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This paper examines the roles of parental social class and cultural capital in inequalities in English school qualifications. The analytical focus is the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). Integral to Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction is the conception that inequalities in cultural capital explain the unequal scholastic achievements of pupils from different social class backgrounds. This paper is a novel investigation using data from "Understanding Society" and linked administrative education records from the National Pupil Database. The central empirical findings do not support the Bourdiuesian position, and there is no evidence that the substantial parental social class inequalities that are observed in school GCSE outcomes can be explained by inequalities in cultural capital. Engagement in reading related activities are mildly influential, but engagement in highbrow cultural activities are not influential. This is an important finding as the concept of cultural capital has become more prominent in Government education policy.

The utilisation of non-formal educational methods has long been advocated as a means of supporting marginalised young people. For many in this cohort, the adverse social circumstances that confront them can limit their sense of hope and leave them susceptible to educational under-achievement and/or engagement in anti-social behaviour. Research indicates that sport can act as an effective back-drop for the promotion of non-formal educational programmes especially in relation to marginalised youth. However, there is contention over the role that such programmes play in providing a foundation for enhanced aspirational goals and social integration. Drawing upon research conducted on one UK-based sporting intervention, this paper explores how project engagement enabled participants to enhance their sense of hope, especially around education, training and employment. In so doing the paper demonstrates how the pedagogical approach adopted by project staff, drew parallels with critical education, and nurtured an increased sense of hope amongst participants.

The role of 'class strategies' in policy formation is sometimes unseen as plans are unrealised in practice over long periods of historical time. 'Subterranean class strategies' are an extension of existing work on class to consider 'class work' on policy in the 'long unenacted'. Using the example of emergency feeding in a national crisis, the stark difference in school meal planning for post-World War 2 emergencies when compared to the COVID-19 crisis is discussed. Through an analysis of archival records, it is shown that 'subterranean class strategies' - the devaluation of school catering expertise by the army and the private sector, the lack of co-operation of independent schools, and localisation and privatisation - diminished the role of schools in emergency feeding. The paper concludes by considering how the concept of 'subterranean class strategies' could inform work on educational think tanks, privatisation and subsumption, and intersectional areas such as race.

This paper explores UK school students' protest activism relating to their schools' policies and practices, drawing on two datasets: 1) a newspaper analysis of media reports relating to school protests between 2000 and 2021; 2) a survey of 800 secondary school pupils in Wales. Drawing on social movements literature and adapting concepts for the school environment, we present a framework for exploring children's protest repertoires that distinguishes between institutionalised, legitimated and disruptive forms of activism. Our analysis outlines trends in pupil protest activities and explores stated motivations for protesting. We find that pupils are using a broad range of protest actions, often in combination, to voice concerns about school-based issues. Our data also suggest that pupils link their grievances to wider themes of social justice, rights, fairness and solidarity. Using principles of critical pedagogy, our study challenges hegemonic and deficit-laden ideas about children's (mis)behaviour as potential mis-readings of activism.

