International Handbook of Student Experience in Elementary and Secondary School (2007)

This collection of studies is the first handbook of its kind to be published. It 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. The book has as its main goal to include students' voices and analyses in interpretations of their experiences. It demonstrates revised and expanded uses of qualitative research methods both to research students' experiences and to represent those experiences in new ways. The opening chapter provides background on, bases of, and trends in research on students' experiences of school. The final chapter uses the interpretive framework translation provided to explore how researching students' experiences of school challenges those involved to translate the qualitative research methods they use, the terms they evoke to describe and define students' experiences of schools, and, in fact, themselves as researchers.