Composing Lives in Transition: A Narrative Inquiry into the Experiences of Early School Leavers is structured around ten narrative accounts, each one offering glimpses into the lives of early school leavers from different backgrounds. Framed by the puzzling question of why someone would want to leave school early, the authors worked alongside youths from culturally and socially diverse backgrounds in order to understand their experiences and motivations in more depth. In doing so, however, the research team learnt that the stories are also as much about how early school leaving shaped their...

Focusing on school as place where curriculum is made to realizing the ways children and families are engaged as curriculum makers in homes, in communities, and in the spaces in-between, outside of school, this book investigates the tensions experienced by teachers, children and families as they make curriculum attentive to lives.