When can contexts and diversity be resources, rather than risks, for children's developmental pathways? Scholars, policy makers, and practitioners increasingly realize that middle childhood matters as a time when children's pathways diverge, as they meet new and overlapping contexts they must navigate on their way to adolescence and adulthood. This volume shines new light on this important transition by tracing how these contexts -- cultural, economic, historical, political, and social -- can support or undermine children's pathways, and how children's own actions and the actions of those...

In every cultural group and in regions worldwide, education is strongly linked to children and adolescents' life opportunities and choices. Many societies embrace the ideals that their children will have equal access to education, and can advance through their merit. However, in many nations, as children move through primary and secondary school towards higher education, the number of immigrant, minority, and low-income youth who finish secondary school and attend college shrinks, signifying a global dilemma.

Drawing on theories and research from across the social sciences, Bridging...