British Journal of Educational Studies, ISSN 0007-1005 DOI number: 10.1111/j.1467-8527.2006.00348.x Vol. 54, No. 3, September 2006, pp 308–328 308 © 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 SES. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. TAKING SCHOOL CONTEXTS MORE SERIOUSLY: THE SOCIAL JUSTICE CHALLENGE by MARTIN THRUPP, University of Waikato and RUTH LUPTON, Institute of Education, University of London ABSTRACT: Research is increasingly highlighting the influence of school contexts on school processes and student achievement. This article reviews a range of social justice rationales for taking school contexts into better account, and highlights the challenges contextualisation currently poses for practice and for policy. It notes important constraints on con- textualised practice and limited developments in contextualising policy. There is now increasing concern to recognise and understand context in school effectiveness and school improvement research but such research needs to consider school context much more, in order to provide a stronger underpinning for contextualised policy and practice. School composition research is potentially most insightful because it addresses the issue most directly. Nevertheless future large-scale studies in this area need to overcome a number of limitations within the existing literature. Keywords: educational research, school context, school performance 1. Introduction Although it is a truism that schools differ, some ways in which they do so are more prominent in academic and policy debate than others. In particular, there is usually much more discussion of vari- ation in features of schools’ internal organisation and practice (e.g. aspects of leadership, management or pedagogy) than of the different external contexts which could partly account for them. The latter include differences in pupil intake characteristics (class, ethnicity, turbulence, proportion of pupils from refugee families or with special needs) and school and area characteristics (urban/rural location, LEA policies, market position compared to surrounding schools). In spite of this imbalance, the imperative to take schools’ highly distinctive contexts seriously has long been a social justice theme in