Farzana Shain reviews two books: (1) Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines, edited by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang and George Lipsitz, 2019; and Education and Race: From Empire to Brexit, by Sally Tomlinson, 2019, Bristol, Policy. Shain begins this review by saying that we are now entering a new period for race relations in the US and UK. What Gramsci (1971) described as the 'morbid symptoms of the interregnum', can be seen in the revival of populist politics and renewed enthusiasm for nationalist policies across a number of countries as they respond to the impact of the global crash in 2008. Immigrants, those seeking asylum and minorities were the first to be blamed for the failures of flawed neoliberal financialisation policies and the wild speculation that went with it, which most economists now agree caused the crash (Bresser-Pereira 2010; Pettifor 2017). From the UK's Brexit referendum in 2016, the Trump election in 2016, to the nationalist policies pursued by Prime Ministers' Narendra Modi in India, Shinzo Abe in Japan, Jair Bolsanaro in Brazil, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, the minority groups within each nation-state are being blamed for declining living standards. Similar trends have been identified in the Philippines, China and India and in South Africa. Across European countries, recent elections have seen a rise in support for parties that promote xenophobic nationalism, economic protectionism and anti-immigration rhetoric. There has been a shift to right populism by existing parties in order to win votes (Inglehart and Norris 2016; Dennison and Geddes 2019) in the particularly volatile and uncertain economic and political context following the global crisis of 2008, the effects of which are still continuing -- this is the 'new interregnum'. Political analyses of events such as the Brexit referendum and Trump's victory in the US election in 2016, and a number of right populist parties' performances in the European elections in 2019, have noted that a significant proportion of the electorate was motivated to vote for anti-immigration parties not only because of economic insecurity but for long standing reasons of cultural insecurity, racial resentment and a marked hostility to 'others', most notably, Muslims and asylum seekers. These sentiments are captured within the cultural backlash theory of voting behaviour. Slogans such as 'Take Our Country Back' (Brexit, UK, 2016), 'Make America Great Again' (Trump election campaign 2016), and 'Get Brexit Done' (UK General Election 2019), do not explicitly mention race but speak to the cultural insecurities of many whites through plugging into a nostalgia for the 'good old days'. In this review, Shain asks the following questions: (1) What is the cultural nostalgia for? and what role does education play in feeding it? Shain identifies these questions as at the heart of the two books under review and she discusses those questions in detail in the sections of this review that follow. She notes that the books contain many rich examples of the methods that sustain white supremacy including the operation of apparently race and power-blind discourses such as merit and opportunity. Both books speak to these decolonising movements which are still in the process of agreeing what decolonise means and how it must be achieved. Shain closes the review by saying that while neither book offers a substantive conclusion chapter, both books make an invaluable contribution to current debates at a time when the right populism is on the rise again. She states that there are, inevitably, some gaps in the books however she found them extremely timely and will no doubt be referenced widely in interdisciplinary conversations focussed on challenging new racisms in education.

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.

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.

This paper is based on findings from an email interview study with 20 academics (17 women, 3 men) in the UK on short-term, insecure or 'casualised' contracts. The paper focuses on their perceptions of the effect their contract status has on the lecturer/student relationship: particularly in regard to student perceptions of their legitimacy and status. Using a poststructuralist theoretical lens, we explore lecturers' concerns or anxieties as to whether they may be interpreted as less legitimate than permanent staff; and the emotional labour involved in the work done to 'cover' for the difficulties that a lecturer's contract status causes for the quality of their teaching content and organisation. We also explore the considerations of some participants to voluntarily 'disclose' their status to students and the possibilities of such acts as a form of resistance to dominant discourses of the legitimate academic.

This paper argues that the sociology of education would benefit from greater integration with social scientific research focused on morality. This body of research offers a rich set of resources that can illuminate and extend many of the sociology of education's intellectual concerns. In support of this argument, the paper draws on data from Millennium Cohort Study in the UK to empirically examine how a wide range of socio-demographic characteristics are related to young people's moral attitudes. The analysis focuses on the extent to which adolescents state that a range of actions are wrong. In doing so, the paper makes an important contribution to studying the moral lives of young people.

This paper explores how teachers respond to the requirement to promote 'fundamental British values' (FBV) to their pupils. It offers a preliminary analysis of data drawn from interviews with teachers and (mostly lesson) observations in schools. It argue that, first, the policy cannot be understood without a consideration of the multi-layered context in which it is being enacted in schools. Second, it locates the policy to promote FBV as a liberal nationalist one and considers some of the problematic issues that arise from this philosophy. Third, it turns to schools and teachers to consider their reactions and responses. It is concluded that teachers and schools in this research often did attempt to neutralize potentially exclusionary readings of the policy and were effective in absorbing the requirement to promote British values. However, doubt is cast on the policy's ability to meet its aims and the paper also raise concerns about the limited amount of time given to pupils' engagement with the values.

Academic conferences have a central role in shaping career trajectories, reproducing or resisting exclusions and moulding relations in and to academia, thus shaping academic networks. In this paper, we consider how precarious academics subvert and navigate conference spaces, including emerging online forms. Particularly, we explore how academic conferences generate and nurture friendship as an enduring political practice that undermines neoliberal economic, political and social structures. This is contextualised in UK higher education amidst mass job losses, increased precarity and the subsequent breaking of academic bonds. In interviews with academics and our own auto/ethnographical experiences, we explore how friendship emerges in and resists the exclusions of the conference space for precarious researchers. Finally, we explore how the nurture of friendship by precarious scholars at academic conferences promotes collective action to resist neoliberalism within the academy.

