In recent years, a little-noted policy has dramatically transformed—for the worse—the experience of schooling in the United Kingdom for a large number of young people. Internal behavior support units, which ostensibly serve to help manage and improve problematic behavior in students, have been installed in schools throughout the nation, with the result that large numbers of young people are removed from mainstream classrooms for long periods to undergo rehabilitative programs that operate with little oversight. Making use of the insights of young people experiencing these units, this book is the first to offer a detailed analysis and critique of this approach, and it should prompt sharp questions from parents, educators, and policy makers alike around issues of social justice, equal opportunities, and institutional racism.

Product Description: This book takes a close-up and critical look at both the elusive and blatant workings and consequences of power in a range of everyday sites in universities. Chapters focus on specific locations in which power shapes personal and institutional knowledge including student-supervisor relationships, research teams, networking, and literature reviews...read more

Successive moral panics have cast poor or socially excluded mothers - associated with social problems as diverse as crime, underachievement, unemployment and mental illness - as bad mothers. Their mothering practices are held up as the antithesis of good parenting and are associated with poor outcomes for children. Marginalised Mothers provides a detailed and much-needed insight into the lived experience of mothers who are frequently the focus of public concern and intervention, yet all too often have their voices and experiences overlooked. The book explores how they make sense of their lives with their children and families, position themselves within a context of inequality and vulnerability, and resist, subvert and survive material and social marginalisation. This controversial text uses qualitative data from a selection of working class mothers to highlight the opportunities and choices they face and to expose the middle class assumptions that ground much contemporary family policy. It will be of interest to students and researchers in sociology, social work and social policy, as well as social workers and policymakers.

Product Description: This book goes to the heart of academic, political and popular debates, as well as professional concerns, about the nature of contemporary family life and parenting. Families are widely discussed in western societies as breaking down or as radically changing, with step-families in particular seen as evidence of such trends...read more