Focus Groups: From Structured Interviews to Collective Conversations is a conceptual and practical introduction to focus group. As the title indicates, focus groups traditionally encompass a wide range of discursive practices. These span from formal structured interviews with particular people assembled around clearly delimited topics to less formal, open-ended conversations with large and small groups that can unfold in myriad and unpredictable ways. Additionally, focus groups can and have served many overlapping purposes-from the pedagogical, to the political, to the traditionally empirical. In this book, focus groups are systematically explored; not as an extension or elaboration of interview work alone, but as its own specific research method with its own particular affordances. This book comprehensively explores: The nature of focus groups Politic and activist uses of focus groups Practical ways to run a successful focus group Effective analysis of focus group data Contemporary threats to focus groups Focus Groups: From Structured Interviews to Collective Conversations is essential reading for qualitative researchers at every level, particularly those involved in education, nursing, social work, anthropology, and sociology disciplines.

Winner of the 2013 American Educational Studies Association's Critics Choice Award! Recent efforts to reform urban high schools have been marked by the pursuit of ever-increasing accountability policies, most notably through the use of high-stakes standardized testing, mayoral control, and secondary school exit exams. Urban Youth and School Pushout excavates the unintended consequences of such policies on secondary school completion by focusing specifically on the use and over-use of the GED credential. Building on a tradition of critical theory and political economy of education, author Eve Tuck offers a provocative analysis of how accountability tacitly and explicitly pushes out under-performing students from the system. By drawing on participatory action research, as well as the work of indigenous scholars and theories, this theoretically and empirically rich book illustrates urban public schooling as a dialectic of humiliating ironies and dangerous dignities. Focusing on the experiences of youth who have been pushed out of their schools under the auspices of obtaining a GED, Tuck reveals new insights on how urban youth view accountability schooling, value the GED, and yearn for multiple, meaningful routes to graduation.

Set against the current proliferation of global "difference" and economic realignment, Critical Dispositions explores the notions of "evidence" and "expertise" in times of material scarcity. Both have come to the forefront of national and international debate in education as "evidence" and "evidence-based" research and pedagogical practices continue as major trends in educational policy. Greg Dimitriadis maintains this debate is best understood as part of a broader rise in professional and managerial discourses in various aspects of educational research and practice. Each aims to control and contain some aspect of research and practice in ways that are increasingly specific and targeted.

As demonstrated through examples from critical intellectuals and artists outside the field of education, this current proliferation of specific, autonomous fields of inquiry and practice marks a much deeper ambivalence about our contemporary moment and how we understand it. Following Bourdieu and other theorists, Dimitriadis argues that educational researchers and practitioners today must be increasingly self-reflexive about the positions they take up in various fields of inquiry, what they allow us to see and to understand, what they blind us to. This kind of self-reflexivity, however, is becoming increasingly difficult today as material demands and dislocations are forcing educators to occupy particular fields in more specific ways. Unpacking this tension and offering alternative "thinking tools" is at the core of this volume.

This book provides a concise introduction to the practical and theoretical complexities of studying urban youth culture today. Looking across disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and education, Dimitriadis explores the ways urban youth have been framed - in often limiting and problematic ways - in the popular and academic imagination. Moving beyond critique alone, this highly accessible primer opens a discussion about what a truly powerful, emergent field of «critical youth studies might look like. Looking toward the future of this field, this book discusses the most important methodological and substantive trends and issues scholars will be addressing now and in the years to come. The Studying Urban Youth Culture Primer is an indispensable text for students in a range of qualitative methods and urban education courses.

For more than three decades Michael Apple has sought to uncover and articulate the connections among knowledge, teaching and power in education. Beginning with Ideology and Curriculum (1979), Apple moved to understand the relationship between and among the economy, political and cultural power in society on the one hand "and the ways in which education is thought about, organized and evaluated" on the other. This edited collection invites several of the world's leading education scholars to reflect on the relationships between education and power and the continued impact of Apple's scholarship. Like Apple's work itself, the essays will span a range of disciplines and inequalities; emancipatory educational practices; and the linkage between the economy and race, class and gender formation in relation to schools.

Theory for Education provides a concise and clear introduction to key contemporary theorists, including their lives, major works and ideas. Written for the student in need of a quick introduction or for the scholar brushing up on details, this new volume in the theory4 series presents major thinkers whose work and ideas have shaped critical thinking in our time. Greg Dimitriadis and George Kamberelis underscore the particular relevance of these thinkers for the field of education - their work on education, how others in education have used them and possible future directions for teachers and researchers.

Theory for Education's ease of use, clarity and comprehensive scope will be invaluable for those entering the field.

Adapted from Theory for Religious Studies, by William E. Deal and Timothy K. Beal.

This stunning new edition retains the book's broad aims, intended audience, and multidisciplinary approach. New chapters take into account the more current backdrop of globalization, particularly events such as 9/11, and attendant developments that make a reconsideration of race relations in education quite urgent. The timely entries foreground the complex intersection of race with the dynamic variables of popular culture, identity formation and state/public policy formulation in the new millennium. Throughout, the emphasis is on multidisciplinary approaches and analyses that seek to integrate contemporary issues concerning race and education in the U.S. within a broader global context of center-periphery relations.

Learning to Labor in New Times foregrounds nine essays which re-examine the work of noted sociologist Paul Willis, 25 years after the publication of his seminal Learning to Labor, one of the most frequently cited and assigned texts in the cultural studies and social foundations of education.