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.

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.

The provisions of the Higher Education Act (2004) have renewed interest in widening participation research. Therefore, this paper explores the development of this scholarly field, primarily in the United Kingdom, by examining major trends in the study of higher education. Political debates related to higher education, the prevailing structure of the sector and predominant sociological perspectives have largely shaped the empirical and theoretical concerns of widening participation research. These delimiting factors have resulted in incomplete accounts of the barriers to higher education, which do not fully explore the relationship between students' social characteristics, learning experiences and university careers. Furthermore, contemporary research runs the risk of reinventing the wheel and replicating the mistakes of the past, since there has been a collective act of forgetfulness with respect to earlier contributions. In contrast, this paper provides guidelines to facilitate a holistic agenda for future widening participation research.

Over the last 30 years higher education has seen a rise in new managerialism across all its activity, driven by neoliberal economic policy. Professional doctorates (PDs) have been part of this rise, increasing in number considerably and spawning a related interest in researching doctoral work. However, there have been few studies focused on how students develop an understanding of theory/theorisation and how supervision supports it. This paper reports on a research project involving interviews with supervisors from professional doctorate in education programmes in the UK, as a particular example of PDs in general, to explore the process of theorisation. Drawing on Bernstein, it shows how supervision, and wider programme design, are mediated by the increasingly managerial context of doctoral study. The study raises questions about the ways in which students and supervisors engage with both methodology and theory/theorisation in working together and subsequent implications for the quality of doctoral work.

Research on international students' post-study plans centres on factors influencing migration and career decisions. However, few studies have considered the impacts of individual institutions on students' aspirations and their subsequent transitions after graduation. In this paper, I employ the notion of institutional habitus in order to explore the extent to which higher education institutions expand or limit the range of options that international students could envisage or realise. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 55 non-EU international postgraduate students from three different UK universities, this study aims to uncover the complex diversity that underpins ostensibly similar UK higher education degrees. Notwithstanding the overlapping influences of individual, family, friends and institution, I argue that individual institutions play a significant role in shaping the ways in which participants imagine and experience the field of possibilities after graduation. This perspective also enables a more detailed examination of differences between and within the institutions.

International scholars have argued that parental engagement in education is influenced by social class inequalities. Goffman's definition of stigma has been applied to interpret working-class mothers' experiences of stigma when attempting to engage in their children's education. However, this paper also draws on recent extensions of 'stigma' -- by considering how and by whom the concept is developed in practice. Selective case studies have been used to illustrate how some working-class mothers feel judged negatively by teachers and the school system, based on their marginalised (and sometimes multiple) social identities. Perceptions of stigma were recalled by parents, who felt this negatively impacted upon their engagement in their children's education. They expressed feelings of powerlessness and in some cases internalisation of stigmatised traits. Recommendations to inform engagement strategies for schools to enable a more inclusive educational experience are made and areas for future research identified.

There is on-going debate about whether mainstream education is desirable for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD). Whilst some hold that 'inclusion' is a human right, and that interaction with mainstream peers leads to socio-cognitive gains, others argue that profoundly disabled learners require developmental curricular provided by special schools. Despite such claims, there is little evidence to support either view. This paper contributes to the debate by presenting research that examined how mainstream schools and special schools, across nursery, primary, and secondary settings, provided alternative social spaces for children with PMLD. It applies a Lefebvrian lens to illuminate how social engagement depended on the extent to which prescribed practices ('abstract spaces') dominated the interaction ('spatial practices'), and the conditions which allowed novel forms of engagement to emerge ('lived spaces'). Novel forms of engagement correlated with positive social development. The conclusion challenges the 'mainstream-special' binary presupposed in inclusion debates.

