A sociology ‘of’ or a sociology ‘for’ education? The New Zealand experience of the dilemma

The sociology of education in New Zealand, as in other countries, is affected by the dilemma inherent to the discipline, namely: is it a sociology of education or a sociology for education? In this article I analyse three factors in which the dilemma is played out: ‘cultural oppositionism’ in the indigenous (kaupapa Maori) approach, critical policy research and the role of empirical research. I argue that a sociology for education is fundamentally weakened by its politicisation, a flaw not helped by the difficulties in drawing political goals from moral imperatives. In contrast a sociology of education, which uses the strengths of empirical research and theoretical analysis, offers the better hope of renewal for, what is, in New Zealand, a moribund discipline.     

Crafting Legitimate Identities: Promotional Strategies in the Ontario Non-Elite Private School Sector

Conventional wisdom within the sociology of education and organizations posits that schools achieve legitimacy by conforming to institutionalized norms and mimicking the actions of successful peers. Recent work on non-elite private schools (NEPS) shows that this institutional type may serve as an exception to this logic, generally adopting what can be perceived as illegitimate forms and practices. We conduct a mixed-methods analysis of the promotional profiles of 204 NEPS located within Ontario, Canada. We ask: How does this unorthodox organizational population carve a space for itself within a fiercely competitive and centuries-old market? Our findings illustrate that these schools engage in niche-seeking behavior, specifically catering to changing parental preferences for a caring consumer ethos with more holistic forms of child development. More broadly, they employ rhetorical strategies (e.g., fostering confidence and global-mindedness) that render their efficiency beyond the scope of verification by potential consumers. We interpret these empirical findings through the lens of contemporary theorizing within organizational sociology.     

The one-in-ten: quantitative Critical Race Theory and the education of the ‘new (white) oppressed’

ABSTRACT

This paper challenges the notion that quantitative data – as a numeric truth – exist independent of a nation’s political and racial landscape. Utilising large-scale national attainment data, the analysis challenges the belief that ‘White working class’ children in England, especially boys, are ‘the new oppressed’ – as a former equality adviser has publicly claimed. The analysis applies Quantitative Critical Race Theory, or ‘QuantCrit’, an emerging quantitative sub-field of Critical Race Theory in education. The paper argues that far from being ‘oppressed’, White boys continue to enjoy achievement advantages over numerous minoritised groups; especially their peers of Black Caribbean ethnic origin. Additionally, the analysis uniquely exposes racialised trends of ‘equivalency’ in core subject qualifications, whereby minority ethnic children are over-represented in certain lower-status qualifications that are counted as equivalent in education statistics but not in the real world labour market. The analysis concludes that knowing misrepresentations of quantitative data are at the heart of an institutional process through which race and racism are produced, legitimised and perpetuated in education.     

Reading the Word and Reading the World: The Impact of a Critical Pedagogical Approach to the Teaching of Criminology in Higher Education

Critical pedagogical approaches are underpinned by the principal that education is an inherently political process which should be concerned with enabling students to be reflective, independent, and critical thinkers. In this paper we argue that facilitating the development of a critical consciousness is an integral part of the teaching of critical criminology in higher education. We contend that it is essential if students are to recognize the broader social and political contexts of their own, and others’, lived experiences and thus be able to challenge political oppressions and domain ideologies. By drawing on a pilot study conducted with final‐year undergraduates from a university in the north west of England, the paper will demonstrate how a critical education (critical in terms of subject content, and teaching practice) can better enable students to develop both academically and, as importantly, with regard to their personal, social, and political consciousness.     

Moving beyond Mozert: Toward a democratic theory of education

Most liberal political theorists of education argue that it is better to teach students to tolerate diversity, than to protect the potentially illiberal commitments of some members of the political communities. In fact, neither approach is wholly satisfying, yet they remain the focus of much political theorizing about education. This article suggests that this misguided focus is, in part, a consequence of a focus, by liberal political theorists of education, upon the 1987 Mozert v. Hawkins court case. Mozert raised serious questions about the nature of toleration in liberal society, but from an educational standpoint, the Mozert case led political theorists to consider what curricular content is appropriate for liberal political education, rather than on the practices that democratic citizens must cultivate. I turn to Hannah Arendt to offer a critical account of the liberal responses to Mozert and then call for a theory of democratic education that fosters practices of democratic decision-making and has, as its aim, not merely to foster respect for diversity, but to allow future citizens to practice critical engagement with diversity.     

