The School Story: Young Adult Narratives in the Age of Neoliberalism examines the work of contemporary writers, filmmakers, and critics who, reflecting on the realm of school experience, help to shape dominant ideas of school. The creations discussed are mostly stories for children and young adults. David Aitchison looks at serious novels for teens including Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak and Faiza Guene's Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, the light-hearted, middle-grade fiction of Andrew Clements and Tommy Greenwald, and Malala Yousafzai's autobiography for young readers, I Am Malala. He also responds to stories that take young people as their primary subjects in such novels as Sapphire's Push and films including Battle Royale and Cooties. Though ranging widely in their accounts of young life, such stories betray a mounting sense of crisis in education around the world, especially in terms of equity (the extent to which students from diverse backgrounds have fair chances of receiving quality education) and empowerment (the extent to which diverse students are encouraged to gain strength, confidence, and selfhood as learners). Drawing particular attention to the influence of neoliberal initiatives on school experience, this book considers what it means when learning and success are measured more and more by entrepreneurship, competitive individualism, and marketplace gains. Attentive to the ways in which power structures, institutional routines, school spaces, and social relations operate in the contemporary school story, The School Story offers provocative insights into a genre that speaks profoundly to the increasingly precarious position of education in the twenty-first century.

Winner of the 2022 AESA Critics' Choice Book Award Winner of the 2022 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award This diverse and global collection of scholars, educators, and activists presents a panorama of perspectives on media education and democracy in a digital age. Drawing upon projects in both the formal and non-formal education spheres, the authors contribute towards conceptualizing, developing, cultivating, building and elaborating a more respectful, robust and critically-engaged democracy. Given the challenges our world faces, it may seem that small projects, programs and initiatives offer just a salve to broader social and political dynamics but these are the types of contestatory spaces, openings and initiatives that enable participatory democracy. This book provides a space for experimentation and dialogue, and a platform for projects and initiatives that challenge or supplement the learning offered by traditional forms of education. The Foreword is written by Divina Frau-Meigs (Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris) and the Postscript by Roberto Apirici and David Garcia Marin (UNED, Madrid). Contributors are: Roberto Aparici, Adelina Calvo Salvador, Paul R. Carr, Colin Chasi, Sandra L. Cuervo Sanchez, Laura D'Olimpio, Milena Droumeva, Elia Fernandez-Diaz, Ellen Field, Michael Forsman, Divina Frau-Meigs, Aquilina Fueyo Gutierrez, David Garcia-Marin, Tania Goitandia Moore, Jose Gutierrez-Perez, Ignacio Haya Salmon, Bruno Salvador Hernandez Levi, Michael Hoechsmann, Jennifer Jenson, Maria Korpijaakko, Sirkku Kotilainen, Emil Marmol, Maria Dolores Olvera-Lobo, Tania Ouariachi, Mari Pienimaki, Anna Renfors, Ylva Rodney-Gumede, Carlos Rodriguez-Hoyos, Mar Rodriguez-Romero, Tafadzwa Rugoho, Juha Suoranta, Gina Thesee, Robyn M. Tierney, Robert C. Williams and Maria Luisa Zorrilla Abascal.