ABSTRACT
This chapter explores that an understanding of neighbourhood is critical to more equitable and productive schooling in deindustrialized working-class neighbourhoods. It shares with Bright a sense that policy discussions of white working-class underachievement', in looking for general fixes, fail to situate youth disengagement and aspiration in particular local settings. However, a typical neighbourhood effects' approach has some serious limitations when thinking about the ways in which neighbourhoods like Steeltown operate as sites of value formation. Most of this research is quantitative and thus limited by the data available. This observation, and the conference which led to this chapter, suggested to author's the possibility of rethinking Steeltown's educational difficulties from the perspective of value plurality'. One way forward, then, is to rethink what would constitute equitable or just education in such circumstances. In the Steeltown case, it would appear that equity in education is being conceived in terms of the equal distribution of educational outcomes and the ensuing labour market chances.