Is politics the problem and markets the answer? An essay review of Politics, Markets, and America's Schools

Politics, Markets, and America's Schools is an ambitious book that draws eclectically on concepts from political science, the sociology of organizations and educational learning theory. Chubb and Moe employ an extensive array of data seeking to link the mechanisms that control school operations to student achievement. They conclude that a total restructuring of the governance system of American education — from democratic to market control — is necessary. Our review scrutinizes a set of critical decisions made by Chubb and Moe in defining their key concepts and in the analytical models employed in this research. We argue that many of these decisions are not justified on either theoretical or methodological grounds. Moreover, the cumulative effect of the decision tends to tilt the empirical evidence toward supporting the authors' a priori beliefs. As a result, we conclude that Politics, Markets, and America's Schools is best viewed as a policy argument, where extensive, but not always solid empirical evidence has been artfully employed to advance the authors' preconceived notions about American schooling.     

On the utility of Asian critical (AsianCrit) theory in the field of education

Abstract

Despite the powerful influence of race and racism on the experiences and outcomes of Asian Americans in US education, coherent conceptual frameworks specifically focused on delineating how White supremacy shapes the lives of this population are difficult to find. The AsianCrit framework, grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the experiences and voices of Asian Americans, can begin filling this gap. In this article, we review an AsianCrit framework and examine Asian American issues in education through seven AsianCrit tenets to demonstrate their utility in the analysis of and advocacy for Asian Americans in U.S. education. We end by discussing implications of how AsianCrit can provide a framework to guide future research, policy and practice, as well as a foundation for discourse around the racialized experiences of Asians Americans and other racially marginalized groups in education.     

The Emotionality of Whiteness in Physical Education Teacher Education

ABSTRACT

The physical education teacher education (PETE) pipeline makes it clear to historically racially minoritized pre-service teachers the value of White norms and experiences while simultaneously “othering” their cultural knowledge. Using Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, and emotionality as theoretical frameworks, this visual narrative inquiry explored self-identified Black and Latinx pre-service physical education teachers’ (n = 10) stories of a racialized identity within predominantly White PETE programs as well as the emotionality of whiteness for myself as a White researcher and teacher educator. I utilized narrative-based semi-structured and conversational interviews, along with photo-elicitation, as methods of data collection. The results contrast participants’ experiences of normalized racism with my heightened emotions of shock and dismay, shedding light on my own white emotionality toward racism. The critical examination of the emotions of whiteness demonstrated the potential to lead PETE faculty toward deeper reflection as to how whiteness is upheld, but also how they might further work to de-center whiteness within their pedagogies, curricula, and programs.     

教育社会学中的新制度学派:基于问题史的研究

本文批判性地总结了1970年代以来美国教育社会学界兴起的新制度学派的发展轨迹,新制度学派提出三个基本的理论命题:(1)现代教育是伴随世俗个人主义而出现的一种独特的社会实体,本质上是一种制度神话和理性仪式;(2)教育组织是松散联接的系统;(3)现代教育的效果主要是对人和知识进行合法化分类。在对经典社会学家韦伯和涂尔干的继承上,新制度学派与美国当时盛行的结构功能理论和冲突论有明显的差异,认为现代教育不是维持地方国家或者特殊阶层需要的地域性事业,而是超越民族-国家和特殊群体利益的世界性制度。新制度学派对教育社会学的贡献,不只是对教育组织和教育效果的深度理论分析,而且其对教育扩张和课程内容的经验研究已经成为当代教育社会学中一个重要的学术传统,在问题意识上有其独特的价值。在借鉴新制度理论时,必须坚持中国经验本位,避免简单地套用和比附新制度理论,应解释和揭示中国教育经验内隐的深层机制,以中国经验丰富和发展新制度理论。     

