This book uses an ethnographic, cross-cultural approach to study everyday life in secondary schools in London and Helsinki. Employing a metaphor of dance, it explores the relationship between the official school (correct steps), the informal school (improvised steps) and the physical school (the ballroom). Practices and processes of differentiation, marginalisation and of co-operation are explored in relation to gender and its intersections with social class and ethnicity. The concluding question ''who are the wallflowers?'' is addressed through a critique of New Right politics and policies in education.

This book uses an ethnographic, cross-cultural approach to study everyday life in secondary schools in London and Helsinki. Employing a metaphor of dance, it explores the relationship between the official school (correct steps), the informal school (improvised steps) and the physical school (the ballroom). Practices and processes of differentiation, marginalisation and of co-operation are explored in relation to gender and its intersections with social class and ethnicity. The concluding question ''who are the wallflowers?'' is addressed through a critique of New Right politics and policies in education.