The Whites Writing Whiteness project is concerned with changes to the racial order in South Africa over a long time-period and connects 'big numbers' and work on very large archive collections with close textual analysis of particular documents. It uses longitudinal data within a Qualitative Longitudinal Research methodological approach, combining…

Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has embarked on extensive reforms aimed at promoting social cohesion, including progressive educational finance policy (e.g., the no-fee school policy) intended to redress historical inequalities. Because improving equality in and through education is vital to social cohesion, this case study examines…

How has education evolved from exclusion to inclusion, from judgment to acceptance, and from disability to difference? This is the question that frames Barbara Boroson's article in the theme issue, "Differences, Not Disabilities." Boroson begins by taking a historical view of how schools have treated those who were perceived to be…

What are some strategies for engaging suburban students in dialogues on diversity in new American metropolis? This question is important, especially at a time when some suburbs are changing from "segregated" to "segregated and diverse," and scholarship is needed to guide their discussion. This article analyzes efforts by a…

It has become increasingly evident that the discourse of transformation that has shaped the democratising of higher education institutions over the first two decades of the democratic dispensation in South Africa has now run its course. Over the past few years, and particularly during the tumultuous student protests of 2015 and 2016, students and…

Boundary lines have long served as a mechanism to divide people, determining the quality of available resources, and ultimately, educational opportunity. In recent years, new school district boundaries have proliferated as local communities attempt to secede from larger school districts. In this study of Memphis-Shelby County, Tennessee, we extend…

Schools do not receive much recognition within urban sociological research for the role they perform in shaping the demographic, structural, and social features of neighborhoods, cities, and metropolitan areas. In contrast, this article links schools, and the racial avoidance that operates through educational policy, to the extreme economic…

This article reconstructs the story behind "Freeman v. Pitts" (1992), one of the main US Supreme Court cases that made it easier for school districts to terminate court desegregation orders and that, in turn, helped to propel a widely documented trend: the resegregation of southern schools. The case in part hinged on the question of…

Traditional research often excludes the voices of marginalized populations such as African Americans, who are usually written about instead of being allowed to tell their own stories (King, 2005). This research gives African Americans the opportunity to "tell their stories" of segregation and integration. Leaving the telling of our…

Six years after "Brown v. Board of Education", Atlanta reluctantly complied with the order to desegregate its school system rather than risk having schools closed due to noncompliance. Out of 132 students, nine black high school seniors desegregated four of Atlanta's all-white high schools. The purpose of this study is to explore and…

Misrecognition of South African university students is at the heart of this article. "Misrecognition" refers in this article to the exclusionary institutional discourses and practices of this country's universities, which continue to prevent the majority of their (Black) students' from achieving a successful education. It is a conceptual…

This response discusses the complexity of racial segregation in U.S. cities today and an emerging education movement for equity and racial justice. Racial segregation has been and continues to be a potent, and contested, strategy of containment, subordination, and exploitation, but African Americans have also, out of necessity, turned racial…

This research is a study of the educational systems of South Africa and the United States in a comparative perspective. The research examines the success and failures of the two systems, taking black student dropout rates as a case study for understanding the structural, philosophical and public policy foundations of the genesis and development of…

This article focuses on the El Sistema programme, which started up in Sweden in 2010 with the objective to deal with segregation problems typical for Swedish urban areas. The purpose of the article is to examine how promoting integration through music and music education is constructed within El Sistema as a way to help children growing up in…

South Africa labours under a bimodal education system in which inequality is deeply entrenched. Approximately 83% of schools are classed as being "dysfunctional" and many learners are not effectively equipped for meaningful futures. Learners who are able to attend the few functional schools are generally able to attain better jobs and…