International Handbook of Student Experience in Elementary and Secondary School

The International Handbook of Student Experience in Elementary and Secondary School brings together in a single volume the groundbreaking work of scholars who have conducted studies of student experiences of school in Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, England, Ghana, Ireland, Pakistan, and the United States. Drawing extensively on students’ interpretations of their experiences in school as expressed in their own words, chapter authors offer insight into how students conceptualize and approach school, understand and address the ongoing social opportunities for and challenges in working with other students and teachers, and the multiple ways in which they shape and contribute to school improvement. The individual chapters are framed by an opening chapter, which provides background on, bases of, and trends in research on students’ experiences of school, and a final chapter, which uses the interpretive framework translation provided to explore how researching students’ experiences of school challenges those involved to translate their qualitative research methods, the terms they evoke to describe and define students’ experiences of schools, and, in fact, themselves as researchers.