Historicizing the new sociology of education and considering its continuing impacts

[Extract] Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, edited by Michael F.D. YoungFootnote1 in 1971, was at the time very influential in the sociology of education and has had continuing impact. The collection came out of conversations between Young, Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu at the 1970 British Sociological Association conference held in Durham. The collection argued the necessity of making stronger links between the sociology of education and sociology per se, as well as linking the sub-discipline with broader sociological theories

Understanding quality and equity of schooling in Scotland : locating educational traditions globally

This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the OECD&rsquo;s (2007) national report on Scottish education, Quality and equity of schooling in Scotland, while also briefly considering the Scottish government&rsquo;s Diagnostic Report, prepared for the review. The national report is situated against Scottish traditions of schooling, particularly the view that access to academic curricula for all is a democratic and egalitarian approach, and also set against the changing role of the OECD. On the latter, the paper argues that the OECD, in the context of globalisation, has become more of a policy actor in its own right, in addition to its more traditional think-tank function. The OECD is a now significant transnational policy actor in education, contributing to the emergent global education policy field. The overarching argument proffered is that debates provoked by the OECD&rsquo;s report, for example the David Raffe/Richard Teese exchange in the Scottish Educational Review, 40(1), 2008, stem from tensions between the new supranational expression of political and policy authority as articulated in the OECD&rsquo;s report and that located more traditionally within the nation. The academic curricula for all, the Scottish tradition, is challenged by the OECD report, which supports more diverse curricula provision, including more vocational education in schools, particularly at the post-compulsory phase. We note, drawing on theoretical and empirical insights of Bourdieu, that the success of the former demands pedagogies which scaffold for those students not possessing the requisite cultural capitals for success with academic curricula, while the latter demands a strategic effort to ensure parity of esteem between different curricular provisions.<br /

NAPLAN and the performance regime in Australian Schooling: a review of the policy context

The National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a Federal Government initiative directed at providing parents, teachers, principals, state and federal governments with diagnostic information on student performance. As a national performance measurement system (PMS), its implementation has been swift, although contentious. It sits at the nexus of the Rudd-Gillard education reform efforts and is positioned as the tool for effecting change. This summary attempts to describe the complex policy context from which the Rudd-Gillard education reforms emerged. It reflects on the contested relationship between the commonwealth, state and territory governments, school accountability, the development of a national curriculum, the emergence of the knowledge economy and an international policy agenda as well as teacher professionalism. It then examines the justifications behind NAPLAN and briefly details the strategy employed to ensure its successful implementation as a PMS within a wider performance regime

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 educational policy in the context of globalisation and the economising of it. In applying Bourdieu\u27s theory and methodology to research in education policy, we focus on developing his work to understand what we call \u27cross-field effects\u27 and for exploring the emergence of a \u27global education policy field\u27. 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\u27 s primary \u27thinking tools\u27, namely practice, habitus,capitals and fields and their application to policy studies. The second and third sections consider two additions to Bourdieu\u27s 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.<br /

New scalar politics : implications for education policy

This paper argues that globalisation has implications for research and theory in the social sciences, demanding that the social no longer be seen as homologous with nation, but also linked to postnational or global fields. This situation has theoretical and methodological implications for comparative education specifically focused on education policy, which traditionally has taken the nation-state as the unit of analysis, and also worked with \u27methodological nationalism\u27. The paper argues that globalisation has witnessed a rescaling of educational politics and policymaking and relocated some political authority to an emergent global education policy field, with implications for the functioning of national political authority and national education policy fields. This rescaling and this reworking of political authority are illustrated through two cases: the first is concerned with the impact of a globalised policy discourse of the &lsquo;knowledge economy&rsquo; proselytised by the OECD and its impact in Australian policy developments; the second is concerned explicitly with the constitution of a global education policy field as a commensurate space of equivalence, as evidenced in the OECD&rsquo;s PISA and educational indicators work and their increasing global coverage. The paper indicatively utilises Bourdieu&rsquo;s &lsquo;thinking tools&rsquo; to understand the emergent global education policy field and suggest these are very useful for doing comparative education policy analysis

The emergent structure of feeling : what does it mean for critical educational studies and research?

Critical research in education is not what it used to be. It must now engage with a differently structured and globalized world with different social and material conditions for its peoples. This paper sets out to name the contemporary structure of feeling in which education researchers now work, particularly in terms of what now is to be the object of their educational theorizing and research and what are to be the intellectual resources brought to bear on such activity. The intention is to open up debate, recognizing that there are no easy answers and yet acknowledging the need for answers to be attempted. It is, therefore, an invitation premised on an optimism of the will to complement legitimate pessimism of the intellect. It concludes that a critical engagement with these matters demands a modernist/postmodernist, reconstructive/deconstructive reflexivity in the mobilizing of a new sociological imagination applied across the broad spectrum which is educational research.<br /

Mediatization and education: a sociological account

This chapter presents an account of the mediatization of education policy through a focus on the development and uptake of the knowledge economy discourse in national education policy and research settings. During the late 20th and early part of the 21st century, Australia, like other nation states around the globe, came to adopt the knowledge economy discourse as a kind of meta-policy that&nbsp;would help connect a variety of statistical indicators and provide direction for a number of policy areas, including education, science, and research funding. In Australia the adoption of a knowledge economy discourse was preceded by coverage from specialized sections of the quality print media, discussed broadly as a debate about the social contract that was afforded to fields charged with developing&nbsp;and producing national capacities for knowledge production. Such a debate mirrored similar claims by Michael Gibbons in the late 1990s, where he argued for a new social contract between science and society. Given the media coverage surrounding the uptake of the knowledge economy discourse and the promotion of the concept by the OECD, this chapter presents an account of the emergence of&nbsp;the knowledge economy discourse through a focus on the mediatization of the concept. The broad argument presented in this account is that what could be called &ldquo;mediatization effects&rdquo;, related to the promotion and adoption of policy concepts, are variable, and reach the broader public in inconsistent, time-bound, and sporadic patterns. In order to understand mediatization effects in respect of policy, the paper draws on a broad Bourdieuian informed conceptual framework&nbsp;to understand different kinds of fields, their logics of practice, and importantly here, cross-field effects. Specifically, the focus is on those cross-field effects related to the impact of practices within both national and global fields of journalism on national and global fields of education policy. While the case is an Australian one, the account explores general and more broadly applicable ways to understand links between the globalization and the mediatization of policy.<br /

Mediatizing educational policy : the journalistic field, science policy, and cross-field effects

This paper is concerned to demonstrate the usefulness of the theory of Bourdieu, including the concepts of field, logics of practice and habitus, to understanding relationships between media and policy, what Fairclough has called the \u27mediatization\u27 of policy. Specifically, the paper draws upon Bourdieu\u27s accessible account of the journalistic field as outlined in On television and journalism. The usefulness of this work is illustrated through a case study of a recent Australian science policy, The chance to change. As this policy went through various iterations and media representations, its naming and structure became more aphoristic. This is the mediatization of contemporary policy, which often results in policy as sound bite. The case study also shows the cross-field effects of this policy in education, illustrating how today educational policy can be spawned from developments in other public policy fields.<br /