Description: 'Choice', along with 'the market', remains a core driver in educational policy and other public service reforms in European countries (Justesen, 2002; Tooley et al 2003), including the UK, despite many well-debated problematic dimensions and ramifications (e.g. Ball, 2003; Power et al, 2003; Shwartz, 2004) . The notion of choice is also the context for a continuing exodus of the white urban middle classes from state secondary education in England. Indeed, the availability of different types of secondary school provision is of central importance in the housing market and is closely related to a series of strategic lifestyle choices. It is against this backdrop that the Economic and Social Research Council-funded project Identity, Educational Choice and the White Urban Middle Classes (Award reference RES-148-25-0023) is investigating a cross-section of 'counter intuitive' examples, where white urban middle class families in England (in London, Newcastle and Bristol) eschew more apparently dependable state and private alternatives and instead choose ordinary state comprehensive secondary schools for their children. The study seeks to understand school choice practices and processes in terms of orientations and motivations, ethnicity and class, with specific reference to this group of families. It aims to investigate how such practices are related to identity and identification in the light of contemporary conceptions of the middle class self. In addition, we seek to understand tensions between familial and wider social interests, and the impact on children of particular school choices. Methodology: We are interviewing parents and children in over 130 white middle-class households within the cities of London, Bristol and Newcastle in England. In each case, a positve choice has been made in favour of a state secondary school that is performing at or below the England average according to conventional examination league-tables. The study began in mid 2005 and concludes in 2007, and is part of the ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme. Conclusions: In this paper we set out some preliminary data analysis on key orientations and motivations for school choices in families that appear to be 'acting against self interest'. We give specific attention to a group of examples of what may be termed communitarian orientations, then contrast these with others including a subtle form of calculated risky investment, in which white middle-class families can be understood as instrumental, seeking particular social and cultural returns from the school as microcosm of an ethnically diverse society. These and other orientations are examined in terms of the assumed normality of middle class life (Savage, 2003) and the moral dimensions of class- specifically the educational conundrum of the middle classes in which ideals must be balanced against tactical imperatives (Sayer, 2004). We also draw upon the work of Bernstein, Bourdieu and others in making sense of potentially important class fractions and to discuss social practices in terms of habitus, field and capital (Grenfell and James, 1998). Our research outcomes encompass reflections upon, and suggestions for, policy. They also seek to extend the scope of class analysis by focusing on a specific segment of the middle classes and upon affective expressions of class (Reay, 2005) and their relation to identity.