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This paper explores the entanglement of humanism and posthumanism within the Western European University, focusing on ethical implications and the role of the university in protecting the marginali...

Over three decades ago (in a paper published in this Journal), Brown discerned the emergence of a ‘parentocracy’, in which a child’s education is ‘increasingly dependent upon the wealth and wishes ...

A recent review essay of three books on effective schooling stated that the literature on school effectiveness largely adopts a functionalist view of society and schooling and the field of inquiry is dominated by a positivist paradigm. The review argued for a sociological analysis of effective schooling. This paper examines from a sociological perspective the nature of effective schooling. The paper draws on case studies of four high schools to analyse their relationship with the social, cultural and policy dimensions of their context. A major focus of the paper is on the dilemmas, tensions and issues arising from the interrelationship between each school and its context, and the implications of these for an understanding of effective practices in schools.

This paper reviews and critiques significant developments within contemporary ethnography. The first part of the paper traces the antecedents of ethnography in an anthropology which was itself closely identified and entwined with colonialism and imperialism. The paper then goes on to review contemporary developments within ethnography, particularly those associated with postmodernism. Attempts to establish a critical ethnography are reviewed and critiqued in the following section. The paper then goes on to suggest ways in which the concepts of ‘really useful knowledge’ and the processes of action research might be combined in order to assist in the construction of critical ethnography. The paper concludes by acknowledging the difficulties which exist for educational researchers and practitioners who wish to practice critical ethnography in the current educational climate in both Britain and North America.

This paper reports on an investigation into central features of institutional schooling that, collectively, constitute the ‘symbolic architecture’ of education. In particular, this paper provides an analysis of the practices associated with school uniform, badges and mottoes, drawn from a sample of over 500 schools in the state of Queensland, Australia. The analysis reveals a large degree of uniformity in the meaning content of these school icons, derived from a common core of educational values established during the formative decades of universal school but resting on older heraldic principles. The authors contend that the propagation of these values within the iconic discourse of schooling constitute a significant ideological practice that focuses a pupil's consciousness towards social norms and further reifies the institutional character of education. These processes are not ‐straightforward but are often contested in instances where pupils recreate mottoes in ways which mock the values that are conse...

This paper is presented in two parts. The first part explores the methodological and epistemological implications of working as a black, female researcher studying issues of social justice and equality in a faculty of education. It is argued that many of those researching social issues and motivated by the desire to facilitate change are faced with an apparent contradiction between a commitment to producing objective, value free research and their commitment to equality and justice. This apparent contradiction haunts them in their negotiations with gate keepers, research funders, employers, the academic community and with policy makers and other practitioners. It is argued that the contradiction is indeed only apparent and that it is based on mistaken notions of ‘objectivity’ and ‘universal values’. I argue that as ‘committed’ researchers we need to move beyond such false contradictions while at the same time accepting a dual role, of empowerment and critical engagement. In part two of the paper, it is su...

The past decade has witnessed the publication of a growing number of important ethnographic studies investigating the schooling experiences of Black students. Their focus has largely been upon student‐teacher relations during the students’ last few years of compulsory education. What they have highlighted is the complexity of racism and the varied nature of Black students’ experiences of schooling. By drawing upon data from a year‐long ethnographic study of an inner‐city, multi‐ethnic primary school, this paper aims to compliment these studies in two ways. Firstly the paper will broaden the focus to examine how student peer‐group relations play an integral role, within the context of student—teacher relations, in shaping many Black students’ schooling experiences. By focussing on African/ Caribbean infant boys, it will be shown how student—teacher relations on the one hand, and peer‐group relations on the other, form a continuous feed‐back loop; the products of each tending to exacerbate and inflate the o...

