Abstract
Education in a New Society: Renewing the Sociology of Education, edited by Jal Mehta and Scott Davies, is a call for sociologists of education to move beyond the heavily researched topic of inequality by considering new theoretical lenses through which to view the institution of education, by covering new topics, and by looking at old topics in new ways, as suggested by the three sections into which the book is divided. This call is timely, and the book provides interesting directions down which researchers could travel. The book is something of a tease—it provides suggestions for how new theory can be developed and tested, snippets of new research topics, and some ideas for how to look at old topics in new ways; and, like any good novel, I suppose, it leaves the reader wanting much more.
To set the stage, Mehta and Davies give a comprehensive history of the development of the field that is the sociology of education. This chapter is quite useful, as it becomes clear how the field became structured in such a way as to focus on stratification and inequality. While the field was largely undefined and not well regarded before the 1960s, it was the famous Coleman report that set the trajectory for the development of the sociology of education. This study, along with the Wisconsin Model of Status Attainment, the seminal theoretical work of Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis and of Randall Collins, followed by the work of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu, and the classic ethnographic studies of Jay MacLeod and Paul Willis, laid the foundation for later research that centered on a couple of questions. Does—and how does—education reproduce inequality? What is the relationship between family socioeconomic status and educational achievement?
I would argue that when the sociology of education broadened to look at racial and gender inequality, it adopted these same types of questions and a similar framework for answering them. The result of the dominance of these works in the field is that articles in the flagship journals (like Sociology of Education) are focused on a few narrow and heavily researched questions and are mostly quantitative. Mehta and Davies argue, though, that there have been such dramatic changes in the institution of education in the past several decades—in its delivery, its expansion, and its influence on other professions and the non-economic aspects of adult lives, such as health and marriage—that the field needs to look beyond the questions it traditionally answers to address these phenomena. Their chapter identifies some under-studied topics in the sociology of education, including school improvement, critical education, higher education, and new institutionalism, that researchers could pay more attention to; and it also recognizes fields with which the sociology of education could mingle, like the sociology of organizations, politics, and culture. The editors call for a more extensive view of education, and the sections that follow offer three ways in which the field could expand.
The first section of the book discusses theoretical approaches that could be better developed. The beginning chapter in this section, “Social Theory and the Coming Schooled Society,” by David Baker, is an ambitious presentation of new theoretical directions the sociology of education could take. Baker argues that the dramatic expansion and interpenetration of schooling in other institutions is a revolution that sociologists of education have largely overlooked. This revolution in education is the result of its expansion to include more groups and more of the life course, its ongoing connections to workforce training and development, and its power as a means of legitimating knowledge and expertise.
The institution of education itself has also changed in dramatic ways that value cognitive performance (like problem-solving skills), privilege a culture of science, devalue vocationalism, and espouse universalism. Baker urges sociologists of education to apply John Meyer and colleagues’ neo-institutional theory to more fully explore this revolution of the “schooled society.” He pushes scholars to think more carefully about how the “schooled society” came to be and how this schooled society is reflected in our everyday, taken-for-granted cultural values and beliefs. He also encourages those who study education to theorize more explicitly how education not only is shaped by a changing economy but also plays a role in shaping how workplaces change. These new directions are exciting; and, beyond the work of Meyer, few theories have taken on these large challenges.
The next chapter, by Davies and Mehta, “The Deepening Interpenetration of Education in Modern Life,” follows Baker’s chapter well. The authors conceptualize this interpenetration as resulting from an “intensifying logic,” a process that extends the reach of schools into other institutions, and an “accommodating logic” that describes how education responds to the needs of groups from new populations and social spheres. Thus, the processes are reciprocal. As these two processes unfold, education and other institutions become more tightly connected. These tight connections can trigger a “logic of resistance” that engenders skepticism of educational credentials and expertise, which in turn influences stakeholders in the institution of education to legitimize their expertise through the creation of greater boundaries. The process is dialectical: interpenetration occurs and is resisted over and over.
The authors give a few examples of what this interpenetration and resistance may look like. First, they describe the vertical expansions of schooling that have occurred as educational institutions encompass more of an individual’s life course—from preschool through continuing adult education and job training. This intensification of education has dramatically affected parenting practices such that a main focus of parenting is preparing children for educational competition, particularly to get into prestigious colleges or universities and perhaps to later apply to law, medical, or graduate school. Parenting for middle-class parents is about “cultivating children,” as Lareau (2003) so richly described in her ethnographic study. This focus on the importance of schooling then leads to changes in the housing market. Davies and Mehta also describe the connections between educational institutions and the business world. While specialized fields and certificates in higher education (event planning, wine-making, and others) grow to accommodate the demands of those occupations, the logics of the business world that value profit generation and efficiency more fully describe the decision-making of universities. School choice has brought these same logics to the K–12 educational system. All of these changes have been met with resistance, from populists who complain about “educated, liberal elites” to parents who protest that they have no time for themselves. This resistance is not enough to reverse or stop the interpenetration that has occurred and is occurring, and education continues to become an even more important institution in determining social divides.
