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This paper presents an account of the development of the sociology of education in the UK, by means of an analysis of papers published in the field's flagship journal, the British Journal of Sociology of Education and its US equivalent, Sociology of Education. In particular, we examine the representation of two contrasting traditions in addressing social inequalities: 'political arithmetic'; and the more recent 'cultural turn'. We find that in the UK, the cultural turn dominates; whilst in the US, it is political arithmetic which does so. In accounting for these contrasting national profiles, we argue that they are underpinned by divergent social infrastructure and organisation. We also discuss some of the implications of the dominance of the cultural turn in the UK, specifically in terms of the relationship between the fields of academic research and policy and the development of a cumulative evidence base to address social inequalities in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many contemporary sociologists suggest that a feature of modern life is that the practices and identities associated with "place" are eroded. The local no longer matters in everyday life as it once did. Some national governments are persuaded of the possibility of an urban dystopia of Orwellian dimensions, and have found a response in theories and rhetorics of social capital, citizenship and communitarianism. They have instituted strategies to address an imaginary of harmonious local communities. This paper examines one such government intervention and shows how four schools in Tasmania, Australia, took up the invitation to strengthen ties with their local communities. The projects reveal that the local still exists and matters, but they also hint at other possibilities. It is argued that by working with a "place-based" curriculum to assist young people in building local networks and engaging productively with their local neighbourhoods, schools might provide important resources for identity-building and learning.

Childcare is a condensate of disparate social forces and social processes. It is gendered and classed. It is subject to an excess of policy and political discourse. It is increasingly a focus for commercial exploitation. This is a paper reporting on work in progress in an ESRC funded research project (R000239232) on the choice and provision of pre-school childcare by middle-class (service class) families in two contrasting London locations. Drawing on recent work in class analysis the paper examines the relationships between childcare choice, middle-class fractions and locality. It suggests that on the evidence of the findings to date, there is some evidence of systematic differences between fractions in terms of values, perspectives and preferences for childcare, but a more powerful case for intra-class similarities, particularly when it comes to putting preferences into practice in the 'making up of a middle-class child' through care and education.

Studies have shown the ways in which non-Western middle- and upper-class families are seeking to educate their children in the West. The rationale for this kind of social reproduction strategy is the acquisition of 'valuable' cultural and symbolic capitals which can be advantageous in the graduate job market of both their home country and internationally. Presenting a case study of four middle-class Nigerian fathers, the paper reveals the rationale behind these fathers' decision to opt out of the Nigerian HE sectors. The paper focuses on three Western capitals – specifically institutional (a Canadian degree), embodied (high proficiency in English language) and symbolic (Canadian citizenship) – capitals which will position these parents' children advantageously in the future. The paper concludes by presenting an argument that in seeking these Western capitals for their children, these parents become implicated in the Western hegemonic discourse of 'West is best'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that the mother's association with the child's schooling and educational needs is not just limited and peculiar to the middle-class families, as the literature suggests, but it is increasingly true of poor and working-class families too. This paper discusses how mothers from a poor neighbourhood in India straddle between household work, paid employment and children's education and how they envisage and support their children's schooling, at times going against the general tide to ensure a better life for their children. Other than highlighting the gendered nature of support for children's education, this paper, also outlines the nature of the differences and distinctions among mothers from a poor neighbourhood in terms of the family social status and educational levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on providing a forum for studies of class, education, and parenting hailing from a range of cultural contexts and social groups. Topics include entrenchment of neoliberalism, increasing competition, and expansion of educational choices; and considering class, education, and parenting in the era of globalization showing both the physical movement of families; and internationalization expanding the field of parenting and class reproduction.

