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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]

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 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]

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]

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]

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]