In the next chapter, Steven Brint talks about an “institutional geography,” with “trade routes,” “imports,” “exports,” and “metacognitive metropoles.” Brint looks at how “knowledge structures” (interrelated concepts, results, and procedures) are “traded” across institutions. As an example of an “import,” Brint looks at the practice of Total Quality Management (TQM) among businesses. While not developed by educators, business schools have taken up TQM as a topic for research, which has led to innovations and extensions of the practice. Academics often export their testing methods and results to fields like medicine and business, but also media and popular culture, and these may influence practices that can lead to transformations in those fields. Brint also acknowledges “barriers to trade” that can occur through corrupted goods, failed exchanges, and actual blockades, often because of political opposition. Brint asserts that in this trade exchange, the academic world is “the home of the ultimate cultural authority (and the privileged work space) that permits knowledge generated both in universities and elsewhere to be examined, proven, deepened, revised, or rejected on the basis of evidence” (p. 137). In this way, academia is the “metacognitive metropole.”
The last two chapters in this section provide examples of cases where new theorizing about education is useful. Tim Hallett and Matt Gougherty, for example, consider the case of the growth of Masters of Public Administration (MPA) and Masters of Public Policy (MPP) programs in the United States. They suggest that their institutionalization and expansion can be best explained by “inhabited institutionalism.” “Inhabited institutionalism” combines macro-level new institutionalism, which is concerned with diffusion of forms and ideas across institutions, and micro-level symbolic interactionism, which looks at how meaning is made through individuals’ interaction with each other and with institutions. MPA and MPP programs are infused with the logics and discourse of “managerialism,” which derive from the fields for which they are training students; however, the interactions between students and between students and instructors reshape the meanings of what it means to be a “professional” as a student of policy.
The second section of the book provides “substantive contributions”—empirical cases that are not frequent topics in the sociology of education that provide new directions for study or new theoretical applications. Shamus Khan makes a case for the study of elites in sociology of education, as an “exceptional case.” Khan argues that sociology in general has a lot to learn from looking at exceptional cases (in his research, the very elite at prestigious boarding schools) because these cases can expose the limits of our classifications of cases as well as magnify patterns in relationships. Examining elite boarding school students, for instance, brings into relief how perceptions of inequality have changed. As boarding schools and other elite institutions open the doors to more students with lower socioeconomic status and students of color, they are perceived to be more “open”; that is, admission is less about inherited status. This leads to a perception that those who are admitted to and complete boarding school have earned their status on the basis of their hard work and their merit. Status inequality is more and more perceived to result from meritocratic processes and less from inherited privilege.
Richard Arum and Amanda Cook look at the historical development of assessment processes in K–12 and higher education. They argue that rather than accept assessment results at face value when we use them in our research, sociologists of education should examine how these tools resulted from particular historical, cultural, and political moments, and from technological developments. Assessments have become entrenched in educational practice, but their meanings and uses change over time with developments in gathering and analyzing big data and in online education.
Amy Binder considers how organizational culture and structure shape students’ political identities, finding that the expression of ideological conservatism on campus is shaped by perceptions of anonymity and belonging. Students at a school with the pseudonym “Western Flagship University” staged provocative events because they were relatively anonymous and did not feel tightly tied to their peers at the institution. Those who attended “Eastern Elite Private” felt part of a “special” community and thus were far more civil to their peers, with whom they identified and whom they respected as a part of their elite community. Binder’s research nicely illustrates the editors’ call to take institutions and cultures seriously.
In an intriguing piece on “Digital Badges” (digitized records of individuals’ achievements and skills), Michael Olneck calls into question the future applicability of degrees as being the credentials that “matter” in one’s eventual labor market (and other) outcomes. In an interesting extension of neo-institutional theory, he sees the adoption of digital badges as potentially reducing the power of education as an institution. As people can define themselves by the skills and competencies they hold (which are designed to be the same regardless of the institution from which they were acquired), education becomes more individualistic and consumer-oriented. In this way, educational institutions lose their autonomy and authority.
