Learning to consume—consuming to learn: children at the interface between consumption and education

The market as educator has become firmly lodged at the centre of popular and scholarly debate commenting on the nexus between children, consumption and education/learning. In this paper, I appreciate this scholarly debate from the point of view of the sociology of consumption. The latter has been relatively silent on children’s consumption and education, focusing instead on adult learning. Nevertheless, I here draw on that sociology to forward an argument that favours consideration of a broader range of social relationships and cultural and contextual influences. I outline two models on the network of relationships that inform children’s consumption, and illustrate, through a discussion of Chin’s Purchasing Power, how children’s consumption‐related learning may originate from outside the market. The paper finishes with a plea for more research that focuses on children and the domestic contexts of consumption.     

Constructing Teacher Culture

In this paper, the argument is made that forms of consciousness, knowledge, sentiments and values that teachers use as part of their cultural repertoires in schools are the result of social constitution. The ‘social’ is composed of a number of overlapping discourses that are characteristic of schools everywhere. ‘Teacher culture’ is a signifier for the production and consumption of these discourses. Recent trends to emphasise the plurality of teacher culture(s) are countered by a review of work that suggests more uniformity in teacher culture.     

‘Racialised facilitative capital’ and the paving of differential paths to achievement of Afro-Trinidadian boys

Bourdieu describes capital as the political building blocks of social order that give meaning to social accumulation and consumption. Through a combination of Bourdieu’s sociology and critical race theory, this sojourn into Afro-Trinidadian boys’ achievement seeks to elucidate an approach to understanding capital as inherently raced. This is premised on an interrogation of Trinidadian society as pigmentocratically structured, where lightness is rewarded with a myriad of social advantages, and darkness denigrated as illegitimate and ‘other’. The premium placed on lighter skin is manifested interdependently in the forms of social, economic and cultural capital. As such, the operation of capital as politic not only reflects societal structures of power and domination, but importantly also contributes in the maintenance of said structures. The concept of ‘Racialised facilitative capital’ follows as inseparably both facilitator of social status and as racialised process.     

The Finnish miracle of PISA: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education

One of the recent tributes to the success of Finnish schooling was the PISA 2000 project report. As befits the field of education, the explanations are primarily pedagogical, referring especially to the excellent teachers and high‐quality teacher education. Without underrating the explanatory power of these statements, this paper presents some of the social, cultural and historical factors behind the pedagogical success of the Finnish comprehensive school. From the perspectives of history and the sociology of education, it also sheds light on some ironic paradoxes and dilemmas that may be concealed by the success. The focus is on the problematic nature of international comparative surveys based on school performance indicators. The question is whether they really make it possible to understand schooling in different countries, or whether they are just part of processes of ‘international spectacle’ and ‘mutual accountability’.     

Data entry: towards the critical study of digital data and education

The generation and processing of data through digital technologies is an integral element of contemporary society, as reflected in recent debates over online data privacy, ‘Big Data’ and the rise of data mining and analytics in business, science and government. This paper outlines the significance of digital data within education, arguing for increased interest in the topic from educational researchers. Building on themes from the emerging sub-field of ‘digital sociology’, the paper outlines a number of ways in which digital data in education could be questioned along social lines. These include issues of data inequalities, the role of data in managerialist modes of organisation and control, the rise of so-called ‘dataveillance' and the reductionist nature of data-based representation. The paper concludes with a set of suggestions for future research and discussion, thus outlining the beginnings of a framework for the future critical study of digital data and education.     

Person Formulation in the Process of Schooling

Mainstream sociology of education has seemingly moved away from the micro‐world of schools and classrooms before we have fully understood them. This is an attempt to reassess some of the prevailing assumptions about the social processes in classrooms, particularly in early schooling. It emerges from an investigation into the formulation of pupils by teachers in primary schools using a four year longitudinal study of a cohort of pupils in two schools. It suggests that Becker's model of ‘ideal‐matching’ may not always be appropriate for understanding interpersonal processes in primary classrooms. Rather than the ‘ideal’ pupil it is apparently the ‘normal’ or ‘average’ pupil that is the significant yardstick in teacher‐pupil dealings.     

