The Sociology of Education
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The sociology of education A Gary Dworkin, Jeanne Ballantine, Ari Antikainen, Maria Ligia Barbosa, David Konstantinovskiy, Lawrence J Saha, Shaheeda Essack, Jason Chang, Marios Vryonides and António Teodoro Research Committee 04 abstract Because education is an essential institution in society, the sociology of education must focus on an array of salient social issues, many with vital policy implications. Following a discussion of the var - ious theoretical orientations and methods used by sociologists of education, this article, which was writ - ten by members of the Board of the Sociology of Education Research Committee (RC04), examines a selection of these significant and emerging issues. keywords education ◆ globalization ◆ educational accountability ◆ lifelong learning ◆ peer groups ◆ teachers Sociology of education makes contributions to the cation also derives its conceptual and theoretical roots understanding of an important institution present in from the contributions of Marx and Weber. Marx laid every society – education. In the following article down the foundations for conflict theory and later members of the Board of the ISA Sociology of conflict theorists have explored the ideological role of Education Research Committee, RC04, explore the state in education as it reproduces and maintains aspects of the field including theory, methods, emerg - class statuses. Weber developed a multidimensional ing issues, stratification, inequalities in developing approach in which structure, human agency, the countries, politics of education and multiculturalism, material and the normative were combined. educational assessment and accountability, peer group Building on this early foundation, several more effects, school-to-work transitions, adult and lifelong recent directions have emerged. Among structural learning, teacher supply, demand, status and morale, conflict theories, Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) theory of and social control. Attention is also paid to emerging practice, Basil Bernstein’s (1996) theory of language issues in the sociology of education. codes and Randall Collins’s (1979) Weberian theory of social exclusion have had a major impact on con - temporary sociology of education. According to Theory in the sociology of education Bourdieu’s (1984) theory of praxis, the social world consists of the history of accumulation. Education as As a major contributor to the field of sociology and to a part of social and cultural reproduction is linked to the testing of established theories, sociology of educa - cultural capital (capital based on students’ social set - tion plays a vital role in the continuing development tings and opportunities that provide knowledge of the of sociology. Émile Durkheim is generally considered world derived from live experiences) and subsequent to be the founder of the sociology of education, hav - social differences between students. Similarly, in ing provided a sociological conceptualization of edu - Bernstein’s ‘code theory’ (1975) he explores the per - cation as a system that transmits society’s culture and formance of working-class students and argues that social order to new generations. The sociology of edu - socialization is based on class. The dominant school Sociopedia.isa © 2013 The Author(s) © 2013 ISA (Editorial Arrangement of Sociopedia.isa ) A Gary Dworkin et al., 2013, ‘The sociology of education’, Sociopedia.isa , DOI: 10.1177/2056846013122 1 Dworkin et al. Sociology of education pedagogy, in addition to language and culture, repro - Methods in the sociology of education duces social differences between classes. In Coleman’s (1988) view, in the formation of human Researchers in the sociology of education have capital, social capital based on trust and community always used a variety of methods in the study of edu - (e.g. school’s relationship with students’ families and cational organizations and processes. From the communities) plays a central role. Social capital beginning, the standard ‘methods of the day’ charac - refers to the social resources and family networks stu - terized educational research. Both qualitative and dents bring to their educations that affect their quantitative research strategies prevailed, and often opportunities and achievement. The study of such the two were mixed. This is what we find in early material and symbolic resources in relation to educa - studies such as Hollingshead’s Elmstown’s Youth tion has enriched our understanding of differences in (Hollingshead, 1948) and Coleman’s Adolescent educational opportunities. At the same time, it has Society (Coleman, 1961), in the United States; opened up opportunities to affect such differences Hargreaves’s Social Relations in a Secondary School through educational policies. (Hargreaves, 1967) and Ford’s Social Class and the Symbolic interactionism and social construction - Comprehensive School (Ford, 1969) in the United ism have been major sources of action theories in the Kingdom; Connell et al.’s Growing up in an sociology of education, particularly in their focus on Australian City: A Study of Adolescents in Sydney interaction (Ballantine and Spade, 2014; Woods, (Connell et al., 1959); and even Bourdieu and 1983). According to Vygotsky’s sociocultural Passeron’s Les Héritiers: les étudiants et la culture approach to cognition, learning is dependent on the (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1964) in France. Similar interaction between the learner and the social envi - studies can be found in other countries. All of these ronment, and this includes peers, as well as parents studies are based on standard methods used by soci - and teachers. From oppositional culture theory, ologists at the time, namely questionnaire surveys, Demanet and Van Houtte (2011) add to the analysis interviews, sociometric maps and observation as of interaction by discussing misconduct in schools sources of data. and the causes of feelings of futility in students in During this period sociologists of education and out of their school environments. Also con - knew that the study of schools, and the students tributing to theory at the interaction level, within them, was more complex than the methods Mickelson discusses gender differences in interaction which were available to study them. Because stu - in classrooms for boys and girls and how these differ - dents are nested in classrooms, and classrooms in ences affect their experiences (Mickelson, 2012). schools, and schools within other boundaries, such Modern and postmodern theories have emerged as school districts or countries, there was recognition on all continents. In Chinese and especially in of the possibility of what was called ‘contextual Taiwanese sociology, the hidden curriculum and ide - effects’, but there were no efficient methods through ology are familiar concepts, and scholars have which these effects could be studied. reviewed almost all relevant theories, including fem - By the end of the 1960s, new statistical tech - inism, postmodernism, Weberian theories, repro - niques began to be developed which opened up the duction theories, resistance theories, critical theories, possibility of both investigating the contextual dramaturgical theories, structural theory, eth - effects of nested data, and also for the simultaneous nomethodology, and so on (Chang and Renjie, analysis of larger numbers of variables (Blau and 2003). In Latin America, political sociology of edu - Duncan, 1967). The development of multivariate cation, influenced by the Brazilian Paulo Freire, is causal models by Sewell and his colleagues, which the major field. Freire (1921–97) – ‘the best known came to be known as the ‘Wisconsin model’ (Sewell educator of our time’ (Gerhardt, 1993: 439) – et al., 1969), opened up a new methodological era, believed education was a political, not a neutral not only in sociology of education, but for sociology process. He has influenced research and policies in as a whole. literacy acquisition, education as liberation and The last several decades have seen the expansion transformative adult education, and educational of statistical techniques, especially driven by the inequality (see especially Freire, 2008 [1970]). unique demands of the analysis of educational data. School systems reflect an eclectic mixture of philo - These techniques, such as PLSPath and LISREL sophical and pedagogical ideas such as pedagogical (both developed in Sweden) and HLM (developed in positivism, spiritualism, humanism, normalism and the United States), have been described in Saha and human capital theories, and these also influence the - Keeves (2003) and Keeves and Darmawan (2009). ory and research (Torres, 2003). The first two techniques made it possible to create latent variables from measured variables in the same causal model, thus advancing the use of path models 2 Dworkin et al. Sociology of education such as the Wisconsin model. The latter technique, research projects have an indirect influence on hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), was a radical national education policies and also because of the breakthrough in allowing researchers to take into relationship established between international organ - account the nesting of data to two or three levels. izations and the formulation of these policies. In this It would be incorrect to assume that all advances sense, the center of educational governance remains made in research methods have been in the quantita - largely under state control, although it is possible to tive domain. During this recent period, qualitative identify new