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The persistent failure of contemporary policies to improve school retention rates and close the achievement gap between students from low and high socio-economic (SES) backgrounds should be a matter of grave concern. In this article, we set out to show what it means to be educated in a context of disadvantage from the perspectives of young people attending a senior secondary public school in regional Australia. Acknowledging that youth are experts in their own lives, we draw extensively on student narratives of the funds of knowledge and opportunity structures that support and/or constrain education and employment opportunities in low-income neighbourhoods. Although young peoples' stories of hope and agency go some way to undermining the deficit thinking about these students and their families, we argue that the realisation of their aspirations requires institutional support and policies that address the systemic causes of educational disadvantage.

This paper addresses the vexed educational policy aspects of area-based "interventions (ABIs) in neighbourhoods designated as "disadvantaged" in an Australian context. We find that the way in which the policy of ABIs is supposed to operate and impact education is highly problematic. What we present instead in this paper is a much more complex process by which aspirations are formed, sustained, contested and maintained by young people who regard themselves as "ordinary" and as being engaged instead in a process of navigating educational opportunities on the basis of resources available to them.

This paper poses a rarely asked question--Re-engagement to where? Or to what valued social purpose for the young people concerned? Drawing from a larger project funded by the Australian Research Council, the paper analyses the "portraits" of two young people whose lives were seemingly better within a re-engagement programme, but whose lives were severely circumscribed by the narrow vocationalism offered in the programme. More concerning was the fact that the considerable natural talents and skills of these young people were neither acknowledged nor used as the basis to improve their life chances or opportunities.

This paper is primarily interested in opening up a strategy to counter the increasing silencing of perspectives resulting from the press towards "evidence-based" forms of research. We argue that all researchers have interests, declared or otherwise. What we advance in the paper is an approach to ethnography that is inclusive of the lives, perspective, experiences, and viewpoints of the least powerful. Methodologically we demonstrate something of how we have explored the intellectual craft and possibilities of portraiture as a way of advancing the notion of advocacy ethnography. (Contains 2 tables.)

In neo-liberal times educational policy and practice is being realigned more closely to the shifting imperatives of the market with damaging effects on the lives of young people. Whilst the rhetoric suggests that schools are safe, welcoming and caring environments for the benefit of all, the veracity is very different for significant numbers of marginalised students who face fragile, uncertain and unpredictable futures. This paper draws on a number of research projects in Australia to investigate the lived reality of students who are struggling to make sense of school and their transition to "getting a job". The research is neither impartial nor neutral. It draws on the tradition of critical policy ethnography to identify, describe and map the kinds of conditions that both constrain and enable the aspirations, dreams and hopes of young people for productive and rewarding lives. The intent is to unsettle commonsense and deficit understandings of school life that serve to oppress and marginalise the least advantaged students.

This paper examines the complex constellation of conditions that turn many young people into "exiles" from schooling. From the vantage point of young people, the paper traces out a profile of the conditions that need to be brought into existence for these young people to find a way back into learning. The paper argues that current educational policies are deeply hostile to young people in the ways they position them as "silent witnesses" and exclude them from having a voice in the important decisions about what they learn, how, with whom, and with what effects. In contrast, the paper explores six alternative programmes in Australia, warehoused from within the same systems that "damaged" these young people. Paradoxically these programmes are seen as providing these damaged young people with the spaces in which they can become powerful "active agents" in re-forming an educational identity for themselves. Where these alternatives depart from the damaging policy regime is in the highly context-sensitive way they enable young learners and local policy advocates who work with them, to effectively contest exclusionary and undemocratic neoliberal policies.

It may seem something of a paradox that in a globalised age where notions of interdependence, interconnectedness and common destinies abound, the "local", with its diversity of cultures, languages, histories and geographies, continues to exercise a powerful grip on the human imagination. The ties that bind us have global connections but are anchored in a strong sense of locality. This paper explores the theoretical foundations of place-based education (PBE) and considers the merits and limitations of current approaches with particular reference to Australian studies. The authors argue that there is a place for PBE in schools but contend that it must be informed by a far more critical reading of the notions of "place", "identity" and "community". The implications of pursuing a critical pedagogy of place-based education are discussed with reference to curriculum, pedagogy and teacher education.

Although alienation is widely recognized as a barrier to educational success for many students, prevailing explanations tend to focus on psychological traits and individual deficits, rather than the oppressive economic and social structures bearing down on young people. This paper addresses the issues of youth alienation and student engagement from a critical/sociological perspective. Informed by Paulo Freire's philosophy and praxis, I argue that any meaningful response to the phenomenon requires a critique of the dehumanizing forces that operate within and outside schools and the development of a renewed project for a critical pedagogy that is more attuned to the influences of globalization and popular culture on young people's lives. The practical possibilities, limitations and potential development of such a pedagogy is discussed with reference to a cluster of Australian high schools serving low socioeconomic communities.

Drawing on a school ethnography and the voices of graduate students, this paper explores the concept of robust hope with reference to the ideal of social justice in education policy and practice. Although the arguments to support a commitment to social justice in education systems, schools and teacher education programs, are often well-articulated, the pedagogical and political strategies to achieve such goals often remain elusive. If we are to reclaim the utopian imagination of socially just schools and egalitarian society we need to move beyond naive optimism to cultivate a notion of robust hope that is praxis-oriented and fully cognisant of the complexities, tensions and difficulties associated with the task. "Getting real" in this sense requires the development of conceptual ideas to critique existing social arrangements, a vision of an emancipatory alternative, and a set of political strategies and resources to affect progressive change. Notwithstanding the difficulties of contesting market-driven approaches to education, this study reveals that there are "resources of hope" in schools, educational institutions and the broader community to guide teachers and teacher educators in pursuing a goal of socially just schooling.

This paper describes an instance of a disadvantaged (urban) Australian government school that realized it had little alternative but to try new approaches; "old ways" were not working. The paper describes an ensemble of school reform practices, philosophies and strategies that give young adolescents genuine ownership of their learning. This school stands out as beacon that school reform is possible, even for young adolescents from the most difficult of circumstances. However, such approaches look markedly different from where mainstream educational reform is taking us at the moment.