Conceptualising the sociology of education: an analysis of contested intellectual trajectories

Abstract

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.     

Standpoint theory,realism and the search for objectivity in the sociology of education

This paper evaluates the contribution of ‘social realism’ in resolving questions of knowledge and curriculum in the sociology of education. Social realists argue that, in the interests of educational equality, all pupils should have access to ‘powerful’ knowledge produced by specialist intellectual communities. Social realism relies upon a critique of standpoint theory, taking it to be irrealist, relativist and ignorant of the post-empiricist revolution in the philosophy of science. This paper argues however, that social realists fail to appreciate the critical realist response to the post-empiricist revolution and thereby end up critiquing a caricatured version of standpoint theory. The paper concludes that if we are concerned with restoring objectivity, in a manner that avoids both relativism and cultural elitism in school curricula, a turn away from standpoint theory in the sociology of education is not warranted and may be obstructive.     

Using action research in current conditions of russian teacher education

This article introduces readers to some of the cultural characteristics of education and educational development in Russia. Action Research is as yet a new influence on Russian educational thinking, and so this article makes a beginning by tracing the connection between the ‘Action Research’ approach and Russian ‘Activity Theory’ in the teacher training process. The assumption of the Russian participants in an international project devoted to action research in teacher training was that the facilitation of the ‘Activity Theory’ approach would make a relevant contribution to an understanding of action research. The practical implications of this link in various different contexts are described in the article.     

Interactions between principals and teacher leaders in the context of Chinese curriculum reform: a micropolitical perspective

This paper draws from a larger exploratory qualitative study that investigated the perceptions of principals and teacher leaders regarding their interactions in Chinese urban primary schools during contemporary curriculum reform. Insights from micropolitics, notably two core constructs of cooperation and conflict, were utilised to examine the interactions of participants. The research found that principals and teacher leaders employed exchange and facilitation as two strategies during cooperative processes; and they adopted enforcement and compromise in conflictive processes. Eight new sub-dimensions under the four strategies emerged from the interview accounts. Findings indicate that most principals were exercising their power ‘through’ their teacher leaders who in turn were working in alignment with their principals to achieve the desired outcomes in schools. Principals in some circumstances used power ‘over’ as a traditional approach, while power ‘with’ was not apparent in participants’ comments. The paper contends that traditional Chinese cultural attitudes towards education, as shaped through Confucianism, were also discernible in framing the nature of some of the interactions between principals and teacher leaders.     

Move over Rover! An essay/assay of the field of educational management in the UK

UK educational administration scholars have undertaken a survey to redefine the field of knowledge in educational management and/or administration. In responding to the resulting corpus of work, I argue that that this is an exercise in ‘turf talk’. I draw on theorizations of the socio-spatialities of fields of knowledge to consider educational management and/or administration and its border scuffles with policy sociology and the exclusion of debates about knowledge and truth claims that characterize the ‘new humanities’. I suggest that the lack of regard accorded the situated empirical and practical knowledges of practitioners, and the invisibility in the analyses of the active role of head teacher professional associations in the current context, places the academy in an adversarial position vis-á-vis practitioners. As government moves to make research ‘more useful’, and positions academics as training providers and management consultants for head teachers, I propose that educational management and/or administration scholars must move over to share ground and dialogue with the emerging head teacher profession.     

New concepts of play and the problem of technology,digital media and popular-culture integration with play-based learning in early childhood education

Technology, digital media and popular culture form an important aspect of young children’s life-worlds in contemporary post-industrial societies. A problem for early childhood educators is how to most effectively integrate these aspects of children’s life-worlds into the provision of play-based learning. Traditionally, research has considered barriers to teacher uptake of technologies in the early years, or teacher beliefs and attitudes about using technologies with young children. An alternative perspective focuses on children’s play as the foundation for early childhood curriculum provision and argues that what is needed instead are ‘new’ concepts of play more appropriate for explaining children’s contemporary play experiences in post-industrial societies. This article examines the influence of a new concept of play called ‘web-mapping’ on teachers’ curriculum practices in early childhood education, and finds that, according to Vygotsky’s ideas about explicit and implicit mediation, new concepts of play are likely to provide a fruitful avenue for addressing the ‘problem’ of technology, digital media and popular-culture integration in early childhood education.     

