This book examines the experiences and perspectives of students and teachers at an alternative music school, which caters for young learners who have been marginalised and disenfranchised from mainstream schooling. The school utilises a rich music-infused curriculum that connects to the lives of its students, alongside a democratic ethos and ethic of care for members of the school community, including the students, teachers, and parents. The combination of personal narratives together with detailed critical discussion, provides a compelling argument for how schools can make a major difference to the lives of young people. The case study presented in this book offers one potential response to the institutionalised social and educational inequities that young people continue to face, and highlights the important lessons from alternative schooling for education more broadly. It will be of particular interest to researchers in the areas of education and sociology, especially those concerned with matters of social justice and equity in education.

Educating for Diversity and Social Justice foregrounds the personal stories of educators who are engaging the space of schooling as a site of possibility for realizing the goals of social justice. It is a book inspired by a vision of education as a practice of freedom where young people – especially those who are marginalized – can learn that they have a voice and the power to change their world for the better. Drawing on the work of US philosopher Nancy Fraser, the book examines issues of justice and schooling in relation to three dimensions: political, cultural and economic. While its focus is on research within three Australian case study schools, the book provides an international perspective of these dimensions of justice in western education contexts as they impact on the schooling performance of marginalized students. Towards greater equity for these students, the book presents a comprehensive scaffold for thinking about and addressing issues of schooling, diversity and social justice. Through practical examples from the case study research, the book illustrates the complexities and possibilities associated with schools providing inclusive environments where marginalized voices are heard (political justice), where marginalized culture is recognized and valued (cultural justice) and where marginalized students are supported to achieve academically towards accessing the material benefits of society (economic justice).

This book brings together diverse, international scholarly perspectives on education and democracy in response to contemporary challenges for educational leadership, policy and practice. The contributions meaningfully engage with a range of local and global issues regarding democratic participation and agency, with a particular focus on implications for educational access, engagement and justice. Each chapter considers the complex tensions and interplay between education histories, policies, practices and research to better understand how education can be for democracy in the twenty-first century. There is much work to be done in the field of democratic education, whether it be in the search of a better understanding of education and democracy’s relationship to one another, questions of how education might be for democracy, the importance of teaching young people about democracy, and whether education can be more democratic. This book makes a small, but important, contribution to these struggles for more democratic and socially just futures through education. Education, Policy and Democracy: Contemporary Challenges and Possibilities will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of education leadership and policy, educational administration, politics, research methods, and sociology. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Educational Administration and History.

This book explores the complexities of investigating minorities, majorities, boundaries and borders, and the experiences of researchers who choose to work in these spaces. It engages with issues of ethics, disclosure and representation, and contends with and seeks to contribute to emerging debates around power and the positioning of researchers and participants. Chapters examine epistemologies that shape researchers’ beliefs about the forms of research that are valued in educational research and theory, and consider the importance of research that genuinely seeks to explore voice, culture, story, authenticity and identity. Resisting the backdrop of standardisation, performativity and accountability agendas pervading governments and organisations, the book attends to the stories of real people, to understand regional and rural landscapes, to examine culture and the human condition and to give voice to those at the fringes of society who remain largely neglected and unheard. Drawing largely on studies from Australia, the book provides an overview of the many types of research being engaged in, revealing the value of different kinds of research, and gaining insight into how meaning and findings are disseminated in research and educational sectors and back into the contexts where research takes place. Mainstreams, Margins and the Spaces In-between will be of key interest to early career researchers and academics internationally, as well as postgraduate students completing research methods courses in the field of education, and the wider social sciences.

This book is a useful guide for educators who seek to better engage students in rich, meaningful learning, outlining a clear set of key concepts and principles for relational pedagogy in school classrooms. Emphasising the complex interpersonal encounters that mediate the social, cultural and political dynamics of the school as a shared space, the authors draw attention to the myriad relationships that constitute the social context of the school and the effects these have on teaching, learning and engagement. The relationships between students and teachers directly affect the experience of education, how learning unfolds and overall educational outcomes. Building on scholarly work and school practices, this book argues that relational pedagogy should be at the centre of teaching and learning in schools, in order to drive positive educational change. It further demonstrates the potential of relational pedagogy in the classroom through vignettes and examples from practice to highlight how these concepts can be applied in teaching and school leadership. Presenting a compelling new framework for relational pedagogy, this book will be of interest to teacher educators, postgraduate students of education, policy and school leaders.

Alternative education caters and cares for students whose regular schools have failed and excluded them. Fifty years of international research reports that alternative settings are characterised by close and powerful staff–student relationships, a curriculum which is relevant, engaging and meaningful, and the strong sense of agency afforded young people by the opportunity to make decisions. Together, these three practices produce increased life chances for alternative education participants. However, despite these apparent successes, alternative education seems to have had little impact on mainstream schools. This collection of papers addresses the important question – what might regular schools and teachers learn about socially just pedagogies from alternative education practices? In providing answers to this question, authors interrogate the taken-for-granted wisdom about alternative education while also taking account of ongoing policy shifts, differing locations and populations, and persistent and intersecting patterns of raced, classed and gendered inequalities. They draw on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to interrogate the ways in which alternative schools and alternative education both challenge and legitimate the kinds of schooling most of us expect for our own and other people's children. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Education.

Autonomy, Accountability and Social Justice provides an account of recent developments in English state education, with a particular focus on the ‘academisation’ of schooling. It examines how head teachers, teachers and others working in diverse education settings navigate the current policy environment. The authors provide readers with insight into the complex decision-making processes that shape school responses to current educational agendas and examine the social justice implications of these responses. The book draws on Nancy Fraser’s social justice framework and her theorising of neoliberalism to explore current tensions associated with moves towards both greater autonomy for and accountability of state schooling. These tensions are presented through four case studies that centre upon 1) a group of local authority primary schools, 2) an academy ‘chain’, 3) a co-operative secondary school and 4) an alternative education setting. The book identifies the ‘emancipatory’ possibilities of these approaches amid the complex demands of autonomy and accountability seizing English schools. Informed by a consideration of market parameters and social protectionist ideals, this examination provides rich insights into how English schools have emancipatory capacity. Autonomy, Accountability and Social Justice makes a major theoretical contribution to understandings of how the market is working alongside the regulation of schooling and the implications of this for social justice. By drawing on the experiences of those working in schools, it demonstrates that the tensions associated with autonomy and accountability within the current education policy environment can be both productive and unproductive for social justice.