Reputation in the sociology of education

The present paper raises questions about the use of the concept of reputation in sociological studies of the relationship between higher education and the labour market. Sociologists of education have yet to subject the concept of reputation to sustained critique and evaluation. This situation is unsatisfactory because a number of critical scholars claim that graduates earn a premium as a consequence of attending an elite institution for no reason other than the institution has such a reputation. However, research generally does not provide unequivocal support for such an effect and neither is the source of this effect clearly theorised or identified. One result of this lack of clarity is confusion over what is driving the formation of reputation. This paper advances field theory as a way of developing a sociology of reputation.     

中国教育社会学的发端——一种知识社会学的视角

中国教育社会学学科产生于上个世纪20年代,但是未得到应有的重视。学科发展有自身学术逻辑,学科的反省是必要的。从知识社会学视角来回顾这段学科发展历史,就会发现除却社会、学术的独特背景之外,参与主体的特质以及其产生的历史作用也得以突显。从教育社会学产生的运命、译介与中国化并行的研究特点、研究者群体所具有的多元知识视野与丰富教育实践的特质、教育社会学发端的开拓与奠基之功分析新生伊始的中国教育社会学,以期对当今教育学学科的发展提供反思的参照。     

网络教育的教育社会学批判

网络教育已经发展成为一种崭新的教育形态,而教育公平则是教育社会学不断探究的核心主题。从教育社会学的角度考量网络教育中存在的种种教育失衡问题,有助于网络教育的健康发展。     

Harem education and heterotopic imagination

Education can cease to be a showcase for political projects and start serving women’s lives only when the agency of women in their own education is acknowledged. In this paper I have addressed issues concerning harem education to emphasise that possible solutions to issues of girls’ education require an awareness concerning the history of girls’ education in different geographies. In this article, this agency is pursued in the homosocial production of knowledge in the harem, which is an exoticised space. Questioning the limitations and benefits of the concept of the harem is especially important in understanding processes such as the accommodation of public practices of education in women’s homes. Using Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, the harem is contextualised to shed light upon its liberating and dominating aspects, as a sphere where public and private practices of education converge.     

Doing time in the sociology of education

Abstract

This article is both an editorial introduction for this special issue and a distinctive contribution in its own right. The article seeks to extend a dynamic and multiple conception of time to the sociology of education to think beyond the clock time associated with modernity and industrialisation. This need is illustrated through an account and critique of E.P. Thompson’s canonical account of clock time. The article argues that this construction of clock time implicitly frames most work in the sociology of education. The concept of ‘timespace’ offers a way to go beyond both clock time and the current ‘spatial turn’ in the sociology of education that prioritises space over time. It is shown how computerisation also ushers in a new temporality, which works simultaneously with clock time and perhaps presages the move from a disciplinary to control society. The article accepts that there are multiple and dynamic temporalities and correlatively supports a working together of historical and sociological imaginations towards a sociology of education that acknowledges and works with multiple temporalities, empirically, methodologically, theoretically and in research writing.     

Anomalous beasts and the sociology of education

Abstract

The author reflects on continuities and changes in the subdiscipline, using Mary Douglas and Basil Bernstein. In 2000 the millennial issue of Sociology, the generic journal of the British Sociological Association, included a paper about the sociology of education called ‘The anomalous beasts: Hooligans and the sociology of education’. It focused on hooligans as anomalous beasts in the sociology of education, and the sub-discipline as an anomalous beast within the discipline of sociology itself. It concluded with, very poor, predictions about the likely state of sociology of education and UK sociology in 2025. The fortieth anniversary of BJSE is a good time to revisit that millennial evaluation in order to offer a new sociologically informed re-evaluation of the field in 2020, set an agenda to highlight some of the current weaknesses in the sub-discipline and update the analysis of the uneasy relationship with the wider discipline of Sociology itself.     