The gown and the korowai: Māori doctoral students and the spatial organisation of academic knowledge

This paper draws on 38 student interviews carried out in the course of the team research project ‘Teaching and Learning in the Supervision of Māori Doctoral Students’. Māori doctoral thesis work takes place in the intersections between the Māori (tribal) world of identifications and obligations, the organisational and epistemological configurations of academia and the bureaucratic requirements of funding or employing bureaucracies. To explore how students accommodate cultural, academic and bureaucratic demands, we develop analytical tools combining three intellectual traditions: Māori educational theory, Bernstein’s sociology of the academy and Lefebvre’s conceptual trilogy of perceived, conceived and lived space. The paper falls into six parts. Section 1 is an overview of the research and is followed in Section 2 by identification of intersecting ‘locations’ in which Māori students’ theses are produced. In Section 3, Henri Lefebvre’s spatial analysis highlights connections between students’ multiple allegiances and affinities. Drawing on Bernstein, Section 4 relates the theses to the organisation of ‘Western’ academic disciplines. Section 5 addresses students’ cultural locations beyond the reach of ‘Western’ disciplines. We conclude with implications for supervision.     

Coping with Isolation: the role of culture in adult distance learners' use of surrogates

Conceptions of learning and preferred learning approaches have been suggested to vary cross-culturally. The extent to which learning is ‘student-centred’ or ‘teacher-centred’ also appears subject to cultural variation. This has led some to conclude that particular cultures exhibit learning preferences more suited to distance learning than do other cultures. This article examines the strategies that students from varying cultural backgrounds use to manage the experience of the isolation of distance learning. Two distinct isolation experiences emerge that reflect differences in the perceptions of the student–teacher relationship. These, it is argued, can be classified as a ‘surrogate teacher’ model in the Asian cultures of Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia and a ‘student identity’ model in Europe.     

Reading lessons: teacher–pupil interactions with text during three KS1 shared reading sessions

Changes in the teaching of reading during the past decade include a shift away from a previous emphasis on ‘one‐to‐one’ learning experiences to a focus upon more communal forms of learning which place the teacher center stage. With the teacher's role thus highlighted, teacher–pupil interaction in practice has come under the spotlight, with a number of studies raising concerns about the quality of teaching taking place and suggesting this is featuring more traditional patterns of ‘IRF’ exchanges between teachers and pupils, which are limiting to children's learning. This article reports on a small‐scale study into teacher–pupil interaction styles during three Key Stage 1 ‘shared reading’ sessions – an activity in which teacher and children work together on an enlarged, illustrated text, with the teacher explicitly modeling components of the reading process to children. The article considers the more tacit modelling taking place during these sessions and how particular linguistic patterning used by teachers frames reading as an educational and cultural activity in ways that position children differentially in relation to it. In particular, it considers how variation in the use of the IRF exchange can mediate different cultural meanings about what it is to engage with text as a reader.     

Bernstein in the urban classroom: a case study

Despite a long-standing concern within the sociology of education for ameliorating educational inequality, the challenge of improving educational opportunities for disadvantaged students remains deeply entrenched. While ‘macro’ issues such as segregation and systemic inequalities in school funding and access to qualified teachers must be addressed as matters of social and educational justice, Basil Bernstein's novel focus on ‘relations within’ education as the site of pedagogic discourse offers teachers and those working inside school systems a particularly powerful vision for promoting more equitable outcomes for students. This paper examines this assertion through a case study of the ‘mixed’ pedagogical practice of a successful teacher in a fifth-grade urban classroom in the United States.     

