Against the backdrop of teaching being downplayed in higher education, this study unravels how the university faculty members' implementation of teaching excellence is influenced by the interplay of objective structural conditionings and subjective internal deliberations, drawing upon Margaret Archer's social realist framework and her distinction…

Previous research has examined how mismatched dispositions within a divided or 'cleft' habitus are subjectively experienced but has not adequately explored nor theorized the variety of ways in which the dispositional disjunctures that progressively give rise to a cleft habitus are initially generated. Combining recent sociological work on…

Despite proliferating attention within the social sciences toward the sources and consequences of climate change and environmental crises, educational sociologists have been slow to confront ecological questions. This omission may seem surprising given the prominence of global perspectives within the field. However, we argue, such a focus is…

Bourdieu argued that class-based inequalities influenced educational outcomes and this paper illustrates the relevance of Bourdieu's concepts in understanding one specific community. A wider study by the authors used the concept of habitus to identify factors which impacted on the participants--predominantly white working-class…

Oxford and Cambridge receive much criticism over the social selectivity of their intake, to which both institutions have responded by admitting more applicants from non-traditional backgrounds. While university-led outreach strategies appear to have made a difference in diversifying their student body, little is known about the role of student-led…

Social reproduction theory names at least two distinct traditions, one of which has a long history in educational research. Social reproduction theory in "education" emerged out of a concern with education's relationship to capitalist inequalities. By contrast, social reproduction "feminism" developed out of feminist…

Researchers interested in new modes of social control and regulation through pedagogic means have increasingly drawn on Bernstein's theories of social control through pedagogic means and the emergence of a totally pedagogised society. This article explores this aspect of the Bernsteinian theoretical project by extrapolating and contrasting…

Accelerationism is a theoretical movement that seeks to mobilise reason and technological development as a strategy for moving beyond capitalism. The first wave of accelerationism took the effects of capitalism at their most pernicious and suggested that they have not gone far enough. More recent work has complicated this project and explored…

This paper argues that the sociology of education would benefit from greater integration with social scientific research focused on morality. This body of research offers a rich set of resources that can illuminate and extend many of the sociology of education's intellectual concerns. In support of this argument, the paper draws on data from…

In 2016 the world witnessed a consolidation of a western brand of political 'populist authoritarianism' that is anti-globalisationalist and creates 'shared objects of loathing' in the popular imagination. This article engages with the implications of this affective and masculinist 'post-truth' era for higher education and analyses the narratives…

This article investigates how risk perception amongst teachers within an outdoor educational initiative, Forest School, both shape and are shaped by their understandings of childhood, pedagogy and their own professional identity. Drawing on a social constructionist perspective in theorising risk and childhood, the article argues that contemporary,…

This article critically considers the promise of computer adaptive testing (CAT) and digital data to provide better and quicker data that will improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of schooling. In particular, it uses the case of the Australian NAPLAN test that will become an online, adaptive test from 2016. The article argues that…

Modern societies are characterised by forms of acceleration, which influence social processes. Sociologist Hartmut Rosa has systematised temporal structures by focusing on three categories of social acceleration: technical acceleration, acceleration of social change, and acceleration of the pace of life. All three processes of acceleration are…

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…

Nearly two decades ago, Ladwig outlined the theoretical and methodological implications of Bourdieu's concept of the social field for sociological analyses of educational policy and school reform. The current analysis extends this work to consider the sociological import of one of the most ubiquitous forms of educational reform found around…