In this paper, we offer a critique of neoliberal power from the perspective of the gendered, sexualised, raced and classed politics of motherhood in English universities. By using dialogical auto-ethnographic methods to examine our own past experiences as full-time employed mother-academics, we demonstrate how feminist academic praxis can not only…

Talcott Parsons is often identified as the "master" of mid-twentieth-century social theory. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, his writings were hardly any longer discussed, but mostly neglected. "The American University" is Parsons's last monograph published during his lifetime. On the basis of extensive archival research, this…

Significant attention has been paid to the forms and practices of effective school-university partnerships in recent times as they are commonly seen as a key element to improve the quality of teacher education programs and thus graduate teachers. However, analysis of the effectiveness of such partnerships has not been so evident. This article…

This commentary explores theoretical alternatives for viewing the problem identified by Volny Fages and Virginie Albe in their article entitled Social issues in nanoscience and nanotechnology Master's degrees: The socio-political stakes of curricular choices. An approach to social research is suggested that would render visible the associations…

The paper tackles the fundamental question of whether democracy has by now been turned into a meaningless liturgy of a past religion and proposes a Deweyan answer which points to the need to fully realize modernity in order to bring into existence a genuine democracy. By deploying an archaeological reading of "The Public and Its…

What is the place of social theory in mathematics education research, and what is it for? This special issue of "Educational Studies in Mathematics" offers insights on what could be the role of some sociological theories in a field that has historically privileged learning theories coming from psychology and mathematics as the main…

The process of Latino self-identification, both racially and ethnically, is of limited conversation among educators. The research on Latinos focuses on either their ethnic construction or absence of including a racial identification. This article focuses on the span of research about ethnicity and race for Latino groups.

Music is a human action (praxis), guided by intentionality, that embodies sociality. The many significant "social" values of music, however, get lost in high-minded but faulty claims that music's essential value is to promote aesthetic experience. A survey of some basic aesthetic premises demonstrates that claims for "proper"…

The notion of moral attention allows the recognition of fundamental aspects of ethical life ignored or neglected by mainstream ethical theories. It is central to the theories of several notable female ethicists and many of them identify the French philosopher Simone Weil as the source of the contemporary use of this concept which invites…

The author engages critical media education and norm-critical pedagogy to map out possible methods of critical engagement of students during interpretation of the pedagogical facets of "The Boxtrolls" (film--2014). The paper discusses rich analytical material that may be explored by employing "The Boxtrolls" story. The paper…

This article is the first and introductory article of this special issue. The article gives a societist account of the principles of partnership and recognition as they are encountered and experienced in practices in action research. A societist account of practices requires a social theory for understanding practices. Therefore, the article…

In 2014, Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-first Century" rocked the economic and political world, with its argument that inequality is destined to increase; in the field of education, however, this book has been almost entirely ignored. I argue that Piketty's treatise is relevant to educational theories for three reasons: his…

Grounded Theory is a systematic approach to social research that allows for new concepts and theories to emerge from gathered data, as opposed to relying on either established theory or personal conjecture to interpret social processes. Although Grounded Theory is a well-known method within social science literature, it is relatively unknown in…

Drawing from Albert Bandura's social cognitive theory, Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy and Hoy (1998) proposed an integrated model of teacher efficacy to aid the understanding of this complex construct. This framework, despite its richness and usefulness in framing teacher efficacy research within the education landscape, is barely examined in the…

In this paper I consider the adult focus of current mainstream gender theory. I relate this to how the concept of the heterosexual matrix originates in a social contract which excludes children from civil society. I argue that this exclusion is problematic both for theoretical reasons and from the perspective of children themselves. I start by…