Student engagement and inclusive education: reframing student engagement

Engagement, or student engagement, is widely used in educational research and public discourse to refer to the problem of public education. The underlying ontological and epistemological assumptions buoying engagement are rarely, if ever, addressed by educational researchers. The ‘silent omission’ (Sidorkin 2014. “On the Theoretical Limits of Education.” In Making a Difference in Theory: The Theory Question in Education and the Education Question in Theory, edited by Julie Allan Gert Biesta and Richard Edwards, 121–137. New York: Routledge) of engagement’s metaphysics has implications for inclusive education. This paper finds that despite being employed with good intent, engagement operates in a paradigm of normativity. In a gesture of bifocality (Weis and Fine 2012. “Critical Bifocality and Circuits of Privilege: Expanding Critical Ethnographic Theory and Design.” Harvard Educational Review 82 (2): 173–201), I critique engagement discourse and its historical context to find that it reproduces a longstanding tradition of psychologising public problems (Fine and Cross 2015. “Critical Race, Psychology and Social Policy: Refusing Damage, Cataloguing Oppression, and Documenting Desire.” In Contextualizing the Costs of Racism, edited by A. Alvarez and H. Neville. Washington, DC: APA Publications), thereby displacing conversations about what may be the most influential issue of public education: social and economic inequality. A reframing of engagement as [student/teacher] engagement is proposed. Highlighted in the reframing is the educational relationship and the context in which it is nested. Mitigated is the pathologising and exclusionary effect of engagement discourse which operates within a dialectic of normal/engaged // ab/normal/disengaged.     

A Latina mother on TV: challenges of intragroup advocacy for equity in a Latinx community

Abstract

This article analyzes a ‘critical race moment’ in an ethnographic study to examine intragroup advocacy in a diverse Latinx community. In this moment, a Spanish-language TV newscast used an image of the first author and her young son to report on local Latinx leaders’ advocacy to address disparities impacting the broader Latinx community. Informed by Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical Race Theory, and Chicana Feminist Epistemology, this paper employs a unique analytical approach of unpacking a ‘critical race moment’ to examine the intragroup representative messages used by leaders. While their advocacy efforts led to investments in educational programming, Latinx leaders at times employed deficit ideologies about low-income, Spanish-speaking, immigrant Latinx families as they spoke to policymakers. Findings reveal the potential political binds Latinx leaders may encounter when they seek to advocate and speak for (rather than with) other Latinx community members in White dominant policy spaces.     

The Race for Class: Reflections on a Critical Raceclass Theory of Education

This article is intended to appraise the insights gained from Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Education. It is particularly interested in CRT's relationship with Marxist discourse, which falls under two questions. One, how does CRT understand Marxist concepts, such as capital, which show up in the way CRT appropriates them? The article argues that Marxist concepts, such as historical classes, class-for-itself, are useful for race analysis as it sets parameters around the conceptual use of historical races and a race-for-itself. Two, how does CRT understand the role of capitalism, therefore shedding light on its position regarding the class problem? It is no doubt attentive to class power, but this is not the same as performing an immanent critique of capitalism. As a result, within CRT class achieves a color whereby class becomes a variant of race, better known as classism. Race becomes the theory with class vocabulary superimposed on it. Last, I suggest areas where CRT could combine with Marxism in order to forge a Critical Raceclass Theory of Education.     

Anxieties of Democracy and Education: Naoko Saito's American Philosophy in Translation

The article is an essay on Naoko Saito's recently published book American Philosophy in Translation. We attempt to draw out the central argument of the book as it moves through its eight chapters. The author finds that American philosophy, which she takes to be rooted in pragmatism, whilst it owes much to Dewey, needs to be reconstructed in order to meet contemporary political challenges, with their implications for political education. She asks questions such as what is the place of the tragic sense of life in philosophical thought? What is a philosophy of affirmation and chance? How are we to understand the significance of the untranslatable? What are these connections between transcendence, translation and transformation? More specifically, how are we to understand the distinction between philosophy in translation and philosophy as translation? And how does all this offer us new ways of thinking about the current state of democracy, political education and education more generally? One specific suggestion is that an education in foreign language can be transformative in terms of political education. The article concludes that Saito's project throws up some important ideas that are pertinent to our times. We question the central idea regarding language education, whilst we welcome this scholarly volume.     

Thinking about Theorizing in Professional Development

This article describes two female beginning teachers from the same teacher education cohort. The two women had many experiences in common, but thought about these experiences quite differently. The article focuses on how their conceptions of students and of themselves as teachers changed over a 5-year period, and explores some of the interactions between their theorizing and their experiences. It also raises issues for teacher educators to consider.     

