In education, the areas of critical policy studies, critical cultural studies, and critical curriculum studies all owe a good deal to a number of people. Among them are Paulo Freire, Raymond Williams, Pierre Bourdieu, Basil Bernstein, and Antonio Gramsci. Yet no such listing would be complete without the inclusion of Stuart Hall. The two books I…

Stephen Ball's work has deservedly received a good deal of attention. In this article, I detail a number of tasks in which the critical sociologist of education--as a "public intellectual"--should engage. I then place Ball's work within these tasks and evaluate his contributions to them. In the process, I show that one of the…

Recently critical scholars have shown a renewed interest in spatial relations in educational contexts. In this essay we use selections from Gulson and Symes's edited volume "Spatial theories of education" as a point of departure to examine what spatial analysis can contribute to the critical education traditions. We argue that, when done…

When the U.S. government released its 2007 census figures in January 2010, it reported that 12% of the U.S. population--more than 38 million people--were foreign born. First-generation people were now one out of every eight persons in the nation, with 80% coming from Latin America and Asia. This near-record transformation, one in which diasporic…

In the elections of 2006 and 2008, progressive and liberal groups in the United States broke through key bulwarks of the Right to capture some of the highest hills on the political landscape. Although progressives and liberals now control key positions, the Right still holds wide swaths of terrain and still exercises considerable power in shaping…

Discusses the inadequacy of correspondence as a theory of the relationship both among all social institutions and between the school and other powerful socioeconomic forces. Notes implications for educational action. (Author/MK)

This article critiques "Schooling and Work in the Democratic State" by Martin Carnoy and Henry M. Levin. The book examined the public school as more than an institution that reproduces unequal class relations of capitalist society, but also as a product of conflict between the dominant and the dominated in the paid workplace. (MT)

Examines the notion of community in terms of language forms and specialized knowledge, and in terms of the social organization of the members of discipline groups. (Author)

The assumptions underlying recent work on the relationship between ideology and school experience are discussed and compared to the traditions which now predominate in curriculum research. Hypotheses are posed about what curricular knowledge is accorded high status by our society and its economic and cultural effects. (Author/SJL)

Discusses Paulo Freire's theories about the nature of differential power and the effects of the politics of exclusion and oppression. Contends it is not possible to understand "reforms" in education and society without placing race at the center of one's critical analysis. (Contains 5 notes and 31 references.) (Author/MLF)

Offers an analysis of the various national reports on education issued between 1983 and 1986. Argues that as a group, the reports are as much political as they are educational documents. Contends that the recommendations of the reports are built upon a vision of the future economy that is wrong and that the educational solutions offered are…

Provides an overview of the main theories, developments, and literature of critically-oriented sociology. Pays particular attention to the politics of meaning including critical discourse analysis, identity politics, racial formation, and political economy and the labor process. Concludes with a discussion of the tensions between postmodern and…