VET colleges in China are positioned at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, absorbing the 'left-over' students with 'less desirable' academic records. VET students are stereotyped as 'stupid and lazy' youths suffering considerable prejudice in Chinese society. Drawing on Bourdieu's theoretical insights, this paper investigates the experiences of students in VET colleges and their teachers' perspectives on them. I explore how teachers' stereotyping habitus is practised in VET colleges and how it affects their students' learning experiences. The findings demonstrate that the teachers' pedagogic practices in class impose a designated cultural arbitrary via a hidden curriculum. The students adopted 'passing time' attitudes in class as a response to their teachers' 'misrecognition'. The paper examines how a system of unequal power relations in Chinese VET college is maintained and legitimised, which contributes to the 'transmission' and reproduction of the very culture that has shaped the standing of VET in Chinese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1970s, Britain has moved from a Keynesian welfare state model toward a mode of governance where economic reasoning replaces politics. Education in England has not escaped this shift from government to governance described as neoliberalism. This shift toward a new governing rationality has taken shape within the English education system since the 1980s through new public management regimes and networked governance; it has accelerated with academies, or schools run outside of local authority oversight. This paper explores how Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), or chains of academies directed by a centralized Trust Board, takes neoliberalism's governing rationality further as opaque networks of power are consolidated. Through tracing the narratives of MAT CEOs, government officials and union organizers, this paper shows how network governance enables neoliberal rationalities to predominate within MAT structures where authoritarian practices become normalized. Democratic ideals become bumps in the road to market-orientated progress requiring removal from education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the status of girls' education in the schools of rural Balochistan in Pakistan, and examines the dimensions of access, enrolment and retention. In order to explore the complexities of this governmental problem, we will propose the concept of postcolonial Islamic governmentality. Drawing on Foucault's work on the arts of government, with Dean's (2010) writing on illiberal governmentalities, and the work of Salehin (2016) on pious governmentality in Bangladesh, we will suggest that postcolonial Islamic governmentalities emerge at the intersections of the legacies of British colonialism in Pakistan's post-colonial governance; the influence of processes of neo-liberal globalisation in the policies of developing countries by donor countries, development NGOs and the SDGs; and the forms of Islamic governance embedded in the juridical, cultural, social and gender relations of Pakistan as a postcolonial, Islamic state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting through the prisms of past, present ("the shape of things that are and were") and future ("the shape of things to come"), this paper discusses three challenges for sociology of education: the rise of populism and declining faith in 'experts'; inequities within and re/produced by the sociology of education; and how to enact a sociology of education that can 'make a difference' to social inequalities. The paper puts forward some ideas in support of a current and future practice of the discipline that is pluralistic and orientated towards social justice. Arguments are made for the value of public-orientated dialogue that is conducted in a range of registers and the importance of acknowledging and engaging with the 'debt' (Ladson-Billings) that is owed to minoritized communities and minoritized researchers. Finally, a case is made for a sociology of education based on the principle of service as enacted through praxis partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the intensifying pressures on critical research and academic integrity in a research policy context that has come to be increasingly dominated by an instrumentalist mind-set. Using sensitising resources drawn from Geoff Whitty's critique of the 'what works' agenda, we reflect on the current conditions of academic labour and some of the key issues and dilemmas they pose for critical researchers in the sociology of education and beyond. In particular, we underline the trend for 'what works' agendas to become constitutive of academic identities and practices, including at micro-levels, such that the option of 'standing outside' them is shifting from being merely personally taxing to being institutionally disallowed. In addition to highlighting the dilemmas this creates for critical researchers and the threat this poses to expansive and democratic approaches to education, the paper emphasises the centrality of relationship-forming in understanding and underpinning academic integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the experiences of staff, parents, governors and students at a secondary free school in the West Midlands of England in relation to the inclusion of students with special educational needs (SEN). The paper is based on a qualitative research project carried out at a school that opened in 2015, with the explicit aim of examining the extent to which it developed as an inclusive school, particularly for children with SEN. In the paper, we draw on the classic distinction between 'education' and 'schooling' to identify tensions and overlaps between process and outcome oriented practices and examine the views of different stakeholders on how such practices impact on inclusion. By focusing on the day-to-day practices of the school and linking them to broader notions of schooling and education, we provide a complementary perspective on the current research on free schools, which is overwhelmingly quantitative and focused on admissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges (inter)national development narratives that propose schooling as a way out of poverty in the global South by interrogating poor children's experience of pedagogic and disciplinary processes in an Indian classroom. It also develops a theoretical framework to interrogate the relationship between urban poverty and classroom processes which attends to wider class and caste relations in the contemporary context of economic liberalism and 'political and social illiberalism'. Drawing upon parent interviews and ethnographic fieldnotes from a classroom in a state school it unpacks the term, 'labour class', used by teachers to refer to pupils' social background. Further, deploying the notion of 'deficit view' it shows how pedagogic practice, physical and verbal aggression experienced by pupils and pupils' struggles to engage with classroom teaching are shaped by realities of deeply stratified schooling, inadequate infrastructure in state schools and the relationship between 'labour class' communities and middle-class teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers' evaluations of students do not consider only academic competence, but are imbued with social considerations related to individual