In the last half century higher education has had to respond to a rapidly accentuated process of globalisation. Consequently, universities worldwide are more concerned with internationalisation than before. Stier identifies three intrinsic internationalisation ideologies (idealism, instrumentalism and educationalism) in higher education. Drawing…

New additional support-needs legislation in Scotland sought to recognise the way in which poverty, as well as individual impairment, contribute to the creation of children's difficulties in learning. As well as identifying a wider range of needs, the legislation sought to provide parents, irrespective of social background, with more powerful means…

This article explores the contribution of sociological scholarship to understanding and analysing the notions of "special educational needs" and "disability" and the ways in which the two notions have been reconfigured and theorised as "public issues" rather than "personal troubles". Barton's contribution is signified both in terms of his…

Research on welfare state regimes and research on educational policy share a common concern for the reduction of social inequality. On one hand, welfare state research is typically designed within a comparative approach where scholars investigate similarities and differences in social institutions across selected countries. On the other hand, the…

The adoption of multiculturalism and multiethnic views of society seems to be a convergent tendency among Western democracies where population flows are becoming increasingly heterogeneous. However, the established citizenship models and migrant groups' experiences have different impacts on the multicultural discourse in each country. This…

The sociology of education in New Zealand, as in other countries, is affected by the dilemma inherent to the discipline, namely: is it a sociology "of" education or a sociology "for" education? In this article I analyse three factors in which the dilemma is played out: "cultural oppositionism" in the indigenous (kaupapa Maori) approach, critical…

This paper draws on an ESRC-funded study of policy enactments in English secondary schools (RES-062-23-1484) based on case-study work in four similar "ordinary" schools. The study has two main objectives; to develop a theory of policy enactment and to explore empirically the differences in the enactment of policy in similar contexts. Taking these…

In the process of discussing the significant contributions that Len Barton has made to the sociology of education and to disability studies, I argue that a good deal of critical analyses of power and inequality in education are impoverished by some of their essentialist and reductive tendencies. I use an example taken from disability rights to…

This article looks at women's efforts to construct an academic leadership career. It is not a study of women's leadership in general but one that takes place in what Bourdieu calls the academic field. Drawing from an in-depth interview study of 31 women from faculties of education who occupy managerial positions in universities in Canada,…

The invaluable use of ethnography in researching educational settings has been demonstrated through many studies and furthered by many passionate researchers. One of such leading lights is Geoffrey Walford. In this paper, Walford's discussion of groups in two public schools, as depicted in his book "Life in public schools", serves as a basis for…

Over the last decade it is young women who have come to be widely understood as the bearers of educational qualifications. It is girls who are now seen to have "the world at their feet" and to be able to attain the glittering prizes of academic success associated with elite universities and top occupations. And it is upper-middle-class girls, in…

It is now nearly thirty years since Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative administration introduced the Assisted Places Scheme (their first education policy) and over ten years since New Labour abolished it. The Scheme, which was designed to provide a ladder of opportunity for academically able students from poor backgrounds to attend private…

Based mainly on my own ethnographic research, which is committed to uncovering the constructed or "practiced" nature of social life, I seek to demonstrate the ways in which Australian school teachers, administrators, students and parents are engaged in a re-productive process that simultaneously reinforces and reinvents schools and schooling. Set…

This paper suggests that, in contrast to the great reports such as Crowther, Newsom Robbins and Plowden, recent government papers relating to education in England pay little attention to values that should shape the standards to be achieved, the knowledge to be transmitted and the virtues to be nourished. Whilst legislation over the past 60 years…

This paper examines the stratification of the curriculum according to parents' education, gender, ethnicity and school sector in England, focusing on year 10 subject choices. Using the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, we analyse both year 10 subject choices and the factors that may motivate these choices, such as liked and disliked…