Special Interest Group
The Social Theory and Education SIG aims to support and develop theoretically informed educational research, to engage with and facilitate new social theory and to explore the relationships between theory-work and research. Social theory here refers to the use of theoretical frameworks to explain and analyse social action, social meanings and large-scale social structures.
The field is interdisciplinary, drawing ideas from a range of contributing disciplines but particularly from politics, philosophy and sociology. Social theory aims to develop concepts and ontologies that can provide social research with conceptual and methodological tools for analytical and interpretational work.
The SIG plans to accommodate and encourage