For all of its promise, public education in the twentieth century never lived up to its democratic potential. Promises to Keep takes a serious look at the slow erosion of the fuller democratic meaning of a public education and a public life and explores the possibilities offered by emerging new progressivism. Inhabiting the intellectual and political space established by recent work in cultural studies, the essays collected here present the significant beginnings of a dialogue among various movements and discourses of democratic education and public life. Blending diverse approaches and distinguished scholars, this ambitious and timely volume struggles with the unfulfilled promises of history and offers hope for the future.

For all of its promise, public education in the twentieth century never lived up to its democratic potential. Promises to Keep takes a serious look at the slow erosion of the fuller democratic meaning of a public education and a public life and explores the possibilities offered by emerging new progressivism. Inhabiting the intellectual and political space established by recent work in cultural studies, the essays collected here present the significant beginnings of a dialogue among various movements and discourses of democratic education and public life. Blending diverse approaches and distinguished scholars, this ambitious and timely volume struggles with the unfulfilled promises of history and offers hope for the future.

Twenty-five years after the publication of Paul Willis' seminal text Learning to Labor, Nadine Dolby and Greg Dimitriadis have gathered together an internationally renowned group of scholars to reflect on the meaning and influence of what many consider to be the most influential book in critical education and cultural studies of our time. Learning to Labor in New Times will refocus attention on the themes that have been central to Willis' work: the relationship between schooling and work; the lives of working class youth; the role of the school as a productive site of struggle; the significance of common culture in the lives of young people; and the continuing importance of ethnography as a research methodology.

Focus Groups: From Structured Interviews to Collective Conversations is a conceptual and practical introduction to focus group. As the title indicates, focus groups traditionally encompass a wide range of discursive practices. These span from formal structured interviews with particular people assembled around clearly delimited topics to less formal, open-ended conversations with large and small groups that can unfold in myriad and unpredictable ways. Additionally, focus groups can and have served many overlapping purposes-from the pedagogical, to the political, to the traditionally empirical. In this book, focus groups are systematically explored; not as an extension or elaboration of interview work alone, but as its own specific research method with its own particular affordances. This book comprehensively explores: The nature of focus groups Politic and activist uses of focus groups Practical ways to run a successful focus group Effective analysis of focus group data Contemporary threats to focus groups Focus Groups: From Structured Interviews to Collective Conversations is essential reading for qualitative researchers at every level, particularly those involved in education, nursing, social work, anthropology, and sociology disciplines.

Set against the current proliferation of global "difference" and economic realignment, Critical Dispositions explores the notions of "evidence" and "expertise" in times of material scarcity. Both have come to the forefront of national and international debate in education as "evidence" and "evidence-based" research and pedagogical practices continue as major trends in educational policy. Author Greg Dimitriadis maintains this debate is best understood as part of a broader rise in professional and managerial discourses in various aspects of educational research and practice. Each aims to control and contain some aspect of research and practice in ways that are increasingly specific and targeted.

As demonstrated through examples from critical intellectuals and artists outside the field of education, this current proliferation of specific, autonomous fields of inquiry and practice marks a much deeper ambivalence about our contemporary moment and how we understand it. Following Bourdieu and other theorists, Dimitriadis argues that educational researchers and practitioners today must be increasingly self-reflexive about the positions they take up in various fields of inquiry, what they allow us to see and to understand, what they blind us to. This kind of self-reflexivity, however, is becoming increasingly difficult today as material demands and dislocations are forcing educators to occupy particular fields in more specific ways. Unpacking this tension and offering alternative "thinking tools" is at the core of this volume.

Recent efforts to reform urban high schools have been marked by the pursuit of ever-increasing accountability policies, most notably through the use of mayoral control and secondary school exit exams. This innovative and provocative volume excavates the unintended consequences of such policies on secondary school completion by focusing specifically on the use and over-use of the GED credential. Building on a tradition of critical theory and political economy of education, author Eve Tuck offers a provacative analysis of how accountability tacitly and explicitly push-out under-performing students from the system. A theoretically and empirically rich treatise on school push-out, Urban Youth and School Push-Out illustrates urban public schooling as a dialectic of humiliating ironies and dangerous dignities. Focusing on the experiences of youth who have been pushed-out of their schools under the auspices of obtaining a GED, Tuck reveals new insights on how urban youth view accountability schooling, value the GED, and yearn for multiple, meaningful routes to graduation.

Theory for Education provides a concise and clear introduction to key contemporary theorists, including their lives, major works and ideas. Written for the student in need of a quick introduction or for the scholar brushing up on details, this new volume in the theory4 series presents major thinkers whose work and ideas have shaped critical thinking in our time. Greg Dimitriadis and George Kamberelis underscore the particular relevance of these thinkers for the field of education - their work on education, how others in education have used them and possible future directions for teachers and researchers.

Theory for Education's ease of use, clarity and comprehensive scope will be invaluable for those entering the field.

Adapted from Theory for Religious Studies, by William E. Deal and Timothy K. Beal.

For more than three decades Michael Apple has sought to uncover and articulate the connections among knowledge, teaching and power in education. Beginning with Ideology and Curriculum (1979), Apple moved to understand the relationship between and among the economy, political and cultural power in society on the one hand "and the ways in which education is thought about, organized and evaluated" on the other. This edited collection invites several of the world's leading education scholars to reflect on the relationships between education and power and the continued impact of Apple's scholarship. Like Apple's work itself, the essays will span a range of disciplines and inequalities; emancipatory educational practices; and the linkage between the economy and race, class and gender formation in relation to schools.

This stunning new edition retains the book's broad aims, intended audience, and multidisciplinary approach. New chapters take into account the more current backdrop of globalization, particularly events such as 9/11, and attendant developments that make a reconsideration of race relations in education quite urgent.