This title comprises a group of original studies in education. It includes detailed empirically-based accounts of a variety of educational settings which are under represented in the sociological literature, for instance special schools, psychiatric adolescent units, further education colleges and government policy settings. Studies of other neglected issues include teachers' understandings of subject, the promotion of cross curricular themes and pupils' acquisition of knowledge about menstruation. Ethnographic fieldwork in Maltese classrooms and a study of Asian pupils in a Welsh school provide an international dimension to the volume. Most contributions draw on ethnographic approaches and by using close observation and/or in-depth interviews they capture the internal workings of a classroom, institution or culture.