The 'problems' and 'solutions' of modern education are overwhelmingly produced and tailored by the modern episteme, institutions, truths, and powers of the Global North. To find new ways of thinking and doing sociology, this paper will explore the outlines of a new Global Sociology of Education Imagination (GSEI) inspired by pre-modern epistemes…

This paper examines how the Durkheimian approach to the 'ideal' delineates a possible way of straddling the dilemma between the normative orientation of 'powerful knowledge' accounts and the critical orientation of 'knowledge of the powerful' accounts. It argues that the normative aims are embedded in the fabrics of the sociological description…

Institutional ethnography is often seen as a useful tool in the study of organizations and bureaucracy. However, many adaptations of the approach ignore the explicitly historical materialist project embodied in Smith's conceptualization of 'ontological shift' and her assertion that institutional ethnography is a 'reinterpretation' of Marx's…

The subfield of Sociology of Education (SOE) concerned with the growth of neoliberalism through critically analysing its policies, discourses, and processes of subjectivation has made a significant contribution to education in the last 40 years. Whilst this scholarship has generated new knowledge about what happens to people, contexts and…

Purpose: This study provides an overview of the changes and developments of the sociology of education in China as it enters the new era as well as its future outlook. Design/Approach/Methods: This study combed and analyzed research in the field of the sociology of education in China during the period from 2012 to 2022 on three issues--educational…

Do international large-scale assessments influence education policy? How? Through scripts, lessons, or incentives? For some, they all produce similar outcomes. For others, different assessment data, shaped by different designs, and mediated by international organizations' (IOs) policy directives, prompt different policy decisions. For some,…

A substantial body of international research argues that the teacher-student relationship is crucial for students' academic and social-emotional learning. However, microanalytic studies of teachers' relational competence are rare. This article aims to contribute such a study by exploring teachers' relational competence, drawing on Erving Goffman's…

The advent of global citizenship agendas marks a transformation in citizenship education policy and practice internationally. However, research has revealed a highly diverse collection of visions and models for global citizenship. This article seeks to make two main contributions to the study of global citizenship in education. Empirically, it…

Global movements to decolonise sociology have gained significant momentum in recent decades and offer far-reaching implications for the field of education. One understudied area of research, however, concerns the sociologies of education taught and experienced in teacher education outside of Anglo/European contexts. This paper uses…

This paper presents a critical exploration of a reported decline in student achievement in Australia (2000-2020). Declining student achievement is framed as symptomatic of broader dysfunction within the education system. The context of declining student achievement is articulated through a Bourdieusian being critical sociology of education. This…

Talcott Parsons did not leave us with a global and consistent sociology of education. Instead, different aspects can be found in Parsons's oeuvre in different theoretical contexts. This paper summarises these different parts of Parsons's sociology of education -- his writings on the concepts of education and socialisation, the university, the…

According to Niklas Luhmann, causality is both an impossibility and a necessity in education. On the one hand, the task of the teacher is an impossible one, because teaching as communication is a closed system that cannot determine the learning of pupils' psychical system in any causal sense. On the other hand, one cannot practice as a teacher…

In this issue, the Harvard Educational Review reprints Giroux's "Theories of Reproduction and Resistance in the New Sociology of Education: A Critical Analysis," which this journal first published in 1983. The construct of resistance in educational spaces continues to be invoked by researchers and the media alike, with different degrees…

The advent of Career Enrolment Data (CED) in Higher Education is an important development for graduate employability practitioners and other stakeholders seeking to understand, analyse and enhance students' career readiness. CED, collected annually from all students in participating universities, requires students to self-report on their own…

In this article, we draw upon Charles Mills' powerful scholarly insights on the racial contract and epistemologies of ignorance and argue for keeping his spirit and theorizing alive through a relentless focus on the endemic reality of racism/white supremacy in our society and institutions -- particularly in the institution in which he and we work,…