Putting Sociology to Work; Chapter 4 Gender, Race, and Class: Attempts to Achieve Equality of Educational Opportunity; Gender and Equality of Educational Opportunity; Class, Race, and Attempts to Rectify Inequalities in Educational Opportunity; Integration Attempts; Educational Experience of Selected Minorities in the United States; Improving Schools for Minority Students; Summary; Putting Sociology to Work; Chapter 5 The School as an Organization; The Social System of the School; Goals of the School System; The School as an Organization.

‘An essential student-friendly text for Education Studies.’ Dr Gillian Forrester, Subject Head for Education & Early Childhood Studies, Liverpool John Moores University ‘Introducing students to the complexities of Education Studies is a difficult task and this book will go a long way to making it easier. I will definitely be recommending this to all my students.’ Kevin Brain, Programme Leader, Education Studies, Leeds Trinity University This textbook explains the basic principles of sociology and relates these concepts to today’s society and education system in order to deepen your understanding of how these issues affect our lives and the world we live in, encouraging you to think critically and to develop a ‘sociological imagination’. Coverage includes: the wider political and economic context for education in the UK, including an analysis of the reforms of the 2010 coalition government childhood, schooling and pupil voice non-traditional consideration of critical pedagogy, ‘race’ and gender the role of education in a multicultural society inequalities in educational opportunity in terms of class, ethnicity and disability. This is essential reading for students on undergraduate Education Studies degrees, and for sociology courses covering educational issues.

This handbook unifies access and opportunity, two key concepts of sociology of education, throughout its 25 chapters. It explores today’s populations rarely noticed, such as undocumented students, first generation college students, and LGBTQs; and emphasizing the intersectionality of gender, race, ethnicity and social class. Sociologists often center their work on the sources and consequences of inequality. This handbook, while reviewing many of these explanations, takes a different approach, concentrating instead on what needs to be accomplished to reduce inequality. A special section is devoted to new methodological work for studying social systems, including network analyses and school and teacher effects. Additionally, the book explores the changing landscape of higher education institutions, their respective populations, and how labor market opportunities are enhanced or impeded by differing postsecondary education pathways. Written by leading sociologists and rising stars in the field, each of the chapters is embedded in theory, but contemporary and futuristic in its implications. This Handbook serves as a blueprint for identifying new work for sociologists of education and other scholars and policymakers trying to understand many of the problems of inequality in education and what is needed to address them.

Drawing on current scholarship, Education and Society takes students on a journey through the many roles that education plays in contemporary societies. Addressing students’ own experience of education before expanding to larger sociological conversations, Education and Society helps readers understand and engage with such topics as peer groups, gender and identity, social class, the racialization of achievement, the treatment of immigrant children, special education, school choice, accountability, discipline, global perspectives, and schooling as a social institution. The book prompts students to evaluate how schools organize our society and how society organizes our schools. Moving from students to schooling to social forces, Education and Society provides a lively and engaging introduction to theory and research and will serve as a cornerstone for courses such as sociology of education, foundations of education, critical issues in education, and school and society.

“Outstanding . . . it presents a comprehensive state of the field, and it explores the role of sociological research in guiding higher education practice.” —Choice In this volume, Patricia Gumport and other leading scholars examine the sociology of higher education as it has evolved since the publication of Burton Clark’s foundational article in 1973. They trace diverse conceptual and empirical developments along several major lines of specialization and analyze the ways in which wider societal and institutional changes in higher education have influenced this vital field of study. In her own chapters, Gumport identifies the factors that constrain or facilitate the field’s development, including different intellectual legacies and professional contexts for faculty in sociology and in education. She also considers prospects for the future legitimacy and vitality of the field. Featuring extensive reviews of the literature, this volume will be invaluable for scholars and students of sociology and higher education.

Some of the most prominent sociologists working in education today have collaborated to address a wide range of empirical and theoretical issues. Adopting an international perspective, this book foregrounds cutting-edge research that highlights both the diversity and complexity of understanding education in society.

Leaders in the Sociology of Education: Intellectual Self-Portraits contains eighteen self-portraits written by some of the leading sociologists of education in the world. Representing the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong, the authors discuss a variety of factors that have affected their lifetime of scholarship, including their childhoods, their education and mentors, the state of the field during their “coming of age,” the institutions where they have worked, the major sociologists during their lifetimes, the political and economic conditions during their lifetimes, and the social and political movements during their lifetimes. These autobiographical essays reveal a great deal not only about their work and their influences, but also about themselves. Taken as a whole, the book provides sociology of knowledge about the creation of sociology of education research since the 1960s. It reveals a number of important themes central to all of the authors’ work, including educational inequality; the influence of the classical sociological theorists, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim; and the influence of more recent classical sociologists of education, Basil Bernstein, Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman. The authors’ research represents a variety of theoretical and methodological orientations including functionalism, conflict and critical theory, interactionist theory and feminist theory, as well as quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods research. Finally, the editors discuss a number of lessons to be learned from the lives and works of these sociologists of education.

This collection brings together many of the world’s leading sociologists of education to explore and address key issues and concerns within the discipline. The thirty-seven newly commissioned chapters draw upon theory and research to provide new accounts of contemporary educational processes, global trends, and changing and enduring forms of social conflict and social inequality. The research, conducted by leading international scholars in the field, indicates that two complexly interrelated agendas are discernible in the heat and noise of educational change over the past twenty-five years. The first rests on a clear articulation by the state of its requirements of education. The second promotes at least the appearance of greater autonomy on the part of educational institutions in the delivery of those requirements. The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education examines the ways in which the sociology of education has responded to these two political agendas, addressing a range of issues which cover three key areas: perspectives and theories social processes and practices inequalities and resistances. The book strongly communicates the vibrancy and diversity of the sociology of education and the nature of ‘sociological work’ in this field. It will be a primary resource for teachers, as well as a title of major interest to practising sociologists of education.

The Credential Society is a classic on the role of higher education in American society and an essential text for understanding the reproduction of inequality. Controversial at the time, Randall Collins’s claim that the expansion of American education has not increased social mobility, but rather created a cycle of credential inflation, has proven remarkably prescient. Collins shows how credential inflation stymies mass education’s promises of upward mobility. An unacknowledged spiral of the rising production of credentials and job requirements was brought about by the expansion of high school and then undergraduate education, with consequences including grade inflation, rising educational costs, and misleading job promises dangled by for-profit schools. Collins examines medicine, law, and engineering to show the ways in which credentialing closed these high-status professions to new arrivals. In an era marked by the devaluation of high school diplomas, outcry about the value of expensive undergraduate degrees, and the proliferation of new professional degrees like the MBA, The Credential Society has more than stood the test of time. In a new preface, Collins discusses recent developments, debunks claims that credentialization is driven by technological change, and points to alternative pathways for the future of education.