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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]

Editorial. French sociologist and internationally renowned public intellectual Pierre Bourdieu died in 2002. He developed a remarkable capacity for critical social analysis and epistemic reflexivity. He also organized a network of progressive social scientists into the group "Raisons d'agir" and launched a publishing house of the same name to bring sociological analyses of contemporary civic issues to a broader public. Bourdieu also succeeded in developing a highly individual brand of sociology. His scholarship was a synthesis of philosophy, social anthropology and sociology underpinned by a passionate commitment to social justice. An acute interest in social inequality and the ways in which it is masked and perpetuated became an enduring contribution preoccupation that influenced his writings.

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'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended to place the other papers in this issue of the journal in a broader theoretical and political context. It considers some of the ways in which sociologists of education have approached the analysis of the curriculum and discusses the extent to which their work can be seen as a contribution to political struggles in and around the curriculum. It pays particular attention to the ways in which recent American and Australian work in this field has developed and to some of the criticisms that have been made of the political orientation of such work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that in recent years sociologists have neglected the processes of occupational socialisation of teaching, despite research interest in everyday life in other educational settings Shortcomings in the extant research on teacher socialisation and in the wider literature on professional socialisation are detailed to explain the lack of intellectual interest in teacher socialisation Finally, the paper offers some potential lines for the development of research on teacher socialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from the Scottish School Leavers Surveys to investigate trends in the transition from school at a time of deepening recession. The main change observed is the collapse of employment between 1979 and 1983. The paper also describes trends in the distribution of school-leaver employment, in its industrial and occupational composition, in patters of movement in the youth labour market and in the role of special programmes. Some of its general conclusions challenge ideas current among some British sociologists. First, youth unemployment (at least among recent school leavers) is no longer significantly connected with patterns of subemployment or frequent job-changing. Secondly, unemployment has not fundamentally changed the 'selective function' of education; credentials have retained their labour-market value in relative if not in absolute terms. Thirdly, the recent rise in school-leaver unemployment is very largely a result of the recession-the decline in the aggregate demand for labour-rather than of underlying structural changes that disadvantage young people; most recent changes in the transition from school to work are in principle reversible if the recession ends. The paper assesses the implications of these findings for the sociology of education, and concludes with a discussion of the possible impact of the Youth Training Scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of Ulrich Beck, particularly his concept of the 'individualised individual', is increasingly cited by educational social scientists. As yet, there have been few empirical investigations that consider how applicable and relevant is the notion of the 'individualised individual' in understanding how people make sense of their lives (for an exception, see Reay, 2003 ). This paper considers Beck's assertion that social class is of increasingly less importance as society shifts from a first to a second modernity. Interviews were carried out into the career experiences of a group of academic women working in higher education institutions. The conclusions reached suggest that if Beck's theory is to be useful in understanding contemporary actors in contemporary societies then the critical concepts he introduces need to be articulated by researchers in more complex ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes as its focus the concept of 'field', which has received relatively less attention than Bourdieu's other concepts such as 'cultural capital' and 'habitus' in the sociology of education. The development of the concept is outlined to present Bourdieu's understanding of higher education as a field consisting of cognitive and structural mechanisms that mediate sociopolitical and economic forces while simultaneously reproducing fundamental principles of social stratification. As an illustration of its widespread application, Bourdieu's framework is applied to develop an analytical understanding of institutional strategies developed by South African universities during a period of political instability. Drawing insights from the South African case study and Bourdieu's empirical research, the article concludes that Bourdieu's theory may be seen to have transcended more simplistic conceptions of universities as closed systems detached from the sociopolitical complex or as mere reflections of external power relations. However, the strict relational nature of Bourdieu's framework and his concept of the 'arbitrary' have placed limits on the extent to which his theory can offer a more in-depth account of the relationship between higher education and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South African sociologists of education are living through a momentous and highly particular transition at the same time as they participate in global trends and debates This paper reviews changes in their framing concerns as they move from an oppositional positionality to a far more ambiguous space that seems to require of them to choose between critique and reconstruction The resultant re-positioning and the changes forms of appropriation of international themes as local priorities shift is the central concerns of this review [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to encourage sociologists of the curriculum to contribute more both to curriculum policy advocacy and the curriculum development process. It concludes by suggesting four areas of curriculum policy research around which both sociologists of education and curriculum studies 'specialists' could unite and which would go some way towards meeting the demands of the National Curriculum at the level of policy analysis and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational selection has been a central issue for Structural Functionalist, Marxist and Interpretative sociologists of education While knowledge about selection processes within schools has increased over the past two decades, as a result of ethnographic studies of schooling, the social process of collective teacher decision making, when teachers are engaged in institutional channelling, has been largely neglected This paper explores collective teacher decision making at a point of allocation through the medium of a case study of setting in one 9-13 years middle school The paper argues that the discussion concerning the recent initiatives of educational selection embodied in modularisation, pupil assessment, common examinations and national testing should be informed by research of teacher interaction at points of allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I shall deal with some issues raised by a sociologist interested in music education, Graham Vulliamy I shall draw on four of his papers. There will be certain areas of agreement between us recognition of the importance of Afro-American music in our century and its dominance in the popular tradition, that forms of analysis through notation are particularly inappropriate to an oral-aural tradition, that all music is bounded by particular styles and traditions and occurs within a socio-cultural context. I shall briefly examine two minor points of difficulty--that