Thirteen years after the publication of the book "Social Network Theory and Educational Change," what can we say about the evolution of research connecting social network theory and analysis with teacher professional development? In this evolution, we can witness a conceptual shift in the literature connecting teacher professional…

In the latest two decades, there has been an increasing number of publications in education studies drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT). However, the uptake of ANT in education studies was not immediate, and the investigations on educational leadership through ANT have been rare. With the aim of promoting the study of educational leadership…

According to Niklas Luhmann, causality is both an impossibility and a necessity in education. On the one hand, the task of the teacher is an impossible one, because teaching as communication is a closed system that cannot determine the learning of pupils' psychical system in any causal sense. On the other hand, one cannot practice as a teacher…

This paper argues that Young and Muller's 'powerful knowledge' requires a more extensive conceptualization of the relation between knowledge and practice. However, rather than focus on the 'practice turn' in social theory as Carlgren has suggested, it is argued that what Rouse terms a 'normative practice' can help explicate the specialized…

The aim of this article is to analyze and discuss the role that sociological theory plays in music education scholarship. Using books published internationally and explicitly on the topic of the sociology of music education during the recent decade as well as abstracts published in the programs from the 2017 and 2019 International Symposium on the…

Research that employs theory provides a framework and structure in which complex phenomenon, can be understood. While many theories have been developed to study people's technology usage, the plurality of perspectives offered are complex to navigate due to the diverse range of problems and topics addressed and the varied theoretical foundations…

This critical qualitative study focused on what are the factors that contribute to high learner performance at a public school in South Africa. Purposive sampling was used and the data was produced via interviews with the participants (the principal, ten teachers, five ex learners and two parents) as well as observations of various school…

This article gives a historical-philosophical overview of three generations of pragmatist thinking centered around the question of democracy. It serves as an introduction and contextualization to the papers that develop a third generation pragmatic point of view in the remainder of the special issue. The perspective is from one American-trained…

Mathematics education is not mathematics, it makes a basic use of highly specialized kinds of mathematical knowledge. The modern world feels a crisis of proper mathematics education in any nation. Realistic Mathematics Education is a domain-specific instruction theory for mathematics. This paper introduces realistic mathematics education (RME) and…

This article takes up an ANTian sensibility to explore the enactment of a policy for educational collaboration in one region in the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand (New Zealand). The case offers potential for considering the benefits of a sociology of associations (Latour 2005/2007): a Treaty-based bicultural nation, school atomisation…

This paper reads Marx's distinction between the method of inquiry and presentation as distinct and Marxist pedagogical logics that take the form of learning and studying. After articulating the differences and their current conceptualizations in educational theory, I turn to different interpretations of the "Grundrisse" and…

This qualitative study located in a critical interpretivist paradigm focused on what are the factors that contribute to high learner performance at a public school in South Africa. The data was produced via interviews with the participants as well as observations of various school activities and documents. Artistic licence was used and the data…

Although many researchers agree that teaching is complex and contextually situated, dominant conceptions of teacher learning, and the enactment of such learning in practice, tend to be linear and reductionist. Because simplistic conceptualisations of teaching activity have far-reaching impact on teachers, students, and school systems, generating a…

Niklas Luhmann's late concept of inclusion/exclusion in world society compensates for the lack of a systems theory of social differentiation, but ultimately remains incomplete. Moreover, it is remarkable that Luhmann apparently never linked the inclusion/exclusion concept to his late theory of the education system. The following considerations…

For several decades, Western universities have been subject to wide-ranging structural, financial and ideological changes. These changes have problematised afresh the meaning of academic identity as evidenced by the emergence of a substantial, international, anglophone research literature. This article examines how the idea of academic identity…