This paper draws on the theory of Basil Bernstein and on more recent applications of it by Rob Moore, John Beck and Michael Young to respond to recent calls for the replacement of discipline-based university faculties and departments with "problem-based" curricula and programmes of study. It considers, particularly, the potential consequences of such a shift in higher education policy for the identities of university teachers, researchers and students, and suggests that these calls for reform are premised especially on the problematic assumption that, in Bernsteinian terms, "regionalised" curricular inputs can be expected to produce "generic" knowledge outcomes within the university. (Contains 10 notes.)

High-stakes, standardized testing has become the central tool for educational reform and regulation in many industrialized nations in the world, and it has been implemented with particular intensity in the United States and the United Kingdom. Drawing on research on high-stakes testing and its effect on classroom practice and pedagogic discourse in the United States, the present paper applies Bernstein's concept of the pedagogic device to explain how high-stakes tests operate as a relay in the reproduction of dominant social relations in education. This analysis finds that high-stakes tests, through the structuring of knowledge, actively select and regulate student identities, and thus contribute to the selection and regulation of students' educational success.

In "British Journal of Sociology of Education" Volume 29 number 3, 2008, Connolly presented what he termed a "critical review" of some of our previous work on the relative attainment of male and female students in UK schools. He proposed three general areas for criticism--our use of attainment gaps, our consideration of outcomes other than at specific thresholds, and our querying of the idea of student "underachievement". These problems, he claimed, have "given rise to a number of misleading conclusions that have questionable implications for practice". However, those of his "criticisms" with any merit are actually the same as our own conclusions, transmuted by Connolly from our papers that he cites, while his remaining "criticisms" are based on faulty elementary logic. In case readers have not read our work and were somehow misled by Connolly, we give here a brief reply to each criticism in turn. This matters, because a greater understanding of patterns of attainment and of the nature of underachievement is a precursor to the design of successful initiatives to overcome inequalities in educational opportunity and reward. This is both a practical and an ethical issue. (Contains 1 figure.)

In this paper Gewirtz and Cribb offer a response to Hammersley and Abraham's criticisms of their arguments about the place of values in social research published in this issue of BJSE. In doing so, they make clear that most of the positions that Hammersley and Abraham attribute to them are ones that they do not identify with and that, like Hammersley and Abraham, they would reject. In order to further clarify and specify their own position, Gewirtz and Cribb argue that: their advocacy of ethical reflexivity rests on the assumption that there are many incompatible sets of values in play within even a single vantage point; researchers should sometimes take an interest in knowledge use although they should not always be required to do so; and, whilst at the level of propositions it is always possible to abstract out and distinguish between factual claims and value claims, at the level of practice there can be significant resonances and linkages between the two, so it is important to be ethically reflexive about these entanglements. Finally, the authors agree that values should not be seen purely as a source of contamination but that attention to values can help to underpin "objectivity". (Contains 2 notes.)

This paper argues that the recent debate about plagiarism has taken on aspects of a moral panic, which reflects underlying anxieties about the state of higher education in the United Kingdom. In contrast to the moral absolutism of some commentators, we argue for the significance of posing the phenomenological question of "what is plagiarism in its appearing?" We present a detailed idiographic analysis of two cases taken from a wider study of staff perceptions of plagiarism looking at the multiple meanings of plagiarism in the life-world of individual staff. Our approach does not entail judgemental relativism; rather, it involves a proper recognition of the limitations of rule-bound approaches to complex ethical matters. We argue for a virtues-based approach to plagiarism, which recognises complexity, and for a more measured and collegial debate.

In this paper we provide a framework for conceptualising transitions from Vocational Education and Training (VET) programmes to Higher Education (HE), by bringing together Bourdieu's and Bernstein's theoretical approaches with the view to attend to the often side-lined epistemic and pedagogical parameters. We utilise the Bourdieusian tools of field, habitus and capital to capture the relational, material and cultural aspects of HE transitions. In using a Bernsteinian lens we shed further light into how social agents acquire differentially structured and valorised knowledges and develop a sense of themselves as hierarchically positioned knowers. The metaphor of transitional frictions is utilised to capture the ongoing struggles that students with a VET background experience as they make the transition to HE. We argue for the need of widening epistemic access and putting in place enabling pedagogies that can ease these "transitional frictions," thereby potentially increasing the chances of successful HE participation and completion.