Vulliamy, overstates the 'freedom' of improvised music and the rigidity of notated music and that he confuses discussion by conflating the views of Meyer and Langer. There are three major issues to which we need to address ourselves The first of these is the assumption that pop music can be legitimised in school merely by establishing that different criteria are necessary The second arises in the attempt to provide appropriate tools of analysis by arguing, with Shepherd, that music has a kind of social referent This proposition is stated in several ways In some forms the proposition is acceptable but in others it is problematic. The third issue involves problems concerning the expressive and formal elements of music and the uses to which music is put, which ma, range from a signal for action (or reaction) to a meaningful symbol (a much more complex and rich form of response) Using the terms 'intensional' and 'engendered feeling' as though they were synonymous and the terms 'extensional' and 'embodied meaning' as though they were the same, some confusion is created, yet there are implications for music education which are not only theoretically important but vital in practical terms of teaching and learning in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers Bourdieu's concepts of perspectivism and reflexivity, looking particularly at how he develops arguments about these in his recent work, The Weight of the World (1999) and Pascalian Meditations (2000b). We explicate Bourdieu's distinctive purposes and deployment of these terms and approaches, and discuss how this compares with related methodological and theoretical approaches currently found in social and feminist theory. We begin by considering three main ways in which 'reflexivity' is deployed in current sociological writing, distinguishing between reflexive sociology and a sociology of reflexivity. This is followed by a discussion of the main aspects of Bourdieu's approach to 'reflexive sociology' and its relation to his concepts of social field, perspectivism and spaces of point of view. He argues that we need to interrogate the idea of a single 'perspective' and account especially for the particularity and influence of the 'scholastic' point of view. He characterizes this latter point of view as unaware of its own historicity and as largely concerned with contemplation and with treating ideas primarily as abstractions ( Bourdieu, 2000b ). Bourdieu's intervention is to argue, as he has throughout his work, for a more reflexive account of one's location and habitus, and for sustained engagement with ideas and social issues as practical problems. Bourdieu exhorts researchers to work with 'multiple perspectives' ( Bourdieu et al. , 1999 , p. 3), the various competing 'spaces of points of view', without collapsing into subjectivism or relativism. We then consider recent feminist engagements with and critiques of Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity and chart some of the main points of contention regarding its relevance and conceptual potential for theorizing gender identities and transformations in current times. We conclude with a brief outline of how we are working with a reflexive sociological approach in a cross-generational study of young women in difficult circumstances, 'on the margins' of education and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to explicate and locate the concept of 'cultural capital' in terms of Pierre Bourdieu's more general theory of the forms of capital and their transubstantiations. It examines the manner in which the relationship between the economic field, and its relations of inequality and power, and the cultural field involves a process of systematic misrecognition on the basis of which the positions and relations of the cultural field come to be recognized as 'arbitrary'. In these terms, pedagogic action is defined as 'symbolic violence'. It is suggested that the relationship between 'objective probability structures' and cultural fields can be usefully approached through the 'dual aspect' theory of the philosopher, Benedict Spinoza. Finally, a tension is noted between the manner in which educational differences between classes are explained and the manner in which differences within classes are explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the methods of personal reflection and auto/biography to consider the ways in which global social and political transformations have influenced a key generation of feminist sociologists entering the academy and attempting to introduce feminist knowledge and pedagogy into academic curricula. Three critical events on or around 22 November are used to highlight key political moments, the associated development of changing themes in forms of analysis of social transformations, and the part played by feminism and sociology within higher education. They are the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963, the Israeli–Arab war in 1973 and the resignation of Margaret Thatcher in 1990. The argument is that there has been a clear relation between changing social and political contexts and methodological understandings, which have drawn on developing feminist perspectives and reflexive sociological analysis, especially as embraced within the sociology of education. In particular, the shift from a political and professional perspective on social change and family life towards one that engages with personal issues is noteworthy. It is one of the hallmarks of both feminist notions associated with reflexivity and developing sociological methodologies and policy sociology. Thus, the personal and the political are now central methodological forms of feminist and sociological analysis within education and, especially, the sociology of education, influencing pedagogy within higher education, especially associated with developments in professional postgraduate education. I weave my personal reflections on my professional developments through an analysis of the key moments related to specific policy regimes and changing forms of understandings within the fields of policy sociology and sociology of education. I conclude with current concerns about the balances between the personal and professional within educational research and policy sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marxist sociology of education has been criticized in recent papers by Hickox and Hargreaves. It is argued that these writers largely misunderstand and misrepresent the work they criticize Hickox attributes a position to Marxist sociologists of education which few, if any, now hold Hargreaves makes a more powerful case, but is insufficiently familiar with Marxist scholarship to grasp the nature of the Marxist project. [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. In this paper I examine one such government intervention and show 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. I argue 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contrasts the use of ethnographic research procedures in the study of schools in Great Britain and the U.S. It also reflects on differences between the anthropology and the sociology of education. In the course of this exploration the authors also hope to draw together much of the literature from the respective countries and disciplinary fields. There is an obvious and striking difference between British and U.S. school ethnography. Whereas the U.S. research on schools and classrooms has been conducted primarily by applied anthropologists, that in Great Britain has been done overwhelmingly by researchers who see themselves as sociologists. It is noticeable that several researchers working as sociologists were trained as anthropologists or began work in anthropology departments. Where British research has looked to North America it has been to U.S. sociology in genera--especially symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology. The article also attempts to establish that the Atlantic really does divide school ethnographers into differing traditions. It establishes the truth of the authors' claim that school and classroom ethnography in the U.S. and Canada is predominantly anthropological in orientation, while that in Great Britain is more sociological.