teacher and student characteristics, their interactions, and the surrounding context. The aim of this paper is understanding the extent to which teachers grade girls more generously than boys, and which characteristics of teachers and classrooms are likely to reduce this gender grading gap. We use Italian data from INVALSI-SNV, providing information on 10th-grade students linked with their teachers. The analysis relies on grade equation models in multilevel regression analysis, with students as first level, teachers/classrooms as second level, and schools as third level. Results show that, when comparing students who have identical subject-specific competence, teachers are more likely to give higher grades to girls. Furthermore, they demonstrate for the first time that this grading premium favouring girls is systemic, as teacher and classroom characteristics play a negligible role in reducing it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internationalisation of educational trajectories has emerged as a new form of cultural capital in education systems. Research suggests that the 'international capital' offered by language enrichment programs has become appropriated primarily by middle- and upper-class families investing in new forms of educational distinction. However, little is known about the appeal of international capital to different class fractions. In this paper, I draw on Bourdieu's theory of class and administrative data on French students and schools to examine the role of international certification in class practices of school choice. The analysis reveals that specific fractions of the upper-middle and upper classes are over-represented in schools offering international certificates. I use the findings to discuss the role of family resources and education system structures in the making of educational strategies. I conclude by highlighting the importance of empirically grounded analyses of the sociological significance and limits of international capital in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the history of the expansion of educational opportunities in the UK, to understand how different generations of -working-class students managed to access HE. Based on 23 life-story interviews with working-class students, the study highlights how the changing dynamics of the structure of compulsory education and the labour market have shaped working-class students' views of HE. Exploring the changing structure of opportunity, and how this has shaped working-class students' sense of social position, is key to understanding the uneven pattern of working-class pathways to HE across generations. It is evident that different types of secondary school experience and opportunities in the labour market affected working-class pathways to university with the nature of the school environment and employment shaping various expectations. This article concludes that people's understanding of their social position within the educational and occupational opportunity structure leads to variations in -working-class transitions to university across different generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the changes in intergenerational mobility seen in Spain during the last century. It examines educational and occupational mobility, paying particular attention to the existence of a differentiated gender effect. The magnitude of the historical changes that have taken place in Spain during the twentieth century and the scarcity of studies in this field increase the value of this paper. More specifically, the paper seeks to describe how the situation has changed with the social–economic and education policy developments in democratic Spain, especially with regards to women. The main results show that while educational mobility has improved, there has been no such significant change in occupational mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on the dramaturgical theory of Erving Goffman, this paper explores undergraduate students' differing experiences of the Cambridge supervision system. Semi-structured interviews with fifteen undergraduate students were analysed to examine the dramaturgical demands of the supervision and students' perceived abilities to meet these. Findings that suggest that female students and those from working-class backgrounds felt less able to deliver credible performances complicate the University's celebratory account of the teaching system. The discussion draws out the relevance of these findings for scholarly literatures addressing student experiences of elite educational institutions, teaching practices in higher education and dramaturgical approaches to the exploration of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we begin to explore how knowledges being generated in bioscience might be brought into productive articulation with the Sociology of Education, considering the potential for emerging transdisciplinary, 'biosocial' approaches to enable new ways of researching and understanding pressing educational issues. In this paper, as in our current research, we take learning as our focus. Our work brings together collaborators from across fields: sociology of education; molecular biology and biochemistry; cognitive neuroscience; fMRI imaging; and EEG. Through the paper we explore the generative potential of an encounter between life sciences and sociology of education. Through consideration of the conceptual and methodological elements of our 'Synchrony in Learning' research and engagement with our pilot experimental approach, our research is suggesting that our central concept, learning, is undergoing metamorphosis, challenging us to understand learning as a phenomenon produced through the intra-action of a multiplicity of forces and processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the contradictions of neoliberal education reform and its companion, the self-made aspirational subject, are embodied by Sir Michael Wilshaw, former headteacher of Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, East London, through his leadership practices. Wilshaw creates powerful mobility and morality tales that pave over the contradictions and ambiguities inherent in the academies programme and Mossbourne’s approach. Drawing on a larger study of Mossbourne, the paper focuses on how raced and classed pathological discourses are mobilised and inverted both by Wilshaw and policy rhetoric, cultivating compliance through a belief in the aspirational subject capable of transcending social structures. The paper argues that neoliberal academy reforms are not about autonomy, but the imperative to comply with centralised policy demands at the expense of democratic participation and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on actor-network theory and on the sociology of cultural consumption to examine the phenomenon of corporate Massive Open Online Courses. Through an analysis of texts available in the public domain, the paper argues that over a short period (between 2012 and 2013) digitisation technology became associated with the emergence of a hybrid ‘actor’: the digital video-recorder teacher. A parallel is drawn between the ‘interactive affordances’ of digital instruction and the playback and cataloguing options that have contributed to shifts in television viewing habits. The digital video-recorder teacher is described as an artefact in the service