Twenty‐seven years of uninterrupted democratic government in Botswana have produced political stability and an economic boom in the 1980s. The economic boom is gradually ebbing away and the democracy is showing signs of weakening in the early 1990s. In this paper I argue that the reason why democracy is under threat is because the evolution of democracy at the macro‐level has not been matched by a concomitant development of democracy at micro levels—in institutions such as schools, colleges, the university and in civil society. In order to sustain this young democracy for future posterity, it is critical that democracy be developed and cherished by all state institutions and civil society at large. In arguing that democracy is relevant for analysing teacher education management in Botswana, the paper sets out to investigate whether this principle of democracy is being translated into the management policies and practices of teacher education institutions on the ground.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dilemmas posed by the analysis of working class issues in education by professional sociologists. There are two central themes in the paper. First it suggests that the inequalities experienced in the education system by working class people has been colonised by middle class academics for their own professional purposes. This colonisation has been greatly facilitated by the nature of the scholastic context itself. To globalise one's point of view in academic writing requires both freedom from the urgency and necessity of survival, and intellectual legitimacy. Working class people lack both. The paper also suggests that working class people occupy a struturally contradictory role in relation to education: on the one hand, social mobility generally requires that they be well educated. Yet if they are to succeed in the education system they have to abandon certain features of their class background. They cease to be working class at least to some degree. O...

The paper begins with a brief reference of some of the inaccuracies in accounts of the so called ‘Honeyford affair’. The main purpose of the paper, however, is not to compare differing accounts, but rather to examine aspects of Honejford's discourse in its own terms. These aspects include his notion of ‘racism’, his concern with ‘tolerance and coherence’ and his account of what he refers to as ‘the human character’.

This paper outlines the difficulties in conceptualising and presenting research, in particular doctoral work in education, in the current climate of intellectual theorising. It argues that many researchers experience a phenomenon described in the paper as ‘post‐modernist tension’ when trying to write in an atmosphere of theoretical and methodological uncertainty. The author elaborates the ‘symptoms’ of post‐modernist tension, and makes a critique of some elements of contemporary social theorising. Nevertheless, the author acknowledges the usefulness of contemporary social theory in challenging traditional research, despite its density and inaccessibility to many researchers

The market alternative in education is gaining ground in policy‐making circles on both sides of the Atlantic. Parental choice and school competition are seen as ways of achieving reform and raising standards while at the same time reducing State intervention into education planning. This paper interrogates the arguments made for markets and against public monopoly schooling; and it is argued that on both counts the claims of advocates are partial and flawed. The failure to address the bases and effects of inequalities of the market are given particular attention. It is argued that markets in education provide the possibility for the pursuit of class advantage and generate a differentiated and stratified system of schooling. 1I am indebted to my colleagues Sharon Gewirtz, Richard Bowe and Alan Cribb, and Barry Troyna, Manfred Weiss and two referees for their contributions to the arguments in this paper. The paper also benefited from ongoing discussions with Richard Bowe and Sharon Gewirtz related to two re...

This paper explores some of the relationships between the understanding of gender equity and gender issues in education held by academic staff in an institute of higher education, and their views on the importance of incorporating gender into the curriculum. The paper discusses findings pertaining to how academics approach gender issues in their teaching in their relationships with students and with other members of staff. In so doing the question is raised—what messages are trainee teachers receiving about gender issues? The findings also discuss some of the pedagogical implications arising from the absence of theoretical perspectives or orientations in relation to gender in preservice teacher education.

The paper considers the status of autobiographical interview data in life history and biographical research. Interviews tend to be treated, it is suggested, as ‘sacred’ texts‐‐as contemplative and authoritative versions that are as free as possible from the biasses and desires that ordinarily animate (and ‘contaminate') personal stories and anecdotes. It is argued here that, on the contrary, interview accounts are as mundane and pragmatic as any other kind of self‐talk. People use identity for practical ends‐‐to make sense of their conduct, to establish allegiances, to justify moral positions and defend educational ideals. The paper ends by examining a fragment from an interview. Using concepts from discourse and conversation analysis it shows how a teacher, Karen, constructs a particular professional identity and thus engages in an act of mundane autobiography.