Finally, the last chapter in this section, by John Skrentny and Natalie Novick, also extends neo-institutional theory to explore the question of why U.S. universities seek to attract foreign students, especially in an era when other immigrants are not being welcomed. The authors suggest that foreign students solve three problems for universities: they prove to the world that the university is a “world-class” institution; they show their competitiveness on the neoliberal educational marketplace; and they provide revenue to universities (because they are not subsidized like domestic students) and cheap labor for otherwise expensive-to-conduct research projects. Collectively, the works in this second section of the book provide empirical examples of new (or gently used) theoretical directions.
The third section of the book, titled “Old Themes, New Perspectives,” provides chapters with fresh perspectives on well-traversed topics in the field like socioeconomic stratification and racial inequality. David Karen, who has long been concerned with class inequality in education, urges researchers to think about how the proliferation of school forms encourages society to think of schools as “the answer” to rising inequality, while also cementing the strength of the ideology of meritocracy over other discourses that emphasize social welfare and justice.
Janice Aurini and Cathlene Hillier take a new look at educational disparities by socioeconomic background, particularly the way families adapt to new organizational forms. Rather than focusing on “deficits” in families of less advantaged socioeconomic background, they highlight upper-middle-class families’ strategies as responsible for maintaining and even widening disparities. Upper-middle-class families have increased their investments (in terms of money, time, and resources) in their children by large margins compared to less advantaged families. These families are more adept at managing changing requirements in the contest that is education, and these families are better able to act as consumers managing the “choices” that education provides in the form of finding housing in particular neighborhoods, finding private and charter schooling, and accessing programs for gifted education, special education, or other student needs.
Doug Downey continues with a similar argument: disparities between families are largely responsible for gaps by socioeconomic status between students, while schools tend to decrease these gaps. Downey urges researchers to look in places other than schools for some of the larger causes of gaps in educational outcomes and to implicate other institutions (like the medical and housing establishments) in their maintenance.
Shifting from inequalities in socioeconomic status to inequalities by race, John Diamond asks researchers to take a fresh look at how race is conceptualized in research in the field. Oftentimes, researchers focus on race as an individual-level characteristic that is associated with other individual- or family-level characteristics like parents’ education, family income, or wealth. Researchers treat race as if it is “held” by an individual. Race, though, is really built in the interactions between people and between people and institutions. Race is constructed through institutional practices like segregation or differential placement in AP courses, and through interactions between students and between teachers and students. Diamond also urges education researchers to consider that race is a “status” and, like other forms of “status,” those who are advantaged will use their resources and power to attempt to hoard opportunities to protect that advantage.
Natasha Kumar Warikoo encourages researchers of race and ethnicity in the sociology of education to explore unique cases by selecting on the dependent variable—like high-achieving groups or those who are involved in the criminal justice system. She suggests researchers focus more on diversity within racial groups. There are new topics she finds promising: how race and meritocracy intersect; how, why, and when Asian Americans are educationally successful; and how elites of underrepresented groups experience education. She also urges researchers of education to pay more attention to the ways critical race theory can inform our understanding of how both explicit and subtle racism in schools influences students’ experiences and outcomes.
The final two chapters present challenges to the sociology of education research community: focus less on universal causal relationships and more on historical and contextually shaped relationships between institutions and students; move beyond our cautious comfort zones where we worry about “blaming victims” and our own moral and ideological identities to really engage arguments about culture and educational inequality (Charles Payne); and see educational research as both an empirical and a moral project (Mitchell Stevens). How a society fashions its educational institutions says a lot about what a society values, and that is a topic very worthy of study.
My only small quibble with this volume is that sometimes it feels as if the authors “protest too much” that the field is stagnant. The point is well taken that the flagship journal, Sociology of Education, publishes on a somewhat limited number of topics and largely limits itself to articles using quantitative methods. However, part of the reason for the quantitative focus may be that quantitative methods are better suited to shorter, more circumscribed articles, while ethnographic and other qualitative and theoretical inquiries are better suited to books. And, indeed, in my own classes, it is these more comprehensive books that I assign and about which students get excited. Some of the best received and most animating work in the field now meets many of the criteria the contributors lay out: works by Amy Binder, Shamus Khan, Jessica Calarco, Laura Hamilton, Eve Ewing, and many other new authors engage culture, examine outlier cases, and take institutional structures and culture seriously. The contributors to the volume recognize and applaud this movement, and, while there are still underexamined theoretical approaches and new topics, I think these new works are an indicator of the very rich future of the field.
This volume has both breadth and depth. It is full of new ideas, concepts, extensions of theory, topics for study, and ways of looking at well-worn questions. It is a lot to digest, but at the same time, it leaves the reader ready for more. I am hopeful that a new generation will take up the call of many of the authors in this volume (or continue to take up the call) because these new directions will greatly invigorate and enrich the field.