This wide-ranging handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the field of education as viewed from a sociological perspective. Experts in the area present theoretical and empirical research on major educational issues and analyze the social processes that govern schooling, and the role of schools in and their impact on contemporary society. A major reference work for social scientists who want an overview of the field, graduate students, and educators.
Presenting original contributions from the key experts in the field, the Research Handbook on the Sociology of Education explores the major theoretical, methodological, empirical and political challenges and pressing social questions facing education in current times.
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.
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 first of its kind, this handbook synthesizes major advances in the sociology of education over the past several decades. It incorporates both a systematic review of significant theoretical and empirical work and challenging original contributions by distinguished American, English, and French sociologists. In his introduction, John G. Richardson traces the development of the sociology of education and reviews the important classical European works in which this discipline is grounded. Each chapter, devoted to a major topic in the field, provides both a review of the literature and an exposition of an original thesis. The inclusion of subjects outside traditional sociological concern--such as the historical foundations of education and the sociology of special education--gives an interdisciplinary scope that enhances the volume's usefulness.
The Handbook of the Sociology of Medical Education provides a contemporary introduction to this classic area of sociology by examining the social origin and implications of the epistemological, organizational and demographic challenges facing medical education in the twenty-first century. Beginning with reflections on the historical and theoretical foundations of the sociology of medical education, the collection then focuses on current issues affecting medical students, the profession and the faculty, before exploring medical education in different national contexts. Leading sociologists analyze: the intersection of medical education and social structures such as gender, ethnicity and disability; the effect of changes in medical practice, such as the emergence of evidence-based medicine, on medical education; and the ongoing debates surrounding the form and content of medical curricula. By examining applied problems within a framework which draws from social theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu, this new collection suggests future directions for the sociological study of medical education and for medical education itself.
The Routledge Handbook to Sociology of Music Education is a comprehensive, authoritative and state-of-the-art review of current research in the field. The opening introduction orients the reader to the field, highlights recent developments, and draws together concepts and research methods to be covered. The chapters that follow are written by respected, experienced experts on key issues in their area of specialisation. From separate beginnings in the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom in the mid-twentieth century, the field of the sociology of music education has and continues to experience rapid and global development. It could be argued that this Handbook marks its coming of age. The Handbook is dedicated to the exclusive and explicit application of sociological constructs and theories to issues such as globalisation, immigration, post-colonialism, inter-generational musicking, socialisation, inclusion, exclusion, hegemony, symbolic violence, and popular culture. Contexts range from formal compulsory schooling to non-formal communal environments to informal music making and listening. The Handbook is aimed at graduate students, researchers and professionals, but will also be a useful text for undergraduate students in music, education, and cultural studies.
This accessible handbook is the first of its kind to examine the sociological approach to the study of the military. The contents are compiled from the work of researchers at universities around the world, as well as military officers devoted to the sector of study. Beginning with a review of studies prior to contemporary research, the book provides a comprehensive survey of the topic. The scope of coverage extends to civic-military relations, including issues surrounding democratic control of the armed forces; military culture; professional training; conditions and problems of minorities in the armed forces; an examination of structural change within the military over the years including new duties and functions following the Cold War.
This is the first handbook to cover the sociological approaches to higher education. It is timely because of global expansions of mass higher educational systems, especially as these systems come under scrutiny by a variety of stakeholders. Questions are being raised about the value of traditional pedagogies along with calls for efficiency, accountability and cost-reduction, but above all job training. Within this neoliberal context, each chapter examines different sociological aspects of, and debates about, educational institutions as status-conferring organizations, with myriad positional characteristics, experiences, and outcomes. Many current debates concern the legitimacy of the statuses conferred, including the continuing debate regarding the role of universities in legitimating social class reproduction as well as more recent concerns about standards in mass systems. This handbook puts these issues and debates in focus in ways that will be of interest to a variety of stakeholders, within academia as well as in policy circles.
Human beings necessarily understand their social worlds in moral terms, orienting their lives, relationships, and activities around socially-produced notions of right and wrong. Morality is sociologically understood as more than simply helping or harming others; it encompasses any way that individuals form understandings of what behaviors are better than others, what goals are most laudable, and what "proper" people believe, feel, and do. Morality involves the explicit and implicit sets of rules and shared understandings that keep human social groups intact. Morality includes both the "shoulds" and "should nots" of human activity, its proactive and inhibitive elements. At one time, sociologists were centrally concerned with morality, issues like social cohesion, values, the goals and norms that structure society, and the ways individuals get socialized to reproduce those concerns. In the last half-century, however, explicit interest in these topics has waned, and modern sociology has become uninterested in these matters and morality has become marginalized within the discipline. But a resurgence in the topic is happening in related disciplines – psychology, neurology, philosophy, and anthropology - and in the wider national discourse. Sociology has much to offer, but is not fully engaged in this conversation. Many scholars work on areas that would fall under the umbrella of a sociology of morality but do not self-identify in such a manner, nor orient their efforts toward conceptualizing what we know, and should know, along these dimensions. The Handbook of the Sociology of Morality fills a niche within sociology making explicit the shared concerns of scholars across the disciplines as they relate to an often-overlooked dimension of human social life. It is unique in social science as it would be the first systematic compilation of the wider social structural, cultural, cross-national, organizational, and interactional dimension of human moral (understood broadly) thought, feeling, and behavior.