This paper is centrally concerned with criticism of inter‐racial contact as a means of improving race relations. It aims, amongst other things, to highlight the damaging implications of the criticism on practices hitherto thought useful in combating racial prejudice. The main focus of the paper is the charge that a reduction in prejudice towards individual members of a group does not transfer to the group as a whole. It is argued that whilst there is much evidence to support this charge, the acquisition of positive attitudes towards an entire racial or ethnic group is not an aim that educationalists should seek to realise. In the light of this objection, an alternative view of the purpose of inter‐racial contact is proposed such that the value of contact be judged in terms of whether it helps diminish the tendency to indulge in unsupported generalisations. To promote this goal it is urged that wherever practicable, inter‐racial contact, under specified conditions, should form part of a programme that emph...

This paper seeks to draw attention to the extent to which liberatory pedagogical intentions can function as part of a technology of surveillance unless, as socially critical educators, we actively work against our own tendency to totalising educational discourse. It notes a number of folkloric traditions in pre‐service teacher education that derive from discursive practices which position students either as inevitably acting out a well‐documented scenario or as ‘victims’ of the dominant technocratic model of teacher education. This paper suggests a way forward for teacher educators through the application of post‐positivist theorising to what has come to be understood as ‘proven’ by past and current educational research. This process is exemplified in the discussion by the application of post‐structuralist deconstructive techniques to avant garde educational text in order to bring forward for scrutiny the binary oppositions in our own ‘transformative’ educational discourse. The implications of ‘a...

This paper reports evidence from an ethnographic study of two primary schools in a large town in Northern France. The schools are located in markedly different socio‐economic settings. One is in an affluent area near the centre while the other is situated on a run down municipal housing estate on the outskirts in an officially designated educational priority zone. Despite their widely divergent social situations the two schools are strikingly similar and can be seen to be providing homogeneous educational experience for two socially heterogeneous populations. In the second half of the paper the notion of ‘national context’ is explored and its usefulness as an explanatory theoretical concept for analysing this educational homogeneity is suggested.

Japan's teacher internship was a hotly debated political issue for three decades until the legislature finally approved its implementation in 1988. The aim of this paper is to explore how the culture of teaching mediated the implementation of the government‐sponsored teacher internship. The data presented in this paper come from ethnographic research conducted in 1989 with a focus on three elementary public schools in Tokyo. Our findings suggest that the culture of teaching measurably influenced the administration of internship in the first year. As a result, internship became ineffective if measured by the Government's expectations. This paper argues that the Government's reform, of teaching is bound to be ineffectual without classroom teachers’ active support for it.

This paper builds on Lingard's paper (1990a, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11, pp. 171‐188) analysing the present secondary school assessment system in Queensland by presenting comparable material for Victoria from 1856 to 1979. All Lingard's tools of analysis are used, but particular attention is paid to Offe's concept of “economic connections” and to operation‐alising it by the use of the financial accounts of examination boards. Only by employing such tools in the service of sociological theory will an approach be made to theories about assessment systems.

International scholars have argued that parental engagement in education is influenced by social class inequalities (Bourdieu, 1974; Reay, 1998). 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.

This paper explores the practices of division in operation in primary schools in England in response to the pressures of high stakes tests at age 10/11, known as SATs. Using data from interviews wi...

This paper compares and contrasts two separate pieces of research on surveying students and practitioners completed in 1980 and 1991, by Martin Joseph and myself respectively. This paper discusses the differences in the two approaches to the research topic, and the changes which have occurred in surveying education and practice over the last ten years, not least of which has been the growing numbers of women entering an erstwhile predominantly male profession. Emphasis is placed upon how women (as against men) experience the values of the subculture and the process of professional socialisation, and related to this women's place and role within surveying education and practice is discussed.

Broadly defined as teachers conferring and collaborating with other teachers, collegiality is becoming something of a new orthodoxy so far as educational policy makers are concerned. The implicit presumption behind such schemes as those of the ‘lead teacher’ programmes in the USA (and its derivatives in other countries) is that the team concept has the potential to unleash the kind of teacher creativity necessary to produce the kinds of educated labour required for economic recovery. This paper argues that this approach is flawed in that it takes scant account of teachers’ preparedness, or otherwise, to engage in the forms of contrivance and shallow participative pretence being suggested. Drawing on international literature the paper argues that as a policy option collegiality may appear to satisfy the requirement of accessing teachers’ knowledge and understanding, but it falls far short of being the effective mechanism touted in some quarters for educational and economic revitalisation.