of a postmodern project of self-improvement through cultural consumption, which recruits digitisation to meet a growing demand for ‘upgrades to the self’. In the conclusion, the paper explores how the study of digital education could benefit from an interface between sociomaterial studies and the sociology of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Referring to the experiences of three Muslim refugee girls recently settled in Australia, this paper examines issues of schooling and empowerment. The paper draws on teacher and student interview data from a study that investigated inclusive approaches to addressing issues of cultural diversity in a secondary state high school in Queensland. The paper foregrounds the girls' highly positive views of their experiences at the school; views that reflect the girls' access to spaces of empowerment but belie the complexity and tensions involved in how empowerment was understood and approached by educators at the school. Theorising empowerment through poststructural understandings of agency, the paper examines conditions and ways of understanding that make possible spaces of empowerment for the girls. In particular, the paper argues for a reflexive approach to empowerment that is informed by an understanding of the framing discourses shaping minority student identity and a critical reflection on educator and school positionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe some of the complexities involved in the construction of a sample of 'ordinary' schools. We outline the policy context in England that produces pressures to resist 'ordinariness'. The paper then explores two theoretical tools, fabrication and rhetoric, that are deployed in an analysis of some key artefacts of fabrication from schools in England. Through an examination of artefacts such as school brochures and websites, this paper asks whether there are any 'ordinary' schools in these performative times? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) passed the 'Students Without Legal Immigration Status Policy', commonly known as the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. While the policy assured undocumented students' admission to schools on paper, it remains to be fully implemented. In addition, given the discursive connection between immigration status, race, and criminalization, the TDSB has instituted procedures that further illegalize undocumented students including a more onerous and dangerous enrolment procedure. This paper examines the role of schools as border zones for undocumented immigrants in Toronto. It argues that bureaucratic processes and criminalizing rhetoric based on race actively exclude undocumented migrants from the school site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to criticisms, put forward by Harrison and Waller in this issue, of an earlier paper by Noble and Davies. In particular, we argue that our interpretation of earlier quantitative research is correct, that Harrison and Waller have misconstrued the purpose of our previous paper and the analysis it contains, and that they (mis-)attribute to us a series of propositions and standpoints that are not in our paper. In the light of increasing policy interest in the extent to which providing information can lead to 'more well-informed choices' about participation in higher education, we remain of the view that researching the role of cultural capital in the students' immanent choices is a matter of considerable importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social reproduction theory names at least two distinct traditions, one of which has a long history in educational research. Social reproduction theory in education emerged out of a concern with education's relationship to capitalist inequalities. By contrast, social reproduction feminism developed out of feminist interventions regarding the role of women's unpaid care-work in the reproduction of capitalism. In this paper, we suggest that the renewed energy surrounding social reproduction feminism provides an opportunity to revisit social reproduction theorizing in education. We review the fields' histories and ready the ground for an integrated framework. At the heart of this integration is a feminist analysis of reproductive labor in its contradictory relationship to capitalism. Expanding the analysis from the reproduction of capitalist relations to the reproduction of life under capitalism, this approach avoids the pitfalls of determinism and attends to students' participation and teachers' work in the contested labor of social reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a response to some criticisms by James Tooley of our research on parental choice The paper argues that many of Tooley's criticism are based on systematic misinterpretations and misreadings of our work, ignorance of the procedures of qualitative research and the we of untenable speculations about sampling, data collection and the interpretation of data It is suggested that Tooley's criticisms are ideologically driven and that if taken senously would make qualitative social research impossible [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an external account of the demise of the `old' Marxist educational theory flowing from social reproductionism/resistance theory. Five developments are explored in terms of how they have undercut the 'old' educational Marxism, hyper-academicism, dislocations/disfuncions between theory and practice, the postmodern challenge; the new liberal `Left' challenge, and, the `death of Marxism' syndrome. The first two elements from the basis of some important `lessons' for the revitalisation of Marxist perspectives on education. It is also argued that, although the five bends and developments have posed a serious challenge fir the `old' Marxist educational theory, nevertheless, it will probably circulate for some time-given revival revisits, and as a source of easy critisism for anti-Marxists Finally, there has been a recent flowering of new approaches to theorising education from a Marxist perspective, which this paper maps out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the special issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy journal entitled Education, Training and Economic Performance. In a speech to the annual conference of the Association of Colleges of Further and Higher Education in London on February 15, 1989, Kenneth Baker, British Secretary of State for Educational and Science, speaking on Further Education a new strategy, talked about the problems of sludge speak, which dominates the rhetoric of further education and has to be translated into everyday language. If one examines the sludge speak of his speech and the vision of further education he has, then it is clear that in everyday language people might conclude, in polite phraseology, that is a real mess. This series of papers from the Oxford Review of Economic Policy provides a clear set of well-argued articles which students of the field should find more than useful in their essays and dissertation work. The special issue begins with a historical review of education, training and economic performance and quotes a lecture in 1852 on Industrial Instruction on the Continent which argued that improvements in technical education were urgently required if British manufacturers were to maintain their lead over foreign competitors.