Preparing engineers for social responsibility

In this paper I introduce the contributions to a special section of the journal: one devoted to the question of how engineering curricula can or should contribute to the preparation of graduates for socially responsible decision making and conduct. The special section is motivated by the circumstance that, although there is broad agreement that engineering education has a role in preparing its graduates for social responsibility, there is a considerable lack of clarity as to how graduates should be prepared for social responsibility, and what this entails for the engineering curricula. Bucciarelli and Conlon both provide reasons why, in order to prepare graduates adequately for social responsibility, considerations of the organisational, social, legal and political context in which engineers operate need to be included in the teaching. Conlon, in addition, explores the possible contributions that the field of sociology can make to this teaching. Heikkerö focuses on the attitudes that are required for socially responsible professional practice and that should be taught in engineering education. Didier and Huet present the results of a survey on how the issue of corporate social responsibility is being discussed and taught in engineering education in France. Both Börsen and Zandvoort et al. report on courses that they teach, and which are aimed at preparing students for ethical and social responsibility.     

The Innovative Educational Thought of Jane Roland Martin: A Review Essay

D. G. Mulcahy highlights some of Jane Roland Martin's major contributions to the field of philosophy of education in this review essay. He focuses on several of Martin's better‐known works — including Reclaiming a Conversation, The Schoolhome, Changing the Educational Landscape, Coming of Age in Academe, Educational Metamorphoses, and School Was Our Life — tracing through them the development of her reconceptualization of the idea of a liberal education from the early1980s to the present day. Viewing Martin's contribution from the perspective of liberal education, he contends, underscores the optimistic spirit of her work as well as its originality and significance for the theory of education as a whole. Mulcahy gives particular attention to these elements of Martin's thought: the importance she attributes to educating the young for active participation in the world and not mere observation of it; her analysis of the range and complexity of our cultural wealth; her concept of a gender‐sensitive education; and her emphasis on the unique contribution of the experience of women to education. Martin's substantial body of work, Mulcahy concludes, stands as a compelling alternative to mainstream educational theorizing, one that offers hope for the potential of educational renewal.     

Teacher agency in the Canadian context: linking the how and the what

Even though there is no common conceptual basis guiding teacher education in Canada, over the past two decades teacher educators both in Canada and around the world have called for teacher candidates to become agents of change. While researchers across Canada strive to demonstrate how to prepare pre- and in-service teachers to be agents of change, few scholars have examined in detail what teacher agency might mean in the Canadian context. This paper reviews the conceptualisation of agency from five theoretical perspectives (psychology, sociology, critical theory, historical studies, and post-structuralism) and examines how empirical studies in the Canadian contexts align with these perspectives. This paper makes explicit the connections between the how and the what of agency, and as such informs current approaches to preparing pre- and in-service teachers and their potential role as agents of change, and maps out how the notion of agency is taken up in a particular jurisdiction.     

“I Just Love Black People!”: Love,Pleasure, and Critical Pedagogy in Urban Teacher Education

With concern to critical pedagogy, the concept of love is fairly frequently (ab)used, yet under-theorized. In this exploratory study, I ask: How does a critical pedagogy of love—or critical pedagogical love—look, sound, and feel? Regarding feeling, how does a critical pedagogue engage the sensations of pleasure attendant to love? Lastly, how does the pedagogue invite love and pleasure into the pain-filled field of urban teacher education? Using Black feminist theorizing of love as an analytic filter, I investigate a university-based urban teacher educator’s navigation of the nexus of love, pleasure, and critical (specifically, antiracist) pedagogy. Extrapolating from the resultant narrative portrait, I consider the affordances of a critical pedagogy of love that accesses embodied pleasure, emphasizing how such a pedagogy might present racially marginalized persons—particularly urban teacher educators of Color—with opportunities for reprieve from the suffering that characterizes many of our experiences with/in teacher education.

     

Identifying Dysfunctional Education Ecologies: A DisCrit Analysis of Bias in the Classroom

In this critical theoretical conceptualization situated in Disability Critical Race Theory (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013), we identify the current education system as a series of dysfunctional education ecologies. We next analyze how dysfunctional education ecologies are maintained through implicit bias, consider how these biases may impact classroom interactions, and reframe bias as dysconscious racism (King, 1991). Finally, we explore how school personnel can use transformative praxis (Freire, 1970) to actively dismantle these dysfunctional education ecologies through a shift in both their epistemological and axiological commitments to develop functional ecologies of learning by enacting a DisCrit Classroom Ecology.