Complex Instruction (CI) is a set of principles and practices for designing and facilitating equitable groupwork. Originally developed to advance racial equity in United States primary schools, CI is now used to support students of many ages across many disciplines. We report on a systematic review of CI-focused research in the U.S. up to the year…

This essay starts with the classical assertion of Niklas Luhmann that there exist no pedagogic technologies, but takes up parts of his conceptual understanding of technology to describe and understand mass schooling in the nineteenth century. It is argued that using his terminology and focusing on "technologies of schooling" brings into…

University examinations categorise students according to their individual achievements determined by teaching staff. This procedure serves the elicitation and certification of student knowledge and thus reproduces academic hierarchies. Drawing on empirical evidence from ethnographic fieldwork in Engineering and History departments, this article…

The 'knowledge turn' in curriculum studies has drawn attention to the central role that knowledge of the disciplines plays in education, and to the need for new thinking about how we understand knowledge and knowledge-building. "Knowing History in Schools" explores these issues in the context of teaching and learning history through a…

This Teaching Note examines the implementation of a full-semester course model for digital exchanges between students across countries. The model, Global Understanding, created and administered by East Carolina University, is a platform for humanistic pedagogy that dovetails seamlessly with sociological content, methods, and principles. Through an…

This paper seeks to further develop and refine a theory of the ways in which artefacts created by humans direct and deflect the attention of groups and individuals as they act in specific institutional settings. It draws on the writings of Basil Bernstein and Lev Vygotsky. These are two bodies of theory that have strengths which, to some extent,…

The arrival of guest workers in Denmark from the late 1960s meant new political questions of how to receive their children in school. During the 1970s, the heyday of welfare state reforms, a new area of welfare state politics and policy emerged concerning these children: an education politics of migrant pupils accompanied by knowledge being…

National styles of 'doing sociology' exist, all celebrating respective 'founding fathers'. Timid, British pragmatism has tended to misrecognise Durkheim ever since our barely transcended early 20th century origins. In relatively low-status teacher education, even when sociology of education was popularly taught from the late sixties through the…

In modern Western education, the visual arts have come to hold a problematic position in the school curriculum. Art is often classified by school leaders, students, parents and even teachers as different from other subjects; sometimes viewed as almost magical, enabling students to explore and develop an innate creativity; sometimes simply…

Parlo Singh is a leading contemporary sociologist of education and world-renowned "Bernstein" scholar. In this interview with Stephen Heimans, Parlo discusses important aspects of her teaching and research journey. She highlights the interconnections between these and discusses her relationship with Basil Bernstein's oeuvre and the work…

Disparities in the technology practices, skills and knowledge of school students still exist, despite widespread investment, and use in schools. In order to understand why inequalities remain, we first need a more nuanced understanding of students' technology practice, including understanding how their backgrounds, circumstances and experiences…

This paper considers the sociology of education (SOE) as a modern human science. It suggests that the SOE is mired in a set of unreflexive, redemptive, Enlightment rationalities, and explores the messy relationships of the sociology with education that result from this. It is argues that the sociology of education has consistently failed to…

Classroom sociology is a powerful discipline that helps students develop a sense of identity, achieve success, and experience well-being while building a strong community in the classroom. Teachers who can see beneath the surface and are aware of classroom sociology create a better and more just learning environment for learners, especially in…

In this paper, we consider the intensifying pressures on critical research and academic integrity in a research policy context that has come to be increasingly dominated by an instrumentalist mind-set. Using sensitising resources drawn from Geoff Whitty's critique of the 'what works' agenda, we reflect on the current conditions of academic labour…

This paper critiques the emergence of micro-credentials in higher education. It argues that micro-credentials build on the discourse of employability skills and 21st century skills within human capital theory, and that they increase the potential of human capital theory to 'discipline' the HE curriculum to align it more closely with putative…