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This paper examines how the Durkheimian approach to the 'ideal' delineates a possible way of straddling the dilemma between the normative orientation of 'powerful knowledge' accounts and the critical orientation of 'knowledge of the powerful' accounts. It argues that the normative aims are embedded in the fabrics of the sociological description with which the Durkheimian notion of 'elementary form' is concerned. To see where this enterprise can lead, this paper turns to the sociology of education of Bourdieu and Bernstein. Both draw on Durkheim's writings on primitive classifications in education and society, working towards uncovering the regularities of the world of knowledge classifications. Keeping in line with Bourdieu and Bernstein, this paper argues that one has to make the same refusal to the advocates of an abstract ideal of educational knowledge that is dissociated from its social conditions of historical realization in pedagogic contexts, and to the advocates of a cynical relativism of ideal that rejects any necessities socially established.

Talcott Parsons did not leave us with a global and consistent sociology of education. Instead, different aspects can be found in Parsons's oeuvre in different theoretical contexts. This paper summarises these different parts of Parsons's sociology of education -- his writings on the concepts of education and socialisation, the university, the school, the professions, and modernisation -- and discusses central criticisms and perspectives for further theoretical development. The paper goes on to argue that the value of cognitive rationality serves as a common basis of Parsons's sociology of education and that Parsons's sociology of education should be characterised as normative functionalist. Since the current sociology of education does not deal very intensely with Parsons's theoretical approach, the paper also considers references to other authors and the relevance for current questions and research in the sociology of education.

The subfield of Sociology of Education (SOE) concerned with the growth of neoliberalism through critically analysing its policies, discourses, and processes of subjectivation has made a significant contribution to education in the last 40 years. Whilst this scholarship has generated new knowledge about what happens to people, contexts and educational systems when they are regulated by neoliberal logics, it has also subsumed the sociological imagination under what this episteme considers valuable. The paper aims to challenge this excessive focus on the neoliberal episteme by broadening our research scope to recover the subjects' magmatic expression in SOE research. To do this, we introduce Hugo Zemelman's notion of "subject" to examine how SOE can overcome this neoliberal closure. The paper discusses three epistemic movements: focusing on the subject, researching the undetermined possibilities of the present in a given order, and, paying attention to the evocative and symbolic aspects of thinking and language.

The 'problems' and 'solutions' of modern education are overwhelmingly produced and tailored by the modern episteme, institutions, truths, and powers of the Global North. To find new ways of thinking and doing sociology, this paper will explore the outlines of a new Global Sociology of Education Imagination (GSEI) inspired by pre-modern epistemes selected precisely because of their distance from modern European standpoints: the ancient lost matriarchal societies and commons-based societies organised around shared goods in pre-modern Europe. Using Foucault's archaeological methodology, this paper finds inspiration in these epistemes to outline a new GSEI capable of questioning certain tenets of the modern sociological episteme regarding science, knowledge, truth and its order, roles, voices, commitments, and 'places'. It concludes with an invitation to experiment with a new GSEI inspired by these pre-modern epistemes, as a tool to openly challenge modern (education) domination and make it intolerable.

Global movements to decolonise sociology have gained significant momentum in recent decades and offer far-reaching implications for the field of education. One understudied area of research, however, concerns the sociologies of education taught and experienced in teacher education outside of Anglo/European contexts. This paper uses post-/­decolonial theory to explore the teaching and learning of sociology of education for pre-service teachers at the University of Zambia. It draws on data from surveys (n = 318) and five focus groups with pre-service teachers (n = 20), a focus group with tutors (n = 3) working on the course, and reflections by course lecturers to examine Zambian pre-service teachers' experiences and perspectives of sociology. We argue that a sociology of education which includes some elements of the classical canon but is grounded more firmly in sociological perspectives related to local social issues, contexts, and epistemologies may lead to a more informed and inspired cadre of pre-service teachers, and by extension, citizens.

Talcott Parsons did not leave us with a global and consistent sociology of education. Instead, different aspects can be found in Parsons's oeuvre in different theoretical contexts. This paper summarises these different parts of Parsons's sociology of education – his writings on the concepts of education and socialisation, the university, the school, the professions, and modernisation – and discusses central criticisms and perspectives for further theoretical development. The paper goes on to argue that the value of cognitive rationality serves as a common basis of Parsons's sociology of education and that Parsons's sociology of education should be characterised as normative functionalist. Since the current sociology of education does not deal very intensely with Parsons's theoretical approach, the paper also considers references to other authors and the relevance for current questions and research in the sociology of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how three other articles have employed E.P. Thompson's concept of the moral economy to analyse movements of resistance to higher education (HE) marketisation processes. Two of the studies relate to the English HE sector while one is a study of the Israeli system. The articles were selected because they are indicative of one of the key challenges that scholars working within the sociology of higher education may encounter when applying Thompson's ideas: rendering a faithful sense of the temporality which is foundational to Thompson's concept, and which makes it such a powerful tool of critique regarding dominant hegemonic processes such as higher education marketisation. I conclude the article with a discussion of the challenges that arise in transferring a concept that originated in history to the sociology of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]