The author reflects on continuities and changes in the subdiscipline, using Mary Douglas and Basil Bernstein. In 2000 the millennial issue of "Sociology," the generic journal of the British Sociological Association, included a paper about the sociology of education called 'The anomalous beasts: Hooligans and the sociology of education'. It focused on hooligans as anomalous beasts in the sociology of education, and the sub-discipline as an anomalous beast within the discipline of sociology itself. It concluded with, very poor, predictions about the likely state of sociology of education and UK sociology in 2025. The fortieth anniversary of "BJSE" is a good time to revisit that millennial evaluation in order to offer a new sociologically informed re-evaluation of the field in 2020, set an agenda to highlight some of the current weaknesses in the sub-discipline and update the analysis of the uneasy relationship with the wider discipline of Sociology itself.

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.

The data for this paper are drawn from a qualitative research project involving a number of alternative education sites in Australia and the United Kingdom. In this paper, we focus only on the motives and teaching philosophies of a sample of teachers who have chosen to work in alternative education sites despite, for some, the prospect of uncertain employment conditions and lower salaries. A thematic approach is used with the data so as to structure participant perspectives on a range of teaching-related issues. We argue that the experiences and perceptions of these teachers provide a starting point for reflection about the impact of many current educational policies that have been shaped or influenced by market-driven neo-liberal paradigms emphasising disciplinary accountabilities for teachers.

This article provides a brief rejoinder to Gorard and Smith's reply to an article I published in a previous issue of British Journal of Sociology of Education. In that original article I provided a critical review of their quantitative research on gender and education in the United Kingdom. In their reply to this article, Gorard and Smith seem to agree with many of the points I made. However, they appear to be particularly perplexed by why I had written this review given that they feel they have already addressed most of my points elsewhere. In this brief rejoinder I explain very clearly my motivations for writing my original article and refer readers to a more detailed and comprehensive paper where I have responded fully to each and every point raised by Gorard and Smith.

Higher education (HE) is often viewed as a conduit for social mobility through which working-class students can secure improved life-chances. However, the link between HE and social mobility is largely viewed as unproblematic. Little research has explored the possible impact of academic failure (in HE) on the trajectories of working-class students or the ways in which working-class students may re-construct their career aspirations as a result of such academic failure. This paper seeks to fill this apparent gap by focusing on a group of non-traditional students enrolled on a BA undergraduate programme in a post-1992 university. Utilising Bourdieu's notion of habitus, the paper identifies how academic failure contributes to possible trajectory interruptions and whether these are temporary or possibly permanent. It specifically focuses on how working-class students interpret and respond to their academic failure and the possible impact this has on their social mobility.

This paper draws on qualitative data exploring the experiences of first-generation middle-class Black Caribbean-heritage parents, their own parents, and their children. We focus on the different ways in which race and class intersect in shaping attitudes towards education and subsequent educational practices. We argue that the nature of racism has changed, but it still remains, mainly in more subtle, insidious forms. We conclude that race cannot be simply "added on" to class. Race changes how class works, how it is experienced, and the subjectivities available to individuals. The paper illustrates how the two intersect, in complex ways, in different historical "moments".

This article presents the authors' review of "Globalizing education, educating the local: how method made us mad," by Ian Stronach. In the opening chapter of their highly influential 1997 book "Education Research Undone: The Postmodern Embrace," Ian Stronach and Maggie MacLure draw upon the work of Derrida to argue for practices within which openings are recognised as dependent upon closures and "vice versa". In other words, rather than working within the binary logic of either-or, educational researchers could work with a deconstructive sensibility wherein there is a narrative space of meaning-making for the reader as well as the writer of research. In "Education Research Undone," the text at times reflexively plays at its own textuality in a somewhat maddening way. Stronach continues this knowing writerliness in "Globalizing Education, Educating the Local." He is writing as if the text is performative and there is a narrative space for meaning-making by the reader. There is also an interest in how this space is enacted. But he is also definitively arguing that method has made one mad, writing about the world, telling individuals what is going on. The authors argue that Stronach is capable of displaying the ways in which his own arguments can then be turned against his own writing.

