A poignant study of how a group of poor white urban youth find respite from poverty, violence, and racism in a local community center.

This book is the result of nearly two decades of research and development into providing educational researchers with a set of reliable and valid measures to study the nature of middle schools, and practitioners with a set of tools to evaluate their school climate with an aim towards organizational improvement.

This is a unique and exciting book that challenges traditional conceptions of middle years provision. It should be read by policy-makers, educators and researchers alike.' Jackie Marsh, University of Sheffield Carrington's analysis of contemporary youth and the lives that they bring to school is significant. This stage of education is fundamental to understanding how we might engage learners, and her sensitive and insightful analysis makes a major contribution to our understandings about how these years resonate with their needs and interests.' Professor Nicola Yelland, Victoria University Despite two decades of research and reform, schools across the Western world still struggle to engage their students in the middle years. But does this mean there is a youth crisis? And what do technology and risk have to do with it? Victoria Carrington argues for the need to move beyond developmentally based models to see middle years pedagogy in historical, social, economic and political contexts. Setting research from Australia alongside international experience, she emphasises the importance of understanding the risk society, and young people

This book is designed to help middle school teachers develop concept-based, transdisciplinary units that reflect what we know about the importance of students working together to construct knowledge and the value of putting young adult literature at the center of such a planning process.