Focusing on gender relations in a working class co‐educational school, this paper reports on the differences in power, status and control when male and female students interact with school‐based curricular processes. The research site provided an interesting arena for the empowerment of pupils, particularly female, through a negotiated school‐based curriculum fragment of the total school organisation. This paper aims to portray teacher/student negotiations in the context of classwork and classroom behaviour and the making of appropriate subject selections, a process which portrays an experimental interaction between students and the organisation and authority of the school. The research identified areas linked closely to emerging shifts in female student career options, as well as reflecting perspectives relevant to policy and theory development for the 1990s.

This paper examines the theory of critical sociology of education by probing it through the unique example of the education of the Druze in the Golan. This examination highlights the fact that even if the state culture is being contested, the state cannot simply dominate the conflicting culture. It also questions one of the major ideas of the corresponding principle and resistance theory, with respect to dominant vs subordinate relations. This paper points out that teacher resistance was usually overlooked. It was also found that a hegemonic curriculum which is based on a disputable foundation is not likely to achieve its goal. The concept of cultural capital has been found partly useful, but in regard to gender it fails to explain the situation.

This paper analyses sociologically the current form of school‐based secondary assessment in Queensland which is criterion‐referenced to Year 10 and a hybrid criterion/norm referenced form at the end of Year 12. Habermas’ arguments are used to suggest that this assessment pattern will give the state potentially greater ‘steering capacity’ over education by ‘rationalising’ it — the ‘scientisation of schooling’. This form of assessment fits within the accountability discourse of the economically parsimonious 1980s while meeting selection demands. However, the approach does meet some educational demands. The paper also reflects upon the role of the state and expert knowledge in policy formulation. *An earlier version of this paper was presented to the International Sociology of Education Conference, Westhill College, Birmingham, United Kingdom, 4th‐6th January, 1988.

In recent years something of a moral panic has been created by the popular press and other powerful voices, around and about the teaching of Physical Education in schools. Teachers have been variously blamed for undermining the country's economic welfare and/or its capacities to achieve success in sport in international arenas. This paper examines the origins of this debate and tries to locate it within broader critiques of educational practice which have featured in educational and political discourses in Britain in recent years. It also claims that individualism is alive and well in the New PE and that initiatives (such as Health Related Fitness and new forms of Games teaching) do little to challenge conventional social categories and status hierarchies (relating to race, class, ability and sex) which prevail both inside the classroom and outside school. At its heart the paper points to the processes by which particular sorts of knowledge are legitimated and defined as worthwhile, in this case ...

In this paper it will be argued that we are entering a ‘third wave’ in the socio‐historical development of British education and that similar trends are also evident in the USA, Australia and New Zealand. The ‘first wave’ can be characterised by the rise of mass schooling for the working classes in the late nineteenth century. The ‘second wave’ involved a shift from the provision of education based upon what Dewey called the “feudal dogma of social predestination” to one organised on the basis of individual merit and achievement. What is distinct about the ‘third wave’ is the move towards a system whereby the education a child receives must conform to the wealth and wishes of parents rather than the abilities and efforts of pupils. In other words, we have witnessed a shift away from the ‘ideology of meritocracy’ to what I will call the ‘ideology of parentocracy’. This paper will consider the evidence to support this conclusion and examine its sociological significance.

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. No one should be expected to say all the time, at the same time, everything that is to be said. (Karl Popper[2]) [1] An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Sociology of Education Conference, Newman College, Birmingham, 3‐5 January 1989. A number of colleagues, including Peter Aggleton, Paul Croll, Ian Menter and John Fitz, read and commented on the first draft of the paper. I am grateful for their time and advice. I am indebted, too, to the two anonymous referees who reviewed the paper when it was first submitted to t...

