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…

Drawing on various disciplinary and scholarly approaches to the multiple roles of higher education in society, this paper offers a new conceptualisation of the non-economic contributions of higher education. The conceptual model identifies two basic dimensions in higher education's contributions to society. The first, axiological dimension…

Social institutions function not only by reproducing specific practices but also by reproducing discourses endowing such practices with meaning. The latter in turn is related to the development of the identities or subjectivities of those who live and thrive within such institutions. Meaning and subjectivity are therefore significant sociological…

This article places the historical events that have influenced the rationale of study abroad programming in U.S. higher education, throughout the twentieth century, within the framework of Baudrillard's theory of hyper-reality. The intent of this paper is not to repeat Hoffa's (2007) and Hoffa and DePaul's (2010) comprehensive two-volume history…

In this theoretical essay, we find inspiration in Lotman's semiotics, in Morìn's sociology of education, the studies of cultural psychology and psychoanalysis of Valsiner and De Luca Picione, and other cultural stimuli coming from the didactics of mathematics. The notion of boundary and liminality was developed and discussed to grasp a…

How and when does affirmative action emerge in different national contexts? This paper is the first to analyze the emergence of affirmative action in higher education across national contexts. We find that three distinct clusters of affirmative action policies developed historically: (1) early nation-building projects, (2) mechanisms to attenuate…

This paper draws on Gramsci's concept of hegemony to locate the Newbolt Report, published in 1921, within a context of the weakening political authority of Britain's ruling class. One indication of this is the fact that in 1917 200,000 workers were involved in strikes in 48 British towns. The moral and cultural dimensions of the problems facing…

How is it that neoliberal education policies, often lacking evidentiary basis, come to be endorsed--often by the very people they alienate and marginalize? This work seeks to expose how this kind of exclusive policy is sold to a public through intricate hortatory tools. Using critical policy analysis with an emphasis on historical development and…

Music education has many "elephants" in its classrooms: obvious major problems that go unmentioned and suffered silently. Two of the larger, more problematic "elephants" are identified, analyzed, and critiqued: (1) the hegemony of university schools of music on school music and the resulting focus in school music on…

Educational agencies are going through a difficult transition, with important consequences in terms of de-legitimacy of the social mandate historically assigned to the school. The reason for this widespread unease can be traced to the fact that today we live in a complex system. This paper arises within this problematic framework with the intent…

As important as cognitive outcomes are in assessing the educational merits of honors programs, the authors ask whether honors programs affect the values and social attitudes of their students differently than other students: in particular, whether honors students are more or less tolerant than other students and, if so, in what ways and why. There…

This qualitative case study examined South Korean elementary teachers' beliefs about the goals of multicultural education in relation to practices and contexts within social studies instruction. The first research question examined the distinguishing features of South Korean elementary teachers' beliefs about the goals of multicultural education.…

This study aims to contribute to the fields of sociology of education and Canadian sociological teaching. English and French Canadian sociology of education course outlines were systematically analysed in order to assess how national context, language and internal divisions influence the undergraduate teaching of sociology of education. The…

This paper was born of the authors' discussions about the imbalance between critique and constructive thinking within the sociology of education, and work on education policy. They were concerned that their research--and the body of work to which their research contributes--is becoming increasingly irrelevant to policy and practice. For British…

This essay reviews six competing positions on U.S. school reform: a speech from Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan; Diane Ravitch's "The Death and Life of the Great American School System"; Frederick Hess's "The Same Thing Over and Over"; Charles Payne's "So Much Reform, So Little Change"; Anthony Byrk and others' "Organizing School for…