Conventional approaches to causation in the social sciences draw on approaches in the Philosophy of Science in which a causal force acts on cases and generates change in the form of events. This relies on just one of the Aristotelian conceptions of cause - efficient cause - what brings the effect in to being. We should also pay attention to Final…

The English language is the most widely-spoken language in the world. This fact deserves serious consideration for educators at all levels of the education system, but more so for those who are tasked with the teaching of English to learners whose Mother Tongue is not English. Globalisation, the internationalisation of education and migratory…

Sociologists are engaging in a long-overdue reckoning about the place of the traditional canon in social theory courses and pedagogy. Instructors are revising their syllabi to include a more diverse set of authors while "provincializing" classics that have long been taught as universal. We confront the question of how to teach contested…

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…

This paper aims to explore the relationship between Karl Marx's concept of justice and Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach. Nusbaum follows the Aristotelian idea of man as a political animal, which is intrinsically consistent with Marx's view of human nature, but she provides us with a new normative perspective to reconsider Marxism. When she…

Although students rely on social solidarity in their everyday lives, they generally fail to acknowledge its existence. An active learning class exercise, conducted within approximately 35 minutes, introduces sociology students to Emile Durkheim's concept of solidarity and the distinction between its mechanical and organic forms. Some groups of…

This article aims to develop enhanced conceptions of the motivational drives that may be imperilled by their encounter with new forms of governance in higher education. Of particular concern are the motivational drives behind creative scientific pursuits associated with the humanities, and their vulnerability in the face of metrics governance and…

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…

Learning analytics platforms (LAPs) have become important modes of anticipatory governance in education. Educational futures are governed by utilizing various forms of learning analytics to track student data over time, suggesting that school leaders and teachers are expected to improve school quality by engaging with digital presentations of…

The dynamics of higher education have changed as a result of online learning. However, it can be challenging for teachers to effectively engage students online. Furthermore, limited research about the relationship between presence and online student engagement is a social problem that impacts the quality of online nursing education. The purpose of…

The predominant conceptualization of scientific literacy occurs on the micro scale of an individual person. However, scientific literacy can also be exhibited at the meso scale by groups of people in communities of place, practice, or interest. What comprises this community level scientific literacy (CSL) is both understudied and undertheorized.…

Inclusion is constantly referenced in educational institutions' mission and values statements. Despite their purpose of guiding the institution, these brief paragraphs usually create more questions than answers regarding the who, what, and how of inclusion work. This article applies a queered critical discourse studies lens to a manifest content…

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…

Luhmann's theory allows for a reflection on teaching as interaction system. According to Luhmann, the interaction system of teaching accomplishes the function of the education system, i.e. transforming psychic systems in persons. The education system fixes the social structures of teaching, i.e. conveyance and evaluation of knowledge. However, the…

Previous theoretical frameworks used to research and explain creative design processes tend to privilege individual expression and not address the context in which the process occurs. This is problematic due to the ways in which creative activities are embedded in and shaped by socio-cultural and historic contexts. In this article we focus on the…