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This paper considers the sociology of education (SOE) as a modern human science. It suggests that the SOE is mired in a set of unreflexive, redemptive, Enlightment rationalities, and explores the messy relationships of the sociology with education that result from this. It is argues that the sociology of education has consistently failed to distance itself from the metaphysics, optimism and oppressions of modern schooling. That it has failed to call into question either the basic building blocks of schooling, or what we call education -- pedagogy, curriculum and assessment -- or the buildings themselves, the spaces of education. The paper concludes by asserting to need for critique rather than simply criticism as a starting point for thinking education differently.

This paper examines the factors shaping teacher-student power relations, based on observations, interviews and document analysis from a Hong Kong study. It identifies and examines six factors: China's traditional culture of respect, examination-oriented teaching and religious culture were found to encourage imbalanced teacher-student power relations, whereas curriculum reform, values education and some school cultures facilitated relatively balanced teacher-student power relations. The paper depicts teacher-student power relations in Hong Kong as a reflection of multileveled intertwined interactions, and as affected by the interplay of various factors. It provides empirical evidence to supplement existing understandings of the nature of teacher--student power relations, especially in a non-western context with varied socio-cultural, educational, school and classroom levels.

This paper explores citizenship discourses empirically through upper secondary school student's understandings, as these emerge in and through their everyday experiences. Drawing on a post-structuralist theorisation inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, a discourse analysis of data from interviews with students is carried out. This analysis characterises three discourses of the active citizen--a knowledgeable citizen, a responsive and holistic citizen, and a self-responsible "free" citizen. The analysis raises questions over the implications of contemporary efforts for the intensification of standardising forces through citizenship education. It also stresses the notion that engaging students actively does always also involve discourses other than those stressed through the curriculum, which nurtures the body and nerve of democracy itself.

