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…

Education is both an institutional process and a set of conscious actions. Since its institutionalization, education has been viewed not only as an act of acquiring knowledge, but also as a socialization process. The traditional understanding of education, which views socialization as the its main purpose in addition to acquiring knowledge and…

The 'New Paradigm' of Sociology of Childhood famously maintains that childhood is socially constructed and supposedly places a much greater emphasis on the agency of children: children should not simply be framed as the passive receivers of socialisation. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that such a 'social construction' of childhood is…

With internationalisation continuing at an ever-increasing pace, Japan incentivises student mobility via study abroad (SA) programmes in the hope of cultivating the global human resources necessary for future economic growth. Against this background, proficiency in English emerges as a dominant linguistic and epistemic model, increasingly viewed…

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…

My focus in this reflection is on the role of mathematics teacher education in the preparation of culturally relevant teachers for urban schools. Drawing from the sociology of urban mathematics education (SUM) framework, I explore the current blind spots in our view of the preparation of culturally relevant mathematics teachers for urban schools.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the sociological aspects of music education and perspectives of university music education professors in five continents in relation to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The concepts of community of practice and agency were used to investigate the social interaction, socialization, and…

In this study, we explore how students identify and navigate the social structure of higher education and how, in doing so, they communicatively (re)produce socializing norms. To this end, we draw upon the work of the late educational sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to outline a critical communication pedagogical understanding of institutional…

The paper makes a connection between transmission modes and constructivism in sociology and education, respectively. There are parallels between Archer's criticism of upward and downward conflation in social theory, and approaches to learning in education. In her 2012 book, Archer seeks to reconceptualise socialisation as relational reflexivity.…

How did the undergraduate college rapidly position itself as the gateway to middle-class US employment between 1880 and 1920? This article attempts to explain one part of that process. Drawing on Weberian organisational theory, transnational intellectual history and case studies of three institutions, it identifies hierarchy as a defining aspect…

Traditional models of student success in higher education focus on access and retention of students, and fall short in their ability to explain the nuanced dynamics of identity formation that occurs for underrepresented STEM students. Drawing on Multicontextual Theory, I examine how academic environments offer non-traditional ways of developing an…

Sociology of education in Norway has traditionally been preoccupied with the classic problems related to education and the reproduction of social inequality. As the general social scientific and political focus on inequality decreased, the sociology of education also became less visible. At the same time, the sociology of youth evolved, and…

Theoretical models designed to predict whether students will persist or not have been valuable tools for retention efforts relative to the creation of services in academic and student affairs. Some of the early models attempted to explain and measure factors in the "college dropout process." For example, in his seminal work, Tinto…

This article discusses the central issue of the transition to preschool. Individual semi-structured interviews with school professionals and parents in the Brussels region revealed that this issue is crucial for the well-being of young children, from both an educational and a social perspective. We discovered that the education system works under…

In this article I discuss a case study of how a music teacher in a postcolonial context has addressed and resisted colonialist practices in education/socialization processes. The case study addresses preliminary findings from a broader ethnography on the social organization of music learning from the standpoint of music teachers. The ethnography…