Higher education is commonly described as offering combinations of work and leisure, but the implied relationship is often limited. Different conceptions of leisure, especially leisure as pleasurable experience, raise new possibilities for seeing academic activity itself as leisure in several important senses. The importance of identifying pleasure as a necessary component of work and politics is discussed. Several more specific approaches to try to understand such pleasures are reviewed: Cultural Studies approaches, the work of Bourdieu on taste, and some recent work in the Sociology of Leisure.

This paper considers the psychic and social dynamics reported by student teachers when learning to embody their teacher persona in the secondary school environment. Focusing on gender dimensions of embodiment and drawing on qualitative interview data from a UK study of postgraduate teacher-training students, teaching is examined as a physical experience. The paper conceptualises findings under two related headings: the appropriately gendered body, signified by heteronormative readings of gender and sexuality; and the gendered authoritative body, conceptualised as male. The "teacher body" emerges as an important element of student teachers' stories of trying to fit with the new professional environment and the paper concludes by arguing for a consideration of gender and body politics in the practice and training of teachers, thus challenging the assumption that professional occupations are essentially "disembodied" and gender neutral.

This paper examines whether women and men publish journal articles at a level comparable with their representation within the social sciences. The paper also explores sex differences in patterns of single authorship and co-authorship. To do so, demographic data of the UK social sciences is compared with a sample of UK-authored journal articles. The findings of the study show that, overall, female academics contribute to a lower proportion of journal articles than the proportion of academic staff that they constitute. However, within certain disciplines (social policy and psychology) women publish articles at a level comparable with the proportion of the discipline that they constitute. These findings, it is argued, can be helpfully understood as both cause and consequence of the gendered academy. (Contains 8 tables and 1 figure.)

This paper explores some of the unresolved tensions in higher education systems and the contradiction between widening participation and the consolidation of social position. It shows how concepts of capital derived from Bourdieu, Coleman and Putnam provide a powerful basis for critique, but risk a deficit view of students from less privileged backgrounds. These students are more likely to attend lower-status institutions and engage with an externally focused curriculum. The paper argues for greater attention to agency, and community and familial capital, in conceptualising the resilience of those from less privileged backgrounds. While the recognition of "voice" is important, a curriculum that acknowledges the context independence of knowledge is essential if these students are not to be further disadvantaged.

This paper is about mothering an intellectually disabled child identified with special educational needs. It specifically looks at the parent partnership rhetoric that has dominated UK government policy and directives for nearly three decades and yet research suggests parents and more often mothers have to battle to be recognised as legitimate experts. This paper engages with sociological analysis as it highlights via qualitative narratives that mothers are weighed down by the sheer number of professionals involved in their day-to-day life. Moreover, mothers whose children are not identified in the early years are often blamed in the first instance for playing a part in their child's difficult behaviour. This research ultimately suggests that partnership work is important and necessary for practice within health, education and social work professions, not least of all because the emotional roller-coaster that mothers experience during the assessment and statementing process is disabling.

This article considers some of the ways in which the transformative power of Web 2.0 digital technology is reconfiguring learning, knowledge and academic identities in the contemporary university. Through a focus on five specific examples, we consider the impact of virtualization processes on spatiality, materiality and embodiment, and pedagogic relations. We argue for the benefits of taking a microsociological approach in order to reflect on the potential of virtualization to bring about new geographies of knowledge production and as a means to identify the ways in which potential transformations are uneven, problematic and contested. (Contains 2 notes.)

This paper focuses on formative assessment in the field of higher education. It examines Bernstein's work on vertical discourses and knowledge structures with the view to deepening understanding of the concept of assessment "for" learning. The first part of the paper draws on Vygotsky's work on concept development and Bernstein's work on knowledge structures to explain why "generalisation" and "hierarchy" are central in knowledge acquisition. It then explores Bernstein's claim that, within the vertical discourse, different knowledge structures (hierarchical and horizontal) afford greater or lesser visibility of their epistemic structure, and thus of their evaluation criteria of what counts as a legitimate text. The second part of the paper investigates the ways epistemic expectations are signalled through the practice of evaluation to first-year university students in a professional education course and proposes that markers do not offer students stuffiest access to recognition rules necessary for producing legitimate texts in the future. Drawing on Maton's distinction between semantic gravity and semantic density, the paper offers an example of how markers could recast what is present in students' work to offer students access to key ordering principles in vertical discourses. (Contains 2 tables and 18 notes.)

