Social media has become a core feature in policy development and enactment. This article extends current features of digital policy sociology to include the entanglement of education policy development processes with new media, paying particular attention to how two conservative think tanks in Australia have strategically used social media in…

This paper argues that more focus on the temporal is needed in critical policy sociology in education. In so asserting, the paper extends the concept of 'historically informed' as included in the foundational definition of policy sociology in education proffered by Jenny Ozga. There are four foci to this extension to encompass the temporal, taken…

This article reflects on what doing critical policy sociology means in shifting theoretical, empirical and methodological contexts of education. We focus our analytical lens on two primary considerations. First, we reflect on the "politics of criticality," examining differing claims and debates about what it means to do critical research…

This paper revisits and reassesses the influence of the context of production on the origin, development and use of the term 'policy sociology' in research in the sociology of education in the UK from the 1980s to the contemporary period. Starting with the first use of the term 'policy sociology,' and its definition as 'rooted in social science…

This paper reflects critically upon how the 'mobilities turn' in the social sciences, and its subsequent contribution towards 'policy mobilities', offers theoretical and methodological resources that can be usefully harnessed in education policy sociology. Just as there are new ways in which policy is being made and moved, there are equally new…

In this special issue response paper, we pick up from prior discussions to suggest areas where we think policy sociology can benefit from further conversation and research. In particular, we bring together our respective readings and work on policy mobilities, in conversation with the contributions of this special issue, to think further about…

This paper investigates mindfulness as a case study of a "subjective turn" in education reflecting a postsecular age. The practice of mindfulness originates in an ancient Buddhist teaching prescribed as part of the path to enlightenment. In spite of its origins, it is becoming widespread within diverse secularly conceived social and…

We old warriors of ideology critique and "wissensoziologie" should not be too hard on ourselves for having forgotten reflexivity and the labors of putting paradigms, including our own, back into the context of history and social movement. Normal science is our necessary bread and butter. We achieved a lot by shaking the liberal…

In this paper, I trace three traditions and bodies of work: The Chicago School of Sociology, the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies and the New Sociology of Education. Each of these traditions evolved in distinct though overlapping ways. Taken together, they offer a productive set of resources for thinking through the complexities of popular…

This paper provides a critical review of papers in this special issue on Bourdieu and practice. What is different about this collection is that, in analysing policy and practice through a Bourdieusian lens, the thinking tools of field, disposition (collective and individual), logics of practice and doxa have been mobilised with regard to the…

This paper explores the trend towards a decentred social organization of learning that has become evident over the last 30-40 years. This is illustrated by the shifting imagery of education, from the red brick school to dispersed learning networks, or "learning bubbles", that constitute new learning spaces. In the context of our large…

This paper raises the issue of what it is to be "critical" in education studies and in social theory more generally. It argues that this idea has for a long time been associated with forms of social constructionism and sociological reductionism. These understand the idea that knowledge is social in terms of reducing it to the experiences and…