“Living on the Edge”: A Case of School Reform Working for Disadvantaged Adolescents

Abstract

The issue of why so many young adolescents around the world are disengaging from school and making the choice to drop out is one of the most intractable, vexed, perplexing, and controversial issues confronting educators. Tackling it requires courage and a radical rethinking of school reform around issues of power, ownership of learning, and the relevance of schooling and curriculum for young lives. This means a heightened institutional capacity to “listen.” This article describes an instance of a disadvantaged urban Australian government school that realized it had little alternative but to try new approaches; “old ways” were not working. The article describes an ensemble of school reform practices, philosophies, and strategies that give young adolescents genuine ownership of their learning. This school stands out as a beacon that school reform is possible, even for young adolescents from the most difficult of circumstances. However, such approaches look markedly different from where mainstream educational reform is taking us at the moment.