The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and researching education policy

Bourdieu did not write anything explicitly about education policy. Despite this neglect, we agree with van Zanten that his theoretical concepts and methodological approaches can contribute to researching and understanding education policy in the context of globalisation and the economising of it. In applying Bourdieu’s theory and methodology to research in education policy, we focus on developing his work to understand what we call ‘cross‐field effects’ and for exploring the emergence of a ‘global education policy field’. These concepts are derived from some of our recent research concerning globalisation and mediatisation of education policy. The paper considers three separate issues. The first deals with Bourdieu’s primary ‘thinking tools’, namely practice, habitus, capitals and fields and their application to policy studies. The second and third sections consider two additions to Bourdieu’s thinking tools, as a way to reconceptualise the functioning of policy if considered as a social field. More specifically, the second section develops an argument around cross‐field effects, as a way to group together, research and describe policy effects. The third section develops an argument about an emergent global education policy field, and considers ways that such a field affects national education policy fields.     

谈职业教育社会学学科体系的构建

本通过对我国职业教育理论与实际问题的分析与透视,梳理了近20年来我国职业教育发展的历程和基础,提出建立职业教育社会学,用社会的观点和方法解决职业教育问题的路径。并对职业教育社会学学科体系构建的理论基础、现实条件、研究对象、理论体系等进行了分析。这不仅是对社会学理论的丰富和发展,而且是职业教育理论研究与实践探索的创新和拓展。     

Performance,culture and the sociology of education

The article takes as its starting point my recent ethnography of the Welsh National Opera Company, and the forthcoming monograph Everyday Arias: making opera work. In the course of that work I revisited the theme of performance: the ethnography of performance and the performance of ethnography. I discuss briefly the everyday work of the opera producer and director in the rehearsal studio and in the theatre. I suggest that despite the pervasive nature of 'performance' in contemporary sociology and anthropology, we have remarkably few studies of performances themselves. Performances by directors and performers are complex interactions, in which cultural forms, vocabularies of motive, emotional and cognitive frames of interpretation are explored by the participants. The director displays many parallels with the pedagogue. Both are preoccupied with eliciting and evaluating the performances of others. More generally, we ought to expand the sociology of education to take greater account of a wide range of cultural settings. Sociologists of education could learn much about instruction and learning by paying more attention to masterclasses in music and the visual arts, the work of cultural entrepreneurs such as impresarios, artistic education such as choir schools and conservatoires, and similar environments. Furthermore, the sociology of education could and should benefit from a more thorough engagement with contemporary sociologies of art and culture. While the sociology of culture has become central to many aspects of current sociological research and theorising, the sociology of education seems oddly peripheral to mainstream cultural analysis. It is surely not necessary to identify the sociology of education in narrowly institutional terms and to restrict the research gaze primarily to institutions and settings that are narrowly and commonsensically 'educational' in nature.     

Bioscience and the sociology of education: the case for biosocial education

This article makes a case for biosocial education as a field of research and as a potential framework for education practice. The article engages with sociology of education’s contemporary interests in embodiment and affect, the possibilities offered by concept studies, and uses of assemblage and complexity theory for thinking about educational phenomena. It also considers broader social science and political theory engagements with epigenetics and neuroscience. The article examines the legacy of the biology/sociology split and the risks, limits, and potentialities of degrounded collaborative trans-disciplinary biosocial research. It considers developments in biosciences that may have particular resonance and promise for education, in particular the epigenetics of care and stress and the metabolomics of diet. The article argues that sociology of education should engage with bioscience to interrogate the folding together of the social, cultural, biographical, pedagogic, political, affective, neurological, and biological in the interactive production of students and learning.     

Response to the sociology of education award

These remarks originally appeared inSociology of Education (the official newsletter of the American Sociological Association's Section on Sociology and Education), Autumn 1988.     

我国教育社会学研究的回顾与前瞻

我国教育社会学自恢复以来,经过20余年的发展,形成了两种理论框架(注重体系和问题取向)及两种理论视角(社会学和教育学),具有了初步的学科自我意识。但总的说来,目前中国教育社会学研究似乎进入了"高原期",有待新的提升与突破。     

澳大利亚职业教育社会伙伴关系对我国职业教育发展的启示

社会伙伴关系是澳大利亚职业教育领域常采用的一种合作关系,其分为法定社会伙伴关系、社区伙伴关系、协商型伙伴关系。澳大利亚职业教育社会伙伴关系为我国职业教育的发展提供了很好的借鉴经验。