This paper is concerned with a case study regarding the `rise and fall' of a promotions committee within an Australian College of Advanced Education The paper considers the internal organisational factors involved with the abolition of promotion by merit as part of increasingly dominant managerialist practices The paper attempts to contextualise these institutional developments in terms of the restructuring of the Australian economy and concomitant pressures upon state expenditure and consequent increasing pressures on tertiary education institutions to `pay their own way' The study fits within the `imperialist strategy' within organisational analyses where the study of organisations is "merged within a wider analytical framework geared to the examination of historical transformations in institutional structures and the principles which underlie these long-term historical movements" In the concluding section, some critical remarks are proffered regarding the way senior administrators within tertiary education institutions have responded to these privatisation pressures upon them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the apparent internal coherence of a programme of agrarian development in India and the distortions and contradictions arising out of its practical implementation. Our object is to examine official policy with regard to tribal residential schools in India, known as ashram shalas. These schools represent an innovation and are different from the general type of day primary schools seen in rural India. In ashram schools, tribal pupils are provided free boarding facilities, together with free school uniforms, text books and other learning materials. These schools are expected to impart elementary education in areas which are remote and sparsely populated and where, on account of the geographic spread of the numerous hamlets, single teacher schools cannot be established. Our study is aimed at understanding official policy in the context of ashram schools, and at providing an arena for bringing to the surface the fundamental contradictions played out in areas of the school situation, specifically relating to: (a) the school organizational structure; (b) the teaching practice; (c) dropout; (d) school-community relations; and (e) area development. The paper is presented in two major parts: (a) the first section will try to relate the functioning of the ashram schools to how the state plans and administers schools with respect to access to them; (b) the second section examines the ashram school as a locus of a wider and general social problem of relating education to social economic and developmental purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the technical teacher in training skilled workers within the FE system has perhaps been one of the least examined aspects of the researched education system in Britain It is not my intention here to explore why this is the case, particularly in view of contemporary debate about the importance of industrial training, but rather to examine the part technical teachers play within the existing arrangements of FE and work practice [1] The paper analyses how the technical teacher perceives the role of teacher as secondary to his occupational status within his former trade In addition, the paper examines the implications of this for his practice, his relations with apprentices and perceptions of his subject matter The main argument questions the assumption that the craft teacher and apprentice, by virtue of their common industrial experience, share a 'special relationship' which unites them in their work The paper is divided into three inter-related parts The first explores the basis upon which such a 'special relationship' is seen to exist the second considers how the conditions of FE practice prevent teachers from exploiting that sense of communality with apprentices which they consider important Finally, the third section analyses how the technical teacher, despite his allegiance to 'trade practice', gradually adopts 'educationist' and 'teacher' strategies to legitimate his training 'function' In so doing, the paper examines the uneasy coexistence which is seen to characterise the relations between 'education' and 'training' in Further Education [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A priority toward creating ‘active’ citizens has been a feature of curricula reforms in many income-rich nations in recent years. However, the normative, one-size-fits-all conceptions of citizenship often presented within such curricula obscure the significant differences in how some young people experience and express citizenship. This paper reports on research that explored the citizenship perceptions and practices of New Zealand social studies teachers and students from four diverse geographic and socio-economic school communities. Attention was drawn to the scale of their citizenship orientations and participation (local/global). Drawing on Bourdieu’s conceptual triad and his species of capital in particular, the author posits that the differences observed between school communities can be usefully explained by a concept of participatory capital. The paper concludes with some reflections on the implications for young people who fail to access the ‘symbolic’ global participatory capital associated with much contemporary citizenship education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the overwhelming focus on young people who are at either end of the educational or social spectrum in policy and research, vast numbers of young people do not reside at these extremes. Consequently, there have been calls to focus more closely on young people who reside in the 'middle.' This paper considers the utility of the concept of a 'middling' category through examining four selected case studies of young people as they anticipate their transition onto a range of post-18 education, training or employment pathways. It highlights the ways in which intra-class fractional positioning, academic