This article suggests three orientations within sociology toward issues of morality and character development. The first stems from Durkheim, one where sociological tools diagnose the operation of any society and its constituent parts, including typifications of the individual. This tradition holds that sociologists can help diagnose…

In contemporary societies, schools play an important role in reproducing the social system. Those who want to maintain the status quo find social reproduction desirable, while more radical scholars are critical regarding the social inequality and injustice perpetuated through this reproduction process. Traditionally, schools and families have…

This article explores the widespread use of the 'lessons' of the era of the Second World War in Europe since 1945. This usage proved to be a resilient element of European cultural values, especially in Western Europe during the era of the Cold War. However, with the emergence of a more diverse and pluralist Europe since 1989, so this form of civic…

In this article, I offer a critical reading of the higher education field-imaginary and its orienting assumptions, inspired by decolonial and abolitionist critiques. These critiques identify the constitutive and ongoing violence that underwrites modern institutions of higher education and, thus, the higher education field itself. In so doing, they…

This study presents an analysis of hidden elitism in music education through the free choice argument -- that individuals are fundamentally free to choose to study music -- as a meritocratic power structure. Qualitative Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is applied to understand music education as a social system with a special structure in which its…

Education acts as an important catalyst for socioeconomic and democratic evolution in society and is a critical tool for building an equitable system. In our paper, we have historicized one of the most important educational policies, viz. Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SAMSA) in India that carries large expectations to minimize the educational divide.…

In this article, David I. Backer introduces the politics of recitation as a third realm for research on recitation pedagogy, in addition to process and product. Recitation is the pattern of classroom talk where a teacher asks a question, a student responds to the question, and the teacher evaluates the response. Research on classroom talk shows…

Since the mid-twentieth century, higher education has been subject to spectacular growth. While the expansion of higher education is undoubtedly a general trend, its actual characteristics in terms of its specific conditions and driving forces vary by context. In this article, our aim is to develop such a socio-political historical narrative of…

Unlike a conventional reading of Bourdieu, this article focuses on his work with regard to the transformation of social structure. In the context of a rereading, from an educational theory perspective, the article proposes an approach that allows for the linking of empirically informed social theory, on the one hand, and biography research…

This article synthesizes Marxian conceptions of identity construction within capitalist relations of production with the Wittgensteinian notion of "language games" to offer a more appropriate relational framework within which scholars ought to understand the Black-White academic achievement gap in America, the United Kingdom, and…

This article compares the relationships of social structure and personality of urban China during "privatization" to those of urban Poland and Ukraine during their transitions from socialism to nascent capitalism. These relationships are similar in pattern and nearly as strong in magnitude for China as for Poland, and stronger than for…

This essay explores how social psychologically the social structure of capitalist inequality has given rise to the Black-White achievement gap. This critical understanding is a reinterpretation of the "burden of acting White" hypothesis, and suggests that research on the achievement gap should focus on how the Black-White achievement gap is more a…

Summarizes a study that expands the contextual parameters of effective schools research by defining the school district as a macro social system containing individual schools as microsocial systems. Analyzes principals' and superintendents' perceptions of six identified effective schools to determine the significance of the superintendent's role…

Banks (2002) stated that to implement multicultural education successfully, we must think of the school as a social system. Therefore, if educational equity and excellence are to be provided to all students, a systemic Total School Environment [Banks (2001) "Cultural diversity and education: Foundations curriculum and teaching, 4th ed." Allyn and…

The social stratification process is analyzed from a theoretical point of view, with assumptions tested with empirical evidence from the International Institute for Educational Planning project in developing countries or with information obtained through the researcher's prior studies on industrialized countries. The significant, and often…