This paper seeks to further develop and refine a theory of the ways in which artefacts created by humans direct and deflect the attention of groups and individuals as they act in specific institutional settings. It draws on the writings of Basil Bernstein and Lev Vygotsky. These are two bodies of theory that have strengths which, to some extent, address the weaknesses of the other. It is argued that taken together they will provide a strong base for further extension and refinement in order to provide a coherent account which encapsulates the espoused but not yet fully realised ambitions of both theoretical traditions. A sociological focus on the rules which shape the social formation of discursive practice will be brought to bear on those aspects of psychology which argue that cultural artefacts, such as pedagogic discourse, both explicitly and implicitly mediate human thought and action.

It has been argued that a transnational elite class is emerging, and that elite schools are ‘choreographing’ this process. This article nuances this developing theoretical framework with empirical data from an economically elite boarding school in Switzerland. It demonstrates that young men and women at this site linked to a global economy whilst refracting geopolitical tensions in their interactions with one another. This draws our attention to the multi-sited understandings that elite young people develop, despite the widespread assumption that in modern globalisation, wealth can break down cultural and juridical borders. This paper thus importantly contributes to an emerging discussion about the possibilities and constraints of transnational class formation at elite schools. In particular, it suggests that different kinds of elite schools may fill different kinds of roles when it comes to such processes.

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 m...

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 ...

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...

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 th...

This paper makes a contribution to the developing field of the political economy of educational technology and to an understanding of the significance of digital technologies for home-school relations. The digitalisation of social life is increasing and the impact of digitalisation on home-school relations, parents, and children is under-researched. This article draws on a new qualitative study where fifteen mothers were interviewed about parenting a primary school aged child in England with a focus on digital technologies, home-school relations, and parenting. I argue that processes of digitalisation are contributing to a bureaucratisation of home-school relations. Drawing on Weber’s social theory, I argue that managing communications and information is taking precedence over other aspects of parental involvement in education. In this process, digital technologies are contributing to increasing demands for involvement in education that are placed on parents, reinforcing the wider norms of the intensification and professionalisation of parenting.

This paper examines how young people account for choosing mathematical subjects, and how these processes sustain, or not, their continued participation. It draws on a 2-year qualitative study of 24...

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 teache...

This paper explores the growing importance of measures of progress in judgements of schools’ effectiveness in England, with a focus on the role of the early years (settings for children aged 2–5) in providing data for these measures. Qualitative data from a research project involving three diverse school-based and pre-compulsory early years settings are used to explore how teachers and school leaders prioritise the collection of data in their every-day practice, in order to show how children make continual progress. The need for a narrative of progress as children move up through the primary school, an ‘Ofsted story’ for the school inspection service, is discussed alongside recent policy which requires a ‘baseline’ assessment at age four. We argue that there is a reification of progress in schools and early years settings, and that this changes the status of early years within the sector.

This paper argues that whereas the social relevance of attitudes towards education is commonly confined to their direct impact on educational aspirations or attainment, attitudes may also impact on educational success in a way similar to cultural capital. Survey data were used to assess the support for three different attitudes with respect to the perceived value of attending school among youngsters (n = 853) following secondary education in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). The results revealed substantial differences according to the pupils’ cultural capital, time perspective, personal educational experiences and social mobility. These findings are taken as a starting point for a broader discussion about how attention to attitudes may enable us to account for the power struggles in which the educational field and the teaching profession are involved.

As higher education institutions globally become increasingly performative, competitive and corporatised in response to neoliberal rationalities, the exigencies of higher education (HE) leadership are being realigned to accommodate its value system. This paper draws on recent British Council funded research, including thirty semi-structured interviews, to explore women's engagement with leadership in HE in South Asia. A potent affective economy was discovered. Leadership was associated with affects such as competitiveness, aggression, impropriety, stress and anxiety, in ways that were intensified by highly patriarchal and corporatised HE cultures. Indeed, its difficulties and toxicities meant that leadership was rejected or resisted as an object of desire by many women. We illuminate how different forms of competition contribute to the affective economy of higher education leadership. The research also raises wider questions about the possibilities of disrupting dominant neoliberal constructions of HE if those who question such values are excluded (or self exclude) from leadership positions.