attainment, personal biographies and serendipitous moments intersect and interact to frame young people's decisions about their post-18 pathways. Attention to these multidimensional elements, over a reliance on categories which position young people within sharp social or academic groups, is crucial for fully understanding young people's decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 contributes to a growing body of literature on widening university participation and brings a focus on the classed and embodied nature of young people’s imagination to existing discussions. We interviewed 250 young people living in disadvantaged communities across five Australian states who had experienced disengagement from compulsory primary and secondary schooling. We asked them about their education and their educational futures, specifically how they imagined universities and university participation. For these young people, universities were imagined as ‘big’, ‘massive’ alienating schools. The paper explores how the elements of schooling from which these young people disengaged became tangible barriers to imagining and pursuing participation in university education. The primary barrier they described was their relationships with school teachers. Our analysis shows how relationships with teachers can impact the imagined improbability/probability of university participation. We offer suggestions for how barriers to university created by poor relationships with teachers may be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the experiences of minority students from two different cultural groups, immigrant children of Pontian background and indigenous minority children of Roma descent, in the Greek-Cypriot educational system. Through a joint re-examination of results from two different qualitative studies, this paper delineates similarities and differences of how life at school is experienced through the eyes of children who are not part of the mainstream, in an effort to gain insight into the nuances of being a minority child in the specific educational system. Comparisons across the two groups of children suggest that although both groups shared a minority status, they nonetheless experienced marginalisation across different dimensions that were linked to their dual multilayered position as both insiders and outsiders. Attention to such complexities enables us to gain deeper understandings of children’s lives, as too often the category of ‘minority child’ seems to be treated as a monolithic and homogeneous one. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Global and national agendas to improve the 'quality' of Education For All have brought focus to pedagogic processes in developing country contexts. How can development research pay attention to the social and political significance of pedagogical projects and understand the micro-processes of classroom reform? This paper considers how Basil Bernstein's sociological theories helped develop a nuanced account of pedagogic reform in a study of Indian primary education. I explore how the analysis encouraged by Bernstein's concepts of recontextualisation and educational codes may contribute to current thinking on the role and significance of pedagogy in development research and evaluation activities. The paper also raises caution about the selectiveness and limits of efforts to capture, identify, measure or assess pedagogic processes and change. A Bernsteinian research approach is not immune from producing the kinds of reductionist accounts of pedagogy of which the analysis is wary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the links between language, social difference and political domination in the practices of parental school choice at the heart of a global city, Vancouver. Vancouver is a highly diverse city, especially in terms of language. Its inner city is replete with multiple languages whose exchange values are not equal. In this context, our case study of two elementary schools observes that white middle-class parents choose a predominantly white school - whose students are non-ESL and have a second language choice of French - in a socially and ethnically mixed inner city neighbourhood, creating a stark imbalance in the student population of local neighbourhood schools. This paper examines parents' accounts of their choices, which they rationalise on the basis of linguistic competency and differentiation from multilingual others. We draw from Pierre Bourdieu's theory of language and symbolic power and Ghassan Hage's spatial theory of nationalist practice to understand the linguistic dimension of school choice rationalisation made by white middle-class parents. In the context of these insights, we argue that the way anglophone white middle-class parents choose their children's schools is intricately linked to active processes of reproducing a stratilingual society in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores recent changes in tertiary education policy in New Zealand, which are designed to address legitimation deficits. By offering an analysis of the making, and the subsequent unmaking, of quasi-markets in tertiary education, this paper attempts to describe how the state dealt with legitimation deficits resulting from providers' of tertiary education use of the adult and community education funding category to increase their revenues. In providing this description, the paper helps to provide a way of understanding how the state in New Zealand has responded to legitimation deficits by introducing a new regime of governance. The paper concludes by arguing that, in terms of its treatment of category 5.1 funding, this regime is supportive of neo-conservative goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Valuable developments in the Sociology of Education over the last 40 years have involved the widening and deepening of analytical perspectives to include not only class-based research in education but also the complex interactions of class, race