School Organisation (RLE Edu L)
School Organisation (RLE Edu L)

Author: William Tyler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-16

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1136463836

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The internal organisation of the school touches on many areas of contemporary debate. Is there such a thing as a ‘good school’? Are large urban comprehensives necessarily impersonal? Are the charges of indiscipline, conflict and declining standards in modern schools based on a failure to understand schools as institutions? At the time this book was first published sociological analysis had neglected to consider schools as organisational entities, preferring to see them as either the sites for negotiated encounters between teachers and pupils or else as agencies of class reproduction. The author redresses this imbalance and by relating the various literatures on the school to the constitutive patterns of its internal organisation he demonstrates the need for a more intensive sociological study of this embattled institution.

Marx and Education in Russia and China (RLE Edu L)
Marx and Education in Russia and China (RLE Edu L)

Author: R F Price

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-04

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1136465588

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To many education students, Russian and/or Chinese education is at the same time their introduction to Marxism, and many students go no further. This book sets the record straight by giving a thorough introduction to the writings of Marx himself as they relate to education. It shows what Marxism implies for education, as aim, method and content. It then proceeds to compare educational developments in the former USSR and China in the light of this analysis, attempting to answer the question as to how Marxist this has been, in the schools and outside them.

The Social Context of the School (RLE Edu L)
The Social Context of the School (RLE Edu L)

Author: John Eggleston

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-16

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13: 1136461000

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In their appearance, schools often seem to be physically separated from their surroundings, cut off from the neighbouring houses and streets by high walls, by playgrounds or playing fields. Within the school, another world seems to exist, with a life of its own – its own routine, dress, rules and customs – which appears to have little relationship to the day-to-day life of the society outside. Yet despite these signs of separateness, we are becoming increasingly aware that a school’s surroundings, the local society in which it is set and whose children it educates, play an important part in determining what actually goes on in the classrooms and the playgrounds. This book looks at some of the factors in the local context of the schools and describes and analyses some of the often complex ways in which the schools interact with them.

Community, Hierarchy and Open Education (RLE Edu L)
Community, Hierarchy and Open Education (RLE Edu L)

Author: Gary Easthope

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-16

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 1136463143

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The book describes the English school, especially the secondary school, as a hierarchical community in which the head-teacher (principal) is an autocratic ruler. After explaining how that particular organisation of the school developed historically from the market situation faced by the English public (i.e. private) schools in the developing industrial society of the nineteenth century it provides empirical evidence demonstrating that the hierarchies of knowledge, teachers and students that developed then were still in place when the book was published in 1975. They are still present today. It also looks at the challenges to the school as a hierarchical community presented by the ideologies of deschooling, progressive education and open education. Finally, it provides an explanation of why these ideologies were never put into practice in English schools despite some pioneering exemplars. Although first published over thirty-five years ago the issues examined in it raise questions that are still central to education today: Does size of school affect the commitment of teachers to the school, their colleagues and their students? How can the teaching staff be organised in a school? Do all need to work to the same ends? What is the role of leadership from the head-teacher (principal) in this? Is it possible to have a curriculum that is open without losing rigour? What should be the relationship between using local community knowledge and the educational wish to extend students’ horizons? The result is a short, nuanced, and densely argued text that demands thought and reflection from any contemporary educator.

Social Crisis and Educational Research (RLE Edu L)
Social Crisis and Educational Research (RLE Edu L)

Author: Len Barton

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2012-04-27

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1136471111

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Originally written at a time of crisis in the education system of Britain – occasioned by cuts, contradictions and change - many of the issues discussed in this book are still relevant today. Debate in the book focuses upon an examination of the nature of the crisis, an exploration of the impact of the crisis upon school processes and upon the relationship between life in school and in the wider community, an investigation of the responses being made by pupils, teachers and educationalists to the day-to-day manifestations of the crisis and a consideration of how the current crisis is giving a particular poignancy to issues to do with the theories and methods employed in our study and interpretation of contemporary educational processes.

Life in Public Schools (RLE Edu L)
Life in Public Schools (RLE Edu L)

Author: Geoffrey Walford

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-16

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1136461949

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Britain’s public (that is, its major independent) schools have a conspicuous role in the country’s social system, and as a result are the subject of a long-standing political debate. The discussion is generally founded on a stereotyped image of what these school may have been like in the 1950s – this books shows how they were in the late 1980s. It is based on fieldwork in two major public boarding schools which the author conducted over an extended period, and draws on interviews, observation and documentary sources to establish a picture of what public school life is actually like for pupils and staff. Since the schools were predominantly male preserves, the major part of the book describes the social world and experiences of boys and school-masters. An important section of the book, however, discusses the introduction of girl pupils, the experiences of female teachers and the way schoolmasters’ wives tend to be drawn into their husbands’ work. Geoffrey Walford’s conclusions about life in public schools differ considerably from traditional expectations. At the same time he asks whether there really has been a ‘public school revolution’. His book makes an important contribution to our knowledge of public schools, to debates in the sociology of education and to the issues of abolishing or extending the independent sector.

Doing Sociology of Education (RLE Edu L)
Doing Sociology of Education (RLE Edu L)

Author: Geoffrey Walford

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-16

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 1136462082

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This collection of specially commissioned articles exposes the practical and personal influences on the process of doing sociology of education. All of the authors have been involved in conducting well know major research projects, and discuss here the pitfalls and problems, conflicts and compromises that went into doing their particular research. A particular feature of the book is that a wide variety of types of research in the sociology of education is covered. The range is from small-scale ethnographic case studies to large-scale postal questionnaire sample surveys and includes studies based on interviews, observation and questionnaires. There are examples of longitudinal work in case studies and in surveys. The collection also includes discussions of action research, the development and influence of theory, and the relationship between research and policy.

Race, Class and Education (RLE Edu L)
Race, Class and Education (RLE Edu L)

Author: Len Barton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-04

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1136471324

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One problem which continues to absorb social scientists is the way in which so much social deprivation stems from racial or class status. The discussion in this book is developed in two ways: firstly, careful attention is given to an examination of the way minority groups create and maintain collective identities and action. Secondly, the relationship between this movement and such topics as racism in schools, schooling, unemployment and West Indian involvement in sporting rather than academic activities is analysed, together with the nature of the educational experience of different class and gender groups.

Educability, Schools and Ideology (RLE Edu L)
Educability, Schools and Ideology (RLE Edu L)

Author: MICHAEL Flude

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1136470417

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The sociology of education has been at the forefront of new developments in sociological theory. This book examines and criticizes a number of these new developments and discusses some empirical work on issues of current concern. One of the few books that integrates radical and critical sociology into the field of education, it deals with the resultant difficulties. The topics covered include cultural deprivation, ideologies in education, classrooms, the teaching profession and the history of women’s education.

Marxist Perspectives in the Sociology of Education (RLE Edu L Sociology of Education)
Marxist Perspectives in the Sociology of Education (RLE Edu L Sociology of Education)

Author: Maurice Levitas

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-04

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 113646817X

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The major theories explored are those concerned with social mobility and those which derive from a relativist position in Sociology, both of which see education as a selection mechanism for a stratified society. Social class, family, sociolinguistics and schools are among the topics discussed. In this analysis the author: defines key areas in the sociology of education gives access to important concepts of Marx and Engels strengthens sociological starting points by adding a Marxist element discriminates between radically different directions in education maps the main features of long-term working class goals This thoroughgoing Marxist critique of widely prevalent notions in the sociology of education provides a compass by which place and direction in this area of education may be found by students, teachers and parents.