Contemporary art is a popular feature of the cultural landscape in the United Kingdom, and recent research has recommended introducing its practices into state education. Yet these practices are still rare in schools, and this paper argues that the many difficulties that arise from attempts to introduce them are indicative of their socially contingent character, which threatens to disrupt the ideological underpinnings of orthodox school practices. The school art projects "Room 13" and "Teaching through contemporary art" are used as prominent examples of contemporary art practices that support a relatively high degree of learner autonomy within state education, yet are situated outside of government initiatives. Through these projects the paper explores the dilemmas that the participants face, which include questions of learner agency, choice and creative risk, and the effects of regulatory assessment systems upon collaboration, experiment, play and ephemeral learning outcomes. The paper concludes by examining the possibilities of encouraging these more "risky" contemporary practices in schools. (Contains 2 figures and 1 note.)

This paper examines the effect of school social class composition on pupil learner identities in British primary schools. In the current British education system, high-stakes testing has a pervasive effect on the pedagogical relationship between teachers and pupils. The data in this paper, from ethnographic research in a working-class school and a middle-class school, indicate that the effect of the "testing culture" is much greater in the working-class school. Using Bernsteinian theory and the concept of the "ideal pupil", it is shown that these pupils' learner identities are more passive and dominated by issues of discipline and behaviour rather than academic performance, in contrast to those in the middle-class school. While this study includes only two schools, it indicates a potentially significant issue for neo-liberal education policy where education is marketised and characterised by high-stakes testing, and schools are polarised in terms of social class. (Contains 3 notes.)

The present paper explores the conceptual limitations of the bully discourses that ground UK anti-bullying policy frameworks and psychological research literatures on school bullying, suggesting they largely ignore gender, (hetero)sexuality and the social, cultural and subjective dynamics of conflict and aggression among teen-aged girls. To explore the limitations of bully discourses in practice, the paper draws on a pilot, interview-based study of girls' experiences of aggression and bullying, illustrating how friendships and conflicts among the girls are thoroughly heterosexualized, en-cultured and classed. Drawing on girls and parent interview narratives, I also trace some of the effects of bully discourses set in motion in schools to intervene into conflicts among girls. I suggest these practices miss the complexity of the dynamics at play among girls and also neglect the power relations of parenting, ethnicity, class and school choice, which can inform how, why and when bullying discourses are mobilized. (Contains 9 notes.)

This article is a reply to Gewirtz and Cribb's argument for ethical reflexivity, presented in a previous issue of this journal. These authors compared their views with mine, suggesting a way in which the differences between our positions could be overcome. I argue that, while there is certainly substantial agreement, there are also some fundamental differences between us, notably about the goal of research. Indeed, in my view, what they recommend involves a greatly increased danger of bias and a version of scientism. At issue here is, in large part, the "kind" of ethical reflexivity that is appropriate in sociological work. (Contains 8 notes.)

The title of this article comes from the editorial written for this journal by Olive Banks, Len Barton, Roger Dale, David Hargreaves, Roland Meighan, Ivan Reid and Graham Vulliamy (Banks et al. 1980, 4) that appeared in its first issue, and set out its remit. The seven scholars who wrote that editorial pledged to "publish high quality work of any theoretical orientation." Three major themes are addressed in this paper: Olive Banks's contribution to sociology of education up to 1973; the fate of her work after 1973; and her work as a case study of the troubled relationship between sociology of education and sociology itself. Two important works by Olive Banks form the core of the paper. Banks and Finlayson (1973) "Success and Failure in the Secondary School," and her textbook "The Sociology of Education" (Banks 1968, 1971, 1976). Banks (1955) Parity and Prestige in English Secondary Education is the subject of another paper in this volume (Edwards, 2008, this issue): a recognition that it is her most important work. Before focusing on the three themes used to structure the paper, there is a brief contextual section.

