1. School Effects on Deviance: An International Perspective; Jannick Demanet and Mieke Van Houtte -- 2. Understanding Student Misconduct in Urban Schools: Is There a Need for a Cross-National Approach?; Sophie Pascal, Michel Janosz, Isabelle Archambault, and Marie-Christine Brault -- 3. The Effects of 21st Century Skills on Behavioral Disengagement in Sacramento High Schools; Gregory J. Palardy and Russell W. Rumberger -- 4. Student Disengagement in Finnish Comprehensive School in Turku; Tero Järvinen and Jenni Tikkanen -- 5. School Misconduct in a Unified system – Norwegian 10th Graders in Bergen; Thea Bertnes Strømme. 6. Student Disengagement in Inclusive Icelandic Education: A Question of School Effect in Reykjavik; Kristjana Stella Blondal, Jón Torfi Jónasson and Atli Hafthórsson -- 7. Socio-Economic School Composition and School Misconduct: Disentangling Structural and Cultural Explanations in Ghent; Jannick Demanet, Laura Van den Broeck, and Mieke Van Houtte -- 8. A Multilevel Analysis of Student School Misconduct in High Schools: Investigating the Role of School Socioeconomic Composition and Teacher Culture in Montréal; Marie-Christine Brault, Veronique Dupéré, Michel Janosz, Sophie Pascal, Isabelle Archambault, and Nathan Yerg -- 9. Bad Schools or Bad Pupils? School Effects on Misbehavior in Barcelona; Rafael Merino and Dani Torrents -- 10. Resisting Education. Do Schools and Systems Matter?; Jannick Demanet and Mieke Van Houtte. .

This book focuses on how school-level features affect student resistance to education from a comparative angle, taking into account cross-national differences. All over the world, policy makers, school administrators, teachers, and parents are dealing with students who resist education. Resisting school might ultimately lead to unqualified dropout, and it is therefore crucial to understand what triggers resistance in students. The book uses the ISCY data set to study multilevel questions in detail. It does so based on the view that system effects and school effects intertwine: system-level policy measures affect student outcomes in part by shaping school-level features, and school effects may differ according to certain system-level features. We start from an overarching theoretical framework that ties the various city-specific insights together, and contains empirical studies from Barcelona, Bergen, Ghent, Montréal Reykjavik, Sacramento, and Turku. It shows that, in all countries, the act of resisting school is more likely to occur among the socio-economically disadvantaged, and those in the most disadvantaged schools. However, educational system features, including tracking, free school choice, and school autonomy, are important driving factors of the differences between schools. As such, systems have the tools to curb between-school differences in resistance. Previous research turns resistance into a problem of individual students. However, if school or system features engender resistance to school, policy initiatives directed at individual students may solve the problem only partially.