Some Indonesian teachers have entangled alternative versions in their teachings on the 1965 affair, a controversial vicious and political event in Indonesia, to counterbalance or even contest the communist coup narrative in the history lesson curriculum and school textbooks. Employing the sociological tools of Margaret Somers, this paper dissects the stories of eleven high school history teachers about what enables them to teach multiple interpretations of the 1965 affair. The inclusion of different accounts in their teachings is navigated by various narratives of the affair that they acquired or fabricated in certain socio-historical and political settings. However, teaching is far from an independent pedagogical action. Accordingly, the extent to which each teacher could easily teach multiple versions was related to surrounding actors inside or outside of the school and their narratives of the 1965 affair and communism, as well as perceived absence of any institutional practice to veto such teachings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decades, many art advocates have argued for the intrinsic value of learning in the arts. Nevertheless, the arts continue to struggle to find a secure place within the school curriculum. Concerned about the arts’ impact on classroom practice, this paper aims to cast light on diverse realities constructed by art teachers as insiders in marginal contexts. This will be done by reviewing a critical cultural inquiry into art education practice in South Korea. Two interpretive analyses of individual teachers’ life stories have disclosed the practitioners’ relationships to established power dynamics between the dominant practice and a developing alternative practice network within the system. The discussion focuses on the inherent contradictions and opportunities identified within the context of Korean education. This paper provides cultural resources for conscious professional transformation of practitioners and contributes to broader discussions on the socio-educational status of art in education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2002 Parlo Singh outlined Bernstein’s theory of the pedagogic device, elaborating the potential in Bernstein’s complex theoretical framework for empirical research. In particular, Singh suggests that Bernstein’s concepts provide the means of making explicit the macro and micro structuring of knowledge into pedagogic communication. More recently, Power has noted that use of Bernstein’s ideas remains relatively unrepresented in the literature. This paper makes a case for the use of Bernstein’s ideas as a particularly rich resource for educational researchers. It provides illustrations of a number of concepts as part of a methodological procedure in a research project examining the approaches to curriculum and pedagogy of six secondary school music teachers within the dialectic of western art music and popular music. Through utilisation of Bernstein’s concepts of knowledge discourses, recontextualisation, and regionalisation, the study is able to identify, describe, and shed light on a key problem for music education and education generally: developing the pedagogical means for the utilisation of informal knowledge as a pedagogic resource within the secondary school curriculum. In turn, the music context suggests a number of extensions to Bernstein’s concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses tuitional practices after a major curriculum change (2005) in primary schools of Turkey. Group discussions conducted with teachers and parents in five maximally contrasting schools (e.g. schools in a squatter and a middle-class neighbourhood of Istanbul) show that tuitional practices, being only ‘loosely coupled’ with the official curriculum, are strongly influenced by generation-specific orientations in teachers’ organisational milieus, by orientations prevalent in the social milieus of pupils and their parents, and by different forms of capital on the part of teachers, parents and school organisations. Combined with empirical analysis, the paper proposes a theoretical framework that complements the assumptions of New Institutionalism by using the basic concepts of the sociology of knowledge and Bourdieu’s concept of capital. This framework offers a new way to understand the intrinsic logic of the growing differences and inequalities within and between school organisations in complex societies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is based on a qualitative case study of undergraduate curriculum design and pedagogic practice in the new University Business School (UBS). Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 24 academics from across a range of business sub-disciplines together with an extensive documentary review of materials relating to two undergraduate degree programmes. The case study found that the UBS curriculum had become recontextualised as a ‘business project’ in which programmes were constructed as ‘products’ for the higher education market. The associated pedagogy was largely confined to behaviourist problem–solution routines based on narrow projections of the ‘real world’ of business. This paper contends that UBS undergraduate programmes were designed in a generic mode in response to the material and discursive influences of marketisation. As a consequence, ‘epistemic chaos’ had arisen in which knowledge and pedagogy had become fragmented and amorphous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on research into the destinations and aspirations of school leavers in Australia. It investigates the relationship between the transition to university for different groups of students and their own and their parents’ and teachers’ expectations. It draws on Bourdieu, Boudon, Nussbaum and others to investigate the way young people construct their aspirations. It examines the limits of young people’s agency, which is bound by their understanding of the hidden and informal rules that govern access to different spaces within the curriculum as well as access to post-school destinations. Navigating these transitions is becoming more important and more complex with the increasing emphasis on higher level qualifications in an education market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores citizenship discourses empirically through upper secondary school student’s understandings, as these emerge in and through their everyday experiences. Drawing on a post-structuralist theorisation inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, a discourse analysis of data from interviews with students is carried out. This analysis characterises three discourses of the active citizen – a knowledgeable citizen, a responsive and holistic citizen, and a self-responsible ‘free’ citizen. The analysis raises questions over the implications of contemporary efforts for the intensification of standardising forces through citizenship education. It also stresses the notion that engaging students actively does always also involve discourses other than those stressed through the curriculum, which nurtures the body and nerve of democracy itself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Whilst there has been increasing focus on the impact of neoliberal education policy on the curriculum covered in schools, as well as on teacher and student subjectivities, less research has been done on the possibility, or otherwise, for teachers to challenge curriculum constraints. Arguing that these curriculum constraints are not simply imposed by an external censor, this article takes up Judith Butler’s concept of the ‘domain of the sayable’ to theorise what it is possible to imagine teaching in the primary school classroom in the first place. I draw on two different ethnographic data episodes to explore the parameters of the domain of the sayable in the space of the classroom in which I taught, mapping the silences and sudden swerving away from topics that seem to be straying close to what is impossible to say or hear. This process offers new insight into how we might conceptualise teacher resistance and counter politics within the current educational policy milieu in the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The incorporation of peace and war into the curriculum poses problems to teachers, especially in an examination-focussed school system. Whilst recent research concerning conflict has considered conflict-resolution within schools, and difficulties teachers face teaching about terrorism, little has been written on teaching 21st century war without the high-profile deployment of UK troops. In this article, I examine how peace and war are taught in an English school. After identifying the school's overall war-focussed discourse, I focus on the practices of an ex-services English teacher and his techniques to debate, discuss, and ultimately problematise war creating a space akin to Foucault's heterotopia. I argue this 'other space' allowed him to develop his practice and there is evidence of the heterotopia 'leaking' further afield. I suggest that although there are limitations to the classroom-as-heterotopia, it can nevertheless provide a space for practitioners to disrupt the wider discourse within their schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denominational secondary schools in Scotland have been an influential means by which Catholics have achieved full social citizenship. Most of the Catholic population of Scotland has its origins in late-nineteenth-century migration from Ireland into low-skilled occupations. Although the church built a system of Catholic primary schools, it could not afford to extend this for secondary education, and so a compromise of 1918 allowed the state to take over the funding and management of almost all Catholic schools while the church retained a role in appointing teaching staff. The resulting public-sector secondary schools provided the Catholic population with unprecedented opportunities. The patterns of social and educational change affecting Catholic schools are studied here using a unique series of surveys of school leavers covering the whole of the second half of the twentieth century. Supplemental data for this article is available online at . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The arts are under threat in English schools. But some schools and teachers work against the trend. To understand how they continue to offer rich arts experiences to students, we bring Bourdieusian thinking to arts teacher practices that were common across the 30 secondary schools we studied for three years. In addition to a flexible approach to the curriculum which encouraged independence, intellectual challenge and risk-taking, teachers also engaged in arts brokerage - embodiment of arts engagement, ensuring students regularly visit cultural events/institutions, using local cultural resources, organising visits from artists/cultural organisations, enabling students to exhibit and perform for wider audiences, connecting students with arts workplaces and enhancing community arts participation. We approach this as a logic of practice associated with arts broker dis/positions drawn from teachers simultaneously occupying two chiasmatic fields - art and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to contribute to the development of research tools for the analysis of the special education curriculum. More precisely, using the concepts of classification and framing from the theory of Basil Bernstein, we approach the intended curriculum for students with mild and moderate learning difficulties. To be specific, using the content analysis method, we approach the school knowledge that refers to the teaching of pre-vocational skills. The research results revealed that according to the special education curriculum, the implementation of a weak classification is recommended for the shaping of school knowledge regarding pre-vocational skills. In addition, in order to teach this knowledge to students with mild and moderate learning difficulties, the application of mixed pedagogical practices, drawn as much from an invisible pedagogy (weak pacing) as from a visible pedagogy (strong framing of didactic-interactive relationships and of evaluative rules), is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of participation in adult literacy programmes on learners’ identities is examined through an interrogation of their past and current experiences and the assessment of the effect of particular pedagogies. The findings show how learners’ positive experiences in their programmes had caused them to re-evaluate their previous understandings and enabled the construction of new identities as people that are able to learn. These changes had come about through the challenging of negative discourses, the creation of new figured worlds and imagined futures, and the use of a learning curriculum where learners’ experiences were utilized as positive resources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]