At a time when "personal development planning" is being rolled out across the UK higher education sector, this paper explores young adults' inclinations to plan for the future in relation to work, relationships and other aspects of life. Although Giddens has emphasised the prevalence of strategic life planning (or the "colonisation of the future") in all strata of contemporary society, du Bois Reymond has argued that there are important differences by social class, with young people from more privileged backgrounds more likely than their peers to engage in such life-planning activities. This paper draws on interviews with 90 young adults (in their mid-20s) to question some of these assumptions about relationships between social location and propensity to plan for the future. It shows how, within this sample at least, there was a strong association between having had a privileged "learning career" (such as attending a high-status university and identifying as an "academic high flier") and a "disinclination" to form detailed plans for the future. In part, this appeared to be related to a strong sense of ontological security and the confidence to resist what Giddens terms "an increasingly dominant temporal outlook." (Contains 2 tables.)

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. (Contains 2 notes.) [The research on which this paper is based was funded by the Society for Research in Higher Education.]

This paper provides a comparative account of two conceptualisations of pleasure. The first draws on Foucault's analysis of bio-power. The second provides a phenomenological account where pleasure is viewed as an aspect of our immediate consciousness. These conceptualisations are illuminated through an analysis of employees' accounts of learning at work. Overall, the paper demonstrates how, in a Foucauldian analysis, pleasure disappears as it becomes a cipher for power whereas within the phenomenological account pleasure is foregrounded but power disappears. The concluding section focuses on the problems of both conceptualisations and explores whether we should simply accept that different analytical frameworks do different work for us or whether we should be more concerned at the losses, and gains, associated with theoretical choices. The conclusion further asks whether a concern to foreground pleasure in accounts of learning represents an antidote to the pessimism of much critical analysis or whether we should treat pleasure as a morally duplicitous category that encourages political apathy.

Government support for the production and consumption of educational software is now a key element of New Labour's education technology drive. At present much attention is being directed towards marketing "digital learning" to an educational sector traditionally wary of technological innovation. In an effort to understand the social shaping of this current phase of policy-making, the present paper examines the political and commercial discourses surrounding digital learning and associated initiatives such as "Curriculum Online" and the "Digital Curriculum." After analysing a range of political and commercial texts produced from 2000 to 2005, the paper explores the dominant themes emerging from these discursive constructions--considering in particular the limitations of the often ambiguous yet structured ways in which digital learning is being shaped by its key actors. (Contains 2 tables and 4 figures.)

Although Boudons distinction between primary and secondary effects, and its associated rational action models of inequality of educational opportunity, have been more influential in the field of social stratification and mobility than in the sociology of education, there is good reason to reconsider the theoretical and practical implications of this approach. The investigation brings conceptual analysis and empirical research to bear on Boudons arguments in a manner that may be somewhat unorthodox. The theoretical arguments are developed in the context of a detailed empirical investigation of three transitions--age 10 to O-level, O-level to A-level, and A-level to degree--using the extensive 1970 British Cohort Study. It is concluded that primary and secondary effects should be recognised as methodological rather than theoretical concepts, that the techniques used to identify them are independent of rational action theory and that, contrary to an influential position, the evidence suggests that primary effects are more important than secondary effects in the generation of social disparities in access to education. (Contains 3 tables.)

The Department for Education and Skills currently shows a high regard for the potential of technology transforming the British education system. Government White papers demonstrate e-learning based unification strategies that reinforce the message that introducing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will raise standards in schools. This paper examines the effect of these developments on teachers and pupils, and questions the government's motivation for change. The introduction of ICT has not been complemented by increased levels of effective professional development for teaching staff in the pedagogy of ICT across the curriculum and may have merely served to reinforce the generational digital divide. In attempting to enchant the pupils, the government may have alienated the teachers. This paper suggests that the Department for Education and Skills should place more emphasis on developing strategies and providing funding for solutions to gaps in the professional development of teachers in their pedagogical understanding of ICT across the curriculum.