Some Sociologies of Education: A History of Problems and Places, and Segments and Gazes

Abstract

This paper focuses on some of the significant ‘moments’ and ‘problems’ and ‘characters’ and places which mark out a history of the sociology of education. It further explores some of the historical conjunctions of knowledge and practice to which the sociology of education contributed in its uneasy relations with schools and teachers and education policy. Three sets of tools and sorts of analysis, drawn from the work of Bernstein, Foucault and Bourdieu, are deployed to explore some of the turmoil and conflict which has characterised the sociology of education at different points in its history focusing on three of these. They are, the 1930s/1960s (Political Arithmetic), the 1970s (the New Sociology of Education) and the 1980s ‘flight to policy studies’ and particularly one aspect of this which produced the notion of ‘school effectiveness’. The paper suggests some of the ways in which the sociology of education has played its part in the government and the detailed management of the population, through the changing construction of an unrelenting gaze (focused initially on families) and the concomitant development of a body of expert professional knowledge (teacher education) and, latterly, the management of the institutions of management (schools) and of the professionals themselves (teachers).