Resisting Educational Inequality: Reframing Policy and Practice in Schools Serving Vulnerable Communities

Resisting Educational Inequality examines poverty, social exclusion and vulnerability in educational contexts at a time of rising inequality and when policy research suggests that such issues are being ignored or distorted within neoliberal logics.

In this volume, leading scholars from Australia and across the UK examine these issues through three main focus areas:

• Mapping the damage: what are our explanations for the persistent nature of educational inequality?
• Resources for hope: what do we know about how educational engagement and success can be improved in schools serving vulnerable communities?
• Sustaining hope: how might we reframe research, policy and practice in the future?

Using a range of theories and methodologies, including empirical and theory-building work as well as policy critique, this book opens innovative areas of thinking about the social issues surrounding educational practice and policy. By exploring different explanations and approaches to school change and considering how research, policy and practice might be reframed, this book moves systematically and insightfully through damage towards hope. In combining pedagogy, policy and experience, Resisting Educational Inequality will be a valuable resource for all researchers and students, policymakers and education practitioners.

Susanne Gannon is Associate Professor in the School of Education at Western Sydney University. Her research interests include gender and equity issues in education. She has co-authored and co-edited seven previous books including Pedagogical Encounters, Place Pedagogy Change, Contemporary Issues in Equity in Education and, most recently, Becoming Girl. She currently coedits the journal Gender and Education.

Robert Hattam is a Professor in the School of Education at the University of South Australia. He has co-authored Schooling for a Fair Go, Teachers' Work in a Globalizing Economy, Reconciliation and Pedagogy, Dropping Out, Drifting Off, Being Excluded and, most recently, Literacy, Leading and Learning – the latter two for Routledge.

Wayne Sawyer is a Professor in the School of Education at Western Sydney University. His research interests are in curriculum and schooling in high-poverty contexts. He has recently co-authored Exemplary Teachers of Students in Poverty and Engaging Schooling: Developing Exemplary Education for Students in Poverty – both for Routledge.