“That's more like how they know me as a person”: one primary pre‐service teacher's stories of her personal and ‘professional’ digital practices

In contributing to debates about how student‐teachers might draw from personal experience in addressing digital literacy in the classroom, this paper explores the stories that one primary student‐teacher told of her digital practices during a larger study of the role of digital literacy in student‐teachers' lives. The paper investigates the ‘recognition work’ this student‐teacher did as she aligned herself with different discourses and notes how themes of ‘control’ and ‘professionalism’ seemed to pattern her stories of informal and formal practices both within and beyond her professional education. The paper calls for further research into how student‐teachers perceive the relevance of their personal experience to their professional role and argues for encouraging pre‐service and practising teachers to tell stories of their digital practices and reflect upon the discourses which frame them.     

The Uses of the Term Hypothesis and the Inquiry Emphasis Conflation in Science Teacher Education

This paper examines the use and role of the term ‘hypothesis’ in science teacher education as described by teacher students. Data were collected through focus group interviews conducted at seven occasions with 32 students from six well‐known Swedish universities. The theoretical framework is a sociocultural and pragmatist perspective on language and learning, introducing the notion of pivot terms to operationalise language use as a habit and mediated action. We describe three different customs of using the term ‘hypothesis’ within four cultural institutions that can be said to constitute science teacher education in Sweden. Students were found to habitually use the term hypothesis as meaning a guess about an outcome. This is contrasted to the function of this term in scientific research as a tentative explanation. We also found differences in how this term was used between the pure science courses given by the science departments of universities and science education courses taken only by teacher students. Findings also included further support for school students hypothesis fear reported in an earlier study. It is discussed how these findings can obstruct learning and teaching about the nature of scientific inquiry. Constructivist theories of learning are suggested as a possible origin of these problems. The findings are also related to curricular reform and development.     

Teachers ‘liking’ their work? Exploring the realities of teacher Facebook groups

Social media are now an important aspect of the professional lives of school teachers. This paper explores the growing use of mass ‘teacher groups’ and ‘teacher communities’ on social media platforms such as Facebook. While these online communities are often welcomed as a means of professional learning and support, the paper considers the extent to which Facebook groups also expose teachers to some of the less beneficial aspects of social media, such as various forms of ‘digital labour’, commercialisation of exchanges and predominance of individualised reputation‐driven behaviours. Drawing on a detailed examination of a Swedish teacher Facebook group of over 13,000 members, the paper first addresses aspects of the online community that could be seen as professionally beneficial and/or valuable—particularly in terms of information exchange and social support. Yet while perceived by participants as a relatively beneficial and uncontroversial aspect of their working lives, the research also points to characteristics of the Facebook group that constituted disadvantaging, exploitative and/or disempowering forms of technological engagement. In these terms, the paper highlights tensions between what appears to ‘work’ for individual teachers in the short term and likely longer‐term implications that these practices might have for diminished professionalism and expertise of teachers.     

Teachers' environmental education as creating cracks and ruptures in school education: a narrative inquiry and an analysis of teacher rhetoric

This article discusses a narrative inquiry as a methodology for understanding and examining teachers' interpretations of their environment‐related teaching experiences. Focusing on the value of teacher stories for interrogating the discursive practices of schools as institutional contexts, four main rhetorical themes are identified to illustrate how teachers' engagements in practice and thinking with environmental education display ongoing identity work. Five Korean secondary science teachers' stories illustrate the dynamic processes and interplay between multiple discourses, such as the ‘proper’, ‘good’, ‘science’ teacher, and the cultural norms, resources and subject positions available to them, as they take up and explain their own and others' meanings and subject positions in science education and environmental education. The paper discusses the value of narrative inquiry to conceptualising teacher agency in ways that offer alternatives to conventional research perspectives in this field, and in taking account of the possible meanings of environmental education, the possibility of creating cracks and ruptures in the ‘sense‐making’ discourses and ‘sense that is made’ of experiences of environmental education and school education more widely.