This volume discusses how the lay-person responds to written appeals to his intelligence and feelings with particular emphasis on education and culture. The author indicates a possible approach to the task of investigation rather than all that can be done with the method employed. The second part deals with educational questions relevant to the evidence and examines the social implications of this evidence.

Although the different contributions to this book range over a wide spectrum of substantive issues, they share a common interest. This is a concern to explore the ways in which notions of the relations between theory and practice, between belief and action, can be used to develop three kinds of sensitivity in the sociology of education. A sensitivity towards how school systems are created, maintained and made to function; towards developing a more refined, critical and constructive awareness of the reliability and validity of descriptions, analyses and explanations offered in this field of...

The manner in which we variously come to an understanding of our world presents problems for us all, but the unified method by which we ought best to acquire such knowledge represents the particular problem of contemporary education. This important book seeks to explore some of the underlying practises and assumptions that go to produce and sustain both such sets of activities.

As a result of its concerns with the social organization of knowledge at all levels, the sociology of education has become a central form of much contemporary sociological theory. All the papers in this...

In this volume a streamed school is studied in detail and parents responses are recorded. Eleven plus is (and has been) under criticism, but many children are selected by a seven plus because they are streamed into A, B or C classes. Few children escape the label once it is pinned on them less than six in one hundred change their stream. The study shows that on a national sample the date on which a child is born irrespective of his ability affects his or her stream at the age of 7 and his results at eleven plus. Finally ten streamed schools are compared, academically and socially, with ten...

Among particular issues discussed in this book are the problems of the cultural disadvantaged, the problems of devising psychological tests which are not biased towards any particular culture, the problems of minority groups of children in education and the relationship between heritability and teachability.

This book provides a systematic and detailed analysis of class relations in advanced capitalist societies as a basis for understanding both class differences in educational practices and the relative effects of class and other social background factors on public attitudes toward education. Secondly, the book offers an empirically-grounded summary of the contending educational ideologies in advanced capitalism, through a discourse analysis of the public statements of spokes-persons for major class groupings. Thirdly, using the data from several public opinion surveys in Ontario, profiles of...

This interdisciplinary textbook provides an introduction to the many theoretical developments and controversies which took place in the sociology and politics of education during the 1970s and 80s. The book

• Discusses the arguments concerning humanist and structuralist Marixsm.
• Provides a clear and concise introduction to structuralism and post-structuralism (work of Derrida, Lacan and Foucault) and theorises in the ways they contribute to Marxism or are subversive of it.
• Relates these theoretical perspectives to education and the...

A large number of pupils are, or are liable to become, disaffected with their schooling. In this comprehensive account of the problem, Ken Reid suggests that school can and should do much more to prevent and overcome disaffected behaviour, as manifested by such factors as absenteeism, disruption and underachievement. The book covers disruptive behaviour in its broader context and examines the search for an explanation within schools themselves. Formal and multidisciplinary approaches to the problem are also fully treated. The author has drawn on his considerable school and research...

At the time of its original publication this book was the first major survey of the nature of the difficulties that children with special educational needs experience in the classroom context of mainstream junior schools. The book is based on research involving interviews with heads and teachers, and on extensive observation of children in junior classrooms. The research is related to the report of the Warnock Committee and to problems of definition and assessment in the area of special education. The book describes the views which junior school teachers have of special educational needs...

This volume considers how various sociological approaches to the exploration of the conditions of teachers might be co-ordinated so as to produce a more penetrating and reliable understanding of the main dimensions of teachers work. Three dimensions are selected for special attention: historical, institutional and interactional contexts in which teachers operate. In different way the papers in this collection explore the contribution such an investigation of these contexts can make to our understanding of wider educational concerns.