and gender in all educational, social, economic and political contexts. From a sociology of knowledge perspective the field has become historically more mature and multi--dimensional in its research and analysis of socio-educational contexts internationally. This paper argues that despite these progressive developments, one dimension is still largely ignored i.e. that of the religions of the world and of the social and cultural implications of these faiths for education today. Sociological analysis which elides a religious dimension not only presents an over-simplified view of social relations in the modern West but also fails to make an authentic engagement with education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, we argued that, when it comes to sociology of education, the lives and education of refugee children were invisible. Sociology of education was 'a wasteland' as far as studies of the social effects of migration were concerned. Here, we revisit this argument exploring whether education and migration has been developed into a viable specialism in the discipline, and whether one of the great societal challenges of our age is being addressed. Examining the work published on migration and education since 2005 in BJSE, we see that the majority of studies focus on the global mobility of students and on school experiences of migrant children. While these are valuable foci, what is missing is a more extensive consideration of how 'the age of migration' and the characteristics of global migration in the 21st century challenge the values, the policies and practices associated with state education institutions and social order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to work on a number of different levels. Firstly, it comprises my personal reflections on a career in sociology of education. These reflections are entwined with a history of the discipline that emphasises themes of power, politics and pragmatism. This subjective, and inevitably partial, account is combined with an examination of the structure and composition of the academic field of sociology of education and its relationship with the two disciplines it originates from, sociology and education, but also with the wider field of politics. The ways in which these different strands within sociology of education coalesce or diverge, and the consequences in terms of tensions, fissures and struggles within the field will be considered. I also discuss the subject and content of sociology of education, and its future possibilities for radical as opposed to reactionary or reformist agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the operation of heteronormativity in online and face-to-face dialogues about sexualities and schooling, and seeks to tease out the means through which this operation is enacted. The data arise from two linked research projects focusing on participants' perceptions and concerns about addressing issues related to sexual orientation in school contexts. Analysis of data from both sources showed that participants' narratives were embedded (often without the participants' recognition) in the heteronormative, through the inscription and reinscription of specific identity categories that fixed heterosexuality as the normative centre. Revisiting these data as a whole, we draw upon Youdell's notion of 'wounds and reinscrptions' and Bakhtin's notion of carnivalistic inversion to explore the virtual impossibility of imagining the homonormative. From this exercise we derive important lessons for ourselves as educators and researchers about how offering new imaginaries might enhance the possibilities for social justice and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theorists of friendship in contemporary society have suggested that our relationships with peers are characterised by their emphasis on openness, disclosure and emotional communication. Moreover, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim argue that friendship, as a deliberately sought, trusting partnership between two people, can play an important role in countering some of the negative consequences of a market-driven society, 'acting as a shared lifeline to take the weight of each other's confusions and weaknesses'. However, drawing on a series of in-depth interviews with students from nine different higher education institutions, this paper will argue that such theorists overlook significant complexity in the ways in which young adults choose to 'order' their friendships. Indeed, it will suggest that highly individualised and ruthlessly competitive approaches to academic study can be maintained alongside more socially cooperative relationships with friends and peers, played out in non-academic arenas. The paper will discuss the implications of this for both sociological theorising about friendship, and policy and practice within the higher education sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines claims that recent reforms to UK education have led to significant organisational changes in primary school and higher education. It also examines two main theoretical explanations for these, namely post-Fordism and New Managerialism. Examples of changes in both schools and universities, including flexibility and teamwork, are explored. Up to the mid-1980s, publicly funded educational organisations did display bureaucratic features, including rules, staff hierarchies and complex procedures. However, professionals employed in these organisations retained discretion and autonomy in their work. Since then, the introduction of an audit culture and a greater emphasis on management and regulation of the work of teachers and academics has decreased discretion and autonomy. This paper suggests that theories of New Managerialism offer a more satisfactory explanation of the changes explored than post-Fordism, which has more often been used as a normative model of what contemporary organisations should look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]