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Over the past decades, many art advocates have argued for the intrinsic value of learning in the arts. Nevertheless, the arts continue to struggle to find a secure place within the school curriculum. Concerned about the arts’ impact on classroom practice, this paper aims to cast light on diverse realities constructed by art teachers as insiders in marginal contexts. This will be done by reviewing a critical cultural inquiry into art education practice in South Korea. Two interpretive analyses of individual teachers’ life stories have disclosed the practitioners’ relationships to established power dynamics between the dominant practice and a developing alternative practice network within the system. The discussion focuses on the inherent contradictions and opportunities identified within the context of Korean education. This paper provides cultural resources for conscious professional transformation of practitioners and contributes to broader discussions on the socio-educational status of art in education.

This paper uses Raymond Boudon’s model of educational expansion to examine the relationship between education and social mobility, paying particular attention to post-compulsory education – an important site of social differentiation in England. The paper shows how Boudon focuses explicitly on the consequences of educational expansion, and argues that his work helps us understand why widening access to post-compulsory education does not necessarily lead to higher rates of social mobility. We investigate Boudon’s key theoretical insights and assess the contemporary relevance of his model. The paper argues that the fundamental assumptions of Boudon’s model not only remain valid, but have been intensified by systemic changes in English post-compulsory education, and its articulation with the labour market.

This paper examines the experiences of minority students from two different cultural groups, immigrant children of Pontian background and indigenous minority children of Roma descent, in the Greek-Cypriot educational system. Through a joint re-examination of results from two different qualitative studies, this paper delineates similarities and differences of how life at school is experienced through the eyes of children who are not part of the mainstream, in an effort to gain insight into the nuances of being a minority child in the specific educational system. Comparisons across the two groups of children suggest that although both groups shared a minority status, they nonetheless experienced marginalisation across different dimensions that were linked to their dual multilayered position as both insiders and outsiders. Attention to such complexities enables us to gain deeper understandings of children’s lives, as too often the category of ‘minority child’ seems to be treated as a monolithic and homogeneo...

Literacy is considered to be a public good – one that benefits not only literate people, but also others in society through mechanisms of sharing and mediation. But to what extent do the benefits of literacy extend to socially distant groups? This paper applies the sociological concept of social distance to examine how social stratification impacts on the way that literacy is distributed and ‘shared' through mediated practice within and across caste-based groups. The paper presents a case study of physical proximity and social distance in Nepal to examine how literacy is shared in a context where inequalities of literacy and schooling are heavily influenced by gender and caste membership. The findings demonstrate that mediation takes place across caste groups, but less extensively than within caste groups. We conclude that assumptions about how literacy operates as a public good need to be tempered by consideration of the implications of social distance.

This paper explores the potential role of creative learning in helping to create positive experiences for socially excluded young people. Noting the increased influence of the market into education and the onus engendered in the ‘Third Way’, which seeks to give socially and economically marginal individuals the opportunity to adapt to changing economic conditions, while neglecting the underlying causes of exclusion, the paper focuses on a group of 14–18 year olds' experience of performance‐based training as part of a government‐funded Creative Partnerships project in Durham/Sunderland. The paper argues that creative learning cannot provide a solution to the ills of educational disadvantage, but that its untapped potential lies in its ability to provide a ‘community of practice’ in which an individual can take personal ownership of his or her own learning experience in a communal context.

Social capital theory has been widely debated across the social sciences. Its core idea is that relationships and norms have a value, in that they enable individuals and groups to co-operate for mutual benefit. The role of social capital appears to be changing in the context of the self-aware reflexivity that characterises contemporary 'risk society'. This paper takes the form of a dialogue between the two authors: the first defends the concept's analytical value while taking an agnostic view of its significance for policy, while the second author raises concerns over the normative implications of current interest in social capital and identifies its connection with authoritarian as well as liberal-humanistic policy responses. The paper concludes with reflections on the value of social capital in academic milieus, combined with an analysis of the implications of this discussion for future research.

This paper explores Basil Bernstein's insights into education and social class, and in particular the relevance of his work for understanding the British middle class. Bernstein is one of the few sociologists of education to recognise and explore differences and tensions within the middle class. We begin by exploring some of the influences of Bernstein's theorisation of social class in general, and outline his main ideas on the relationship between the middle class and education in particular. We then examine the relevance of his work for research on education and middle-class differentiation through drawing on data from our 'Destined for Success' project. This project traced the educational biographies of 300 young men and women from the beginning of their promising educational secondary school career to their mid-twenties. We argue that the distinctive dispositions and orientations of the 'new' and 'old' middle class proposed by Bernstein are evident within parental preferences for types of school, proc...

This article is part (and the outcome) of my research on the inequality of access to Higher Education in Greece. My main focus will be the higher education entry National Examinations (Genikes Exetasis). Although my main data refer to the case of the metropolitan area of Athens, in this paper I will deal with inequalities of access to higher education at national level. I intend to show the differentiation, not just between, or within, the various higher education establishments and their respective disciplines ('hierarchisation of knowledge'), but also between the various occupations in the labour market ('hierarchisation of occupations'). This will be done, after a brief reference to the international debates on the equality of opportunities in schools, the evolution of the Greek school system, and the relation between the structure of the school system and the main characteristics of the Greek job market. By using national statistics, I will construct some ‘Indices of Educational Opportunities...