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This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. All in the mix: Race, class and school choice considers how parents choose secondary schools for their children and makes an important intervention into debates on school choice and education. The book examines how parents talk about race, religion and class in the process of choosing. It also explores how parents'own racialised and classed positions, as well as their experience of education, can shape the way they approach choosing schools. Based on in-depth interviews with parents from different class and racialised backgrounds in three areas in and around Manchester, the book shows how discussions about school choice are shaped by the places in which the choices are made. It argues that careful consideration of choosing schools opens up a moment to explore the ways in which people imagine themselves, their children and others in social, relational space.

Doing Theory on Education explores key debates using examples from contemporary media and popular culture to guide Education Studies students through the perennial debates that surround teaching and learning. Aimed at undergraduates, postgraduates and teachers in education settings, it uses over seventy popular culture texts from television, music, videogames, fiction, film, architecture, social media, the press and art to illuminate important issues and make the critical theory that underpins educational debates more accessible and engaging.Each chapter also offers essential background knowledge and historical perspective and includes reflective activities to help you develop a critical approach, enabling you to argue your own point of view with confidence and consider where issues may progress to in the future. It examines core issues such as: Class and educational choice Learning styles Testing and assessment What counts as knowledge Leadership and professionalism Education students and those in education settings often struggle to see the value of theory. Doing Theory on Education: Using Popular Culture to Explore Key Debates is an accessible text designed for educationalists who want to put theory to work as an active strategy for influencing thinking and practice.

Published in 1994, Mother's Intuition? examines the process of choosing secondary schools in two inner London boroughs. The research is based upon detailed interviews with parents as well as questionnaires filled in by pupils themselves. The authors address several important dimensions in the choosing process which had not been investigated by previous research. The book particularly focusses on the main question arising from the interviews; who does the choosing – mother, father or the child? Other areas discussed are the changing nature of families and the role different members in lone parent families play, as well as the different decisions made between families with girls and boys, and those from different racial and ethnic groups.

The first major battle over school choice came out of struggles over equalizing and integrating schools in the civil rights era, when it became apparent that choice could be either a serious barrier or a significant tool for reaching these goals. The second large and continuing movement for choice was part of the very different anti-government, individualistic, market-based movement of a more conservative period in which many of the lessons of that earlier period were forgotten, though choice was once again presented as the answer to racial inequality. This book brings civil rights back into the center of the debate and tries to move from doctrine to empirical research in exploring the many forms of choice and their very different consequences for equity in U.S. schools. Leading researchers conclude that although helping minority children remains a central justification for choice proponents, ignoring the essential civil rights dimensions of choice plans risks compounding rather than remedying racial inequality.