The Sociology of Education

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The purpose of this module is to introduce students to key sociological frameworks and concepts which have been developed to explain the relationship between schooling, education and society. In particular the module will provide students with the opportunity to develop a range of critical 'thinking tools' through they can situate their work as educators vis-a-vis wider societal processes and social phenomena. In particular it will explore the way in which schooling and other forms of educational organisations are implicated in both the reproduction and distribution (as well as attempted re-distributions), of life chances and social 'goods' and 'bads', relative to different of social groups (e.g., gender, social class, sexuality, ethnicity, disability). As such it will take as its central theme Michel Foucault's notion of the productive/oppressive function of schooling as a form of social institution. The module will firstly introduce students to the main theoretical perspectives in a deliberate chronological order of their 'appearance' within the discipline. We will begin with the structural-functionalism of for example Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons, followed by the re-discovery in the early 1970s of Marxism, Weber and Critical Theory and the emergence of feminist critiques. Lastly, we will introduce the various ideas associated with postmodernism and poststructuralism & education. The second aim is to build on this introduction to explore a range of contemporary social issues additional ones (such as gender, socio-ethnic linguistics, ethnicity, inclusion and social disadvantage) as they relate to schooling and education.