This article constitutes a short personal tribute to Len Barton in honour of his work and our collegial relationship going back over 30 years. It covers how Len saw his intellectual project of providing critical sociological and political perspectives on special education, disability and inclusion, and his own radical political perspectives. Len's challenges to prevailing notions of individual deficiencies of intellect, and disability as a personal misfortune, are noted, as is his profound influence on practitioners, activists, students and academics worldwide. It concludes that his goal of challenging and unsettling conventional 'ways of knowing' has had wide and lasting influence and that it is imperative to understand what moral, economic and political judgements lie behind decisions to separate, segregate and exclude young people from mainstream education and their fellow citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the concept of habitus given by sociologist P. Bourdieu that appears to have little to offer educational research. This proposition is considered in a critical evaluation of the origin of habitus in Bourdieu's work and its ability to fulfill its theoretical functions. Sociologist J. Tooley and D. Darby are not the first to have reached the conclusion the Bourdieu's approach of sociology and particularly the concept of habitus has little to offer educational research. They are not so much concerned with Bourdieu as with the value of his concepts for educational research, and their critique is directed specifically to sociologist D. Reay's work on habitus in the classroom. Tooley and Darby's view that the substantive weakness they identified are due to an "uncritical adulation" of Bourdieu and, more generally, to demonstrate the worthlessness of their approach as a means to reach their substantive conclusion. On the basis of Reay's account of habitus, Tooley and Darby included their study as an instance of the poor-quality educational research they believe to be caused by the willingness of many academics to attach themselves to the coal-tails of some major theorist.

This article discusses issues on the sociology of education in the Netherlands as of 1982. Like in most European countries and in the U.S., sociologists in the Netherlands have only recently shown a systematic and empirical concern with matters of education and socialization in general. In fact it was only after 1950 that the first few research projects were done and it was 1964 before the Dutch sociologists officially began to show interest in the subject when the Netherlands Sociological Society held a conference devoted to the basic problems of the sociology of education. Most of the teaching and research work in the sociology of education has taken place in the university departments of sociology and definitely not in institutes and colleges of education. More and more, the academic study of education is being built upon a few basic disciplines. In the country, there is a movement towards more or less interdisciplinary departments of education in which sociologists of education participate from their own sociological departments. In the Netherlands, a considerable part of the sociological research in the field of education is carried out in institutes which were specifically founded for that purpose. Dutch sociologists of education have organized themselves quite firmly to create favorable conditions for the development of their discipline. Four fields or subjects which cover most of the Dutch activities in the field of sociology of education, both in terms of theory and research. These are: social inequality in education, education and economy labor market and qualification, the school as an institution and educational policy.

This article discusses the sociology of education. According to the author, most of the present generation of sociologists of education in Britain commenced their study of the discipline at a time when it was informed by a major consideration of the inequalities of social class. Sociologists and theologists share the gospel that the poor will always be with them, together with a reality of changing situations and definitions and with varying levels of interest and involvement. Some would argue that the cutting edge of the discipline has consequently been dulled, and that the more macro political dimensions of the analysis of education and society have been put aside in favour of smaller practical research questions. At the same time, interest in inequality in education can be seen to have both broadened and deepened. The analysis of social class relations in education has been challenged and extended by research on gender and race relations and policy makers have developed an interest in formulating equal opportunity or equality policies in education in these areas. Sociological analyses of education have in the last decade encompassed many more aspects of schooling. Within an era of economic recession and dominance of monetarist values, ideologies so much part of the educational consensus, such as the concept of equal opportunity, have been reframed and pushed to one side.