Beginning and well-seasoned researchers alike face significant challenges in understanding the complexities of research designs arising from both within and across methodological paradigms, and in applying them in ways that maximise impact on knowledge, practice, and policy. This volume engages educational and social researchers in a scholarly debate offering some crucial re-interpretations of established research methodologies in light of contemporary conditions and critical introduction to some contemporary research approaches yet to gain general recognition. This book is a contemporary vademecum for researchers, practitioners and graduate students on research methodologies and designs for educational and social change in today's world. The chapters chart and analyse the conceptual and practical complexities of a variety research designs for contemporary educational and social work research. This anthology, taken overall, provides readers with the knowledge and understanding needed not only to design technically sound and coherent research studies, but also to develop methodologically innovative research projects that cross the boundaries between different methodological traditions to the benefit of scholarship, policy, and practice. The chapters cover nine research approaches: - Design-based research - Action research - Ethnomethodological research - Negotiated ethnography - Arts-informed research - Historical analysis and postcolonial scholarship - Policy analysis - Comparative research - Quantitative modelling of correlational and multi-level data The book provides a critical discussion of epistemological questions and methodological frontiers: - Knowledge and epistemology in scholarship, practice and policy - Digital knowledge and digital research - Emerging methodological challenges for educational research - Challenges and futures for social work and social policy research methods - Methodology and the knowledge industry

This book is the outcome of a colloquium series organized by The University of Sydney in which leading and emerging researchers were invited to name what they took to be the deep flaws at the heart of contemporary educational and policy and practice in Australia and globally - to voice their potentially 'heretical' views on what most urgently needs to be done. The chapters in this collection are paired to offer two takes on each topic, from supplementing to critiquing to countering and most points in between. The issues addressed in this volume include: the place of education in national and international marketplaces, mass testing and standardisation, the future of 'multiculturalism' in schools, the public funding of private schools, the complicated relationship between evidence and policy and the shifting politics of inequality. This book is based on the idea that recognising deep disagreements on big issues is a necessary accompaniment to imagining and developing productive ways forward.

What is a child?
How is the concept of childhood defined?
This book aims to explore these perennial and complex questions by looking at the way in which society constructs and understands childhood. The authors focus in particular on the school, a key location within which social and cultural notions of childhood are defined and performed.
The book is divided into three major parts:
Part 1 frames the accepted notions of childhood and schooling, and introduces ethnomethodological analysis as a tool to rethink current versions of the child.
Part 2 focuses on how school students become members of a category within the institution of the classroom. The authors explore this idea through transcripts of talk between teachers and students, and amongst students themselves in two classroom studies.
Part 3 looks at the materials of education, concentrating specifically on children's texts. The authors examine how such texts portray a notion of the child within the story, and also assume a notion of the child as reader of the story.
This important book shows how much is at stake for children in accepting adults' deep-seated notions of childhood. It will be of great interest to educational researchers and policy makers, sociologists of childhood, teachers and student teachers.

What is a child?
How is the concept of childhood defined?
This book aims to explore these perennial and complex questions by looking at the way in which society constructs and understands childhood. The authors focus in particular on the school, a key location within which social and cultural notions of childhood are defined and performed.
The book is divided into three major parts:
Part 1 frames the accepted notions of childhood and schooling, and introduces ethnomethodological analysis as a tool to rethink current versions of the child.
Part 2 focuses on how school students become members of a category within the institution of the classroom. The authors explore this idea through transcripts of talk between teachers and students, and amongst students themselves in two classroom studies.
Part 3 looks at the materials of education, concentrating specifically on children's texts. The authors examine how such texts portray a notion of the child within the story, and also assume a notion of the child as reader of the story.
This important book shows how much is at stake for children in accepting adults' deep-seated notions of childhood. It will be of great interest to educational researchers and policy makers, sociologists of childhood, teachers and student teachers.

A collection of original pieces written by recognised scholars in literary studies from around the world. Some of the pieces report data on access to literacy competence for various sub-national minority groups, some focus on the historical role of literacy in the maintenance or suppression of marginal groups, and some pay close attention to important policy, public, or media accounts of literacy. What gives this collection cohension is a perception of literacy education among the authors as a potent ally in programmes of both freedom and oppression, and the commitment to present ways of viewing the working of these macro-political agenda in the details of policy and practice.

This book is the outcome of a colloquium series organized by The University of Sydney in which leading and emerging researchers were invited to name what they took to be the deep flaws at the heart of contemporary educational and policy and practice in Australia and globally — to voice their potentially ‘heretical’ views on what most urgently needs to be done. The chapters in this collection are paired to offer two takes on each topic, from supplementing to critiquing to countering and most points in between. The issues addressed in this volume include: the place of education in national and international marketplaces, mass testing and standardisation, the future of ‘multiculturalism’ in schools, the public funding of private schools, the complicated relationship between evidence and policy and the shifting politics of inequality. This book is based on the idea that recognising deep disagreements on big issues is a necessary accompaniment to imagining and developing productive ways forward.