travesuras" served to disassociate him from being labeled a "schoolboy." This disassociation was evident in how José: (1) renounced "school-like" work and…

In this article, I reinterpret the stories of two students who dropped out of a vocational school for care work, which turned them into a category of ongoing policy concern: early school leavers. The stories were recorded over a three-year period, as part of an ethnographic study of motivation and aspiration of 150 young people at the Amsterdam…

The model minority image of Asian Americans authorizes the flat denial of racism and structures of racial dominance and silences those who are not economically successful. This book explores how young people incorporate, interpret, and make meaning of the "model minority" stereotype in the context of their lived experience in school and…

A study examined the labeling practices in the multicultural discourse in two adult education settings in Sweden: a day folk high school and a municipal adult education center. A total of 33 students and 9 staff members from two adult education programs were interviewed. The labeling processes used by the "actors" (the adult learners and…

Reviews an ethnographic analysis of Teach for America, a 1990 educational reform program that illustrates how underlying assumptions about "marginal" urban and rural students and their "deficient" environments solidify existing power structures, acculturate students to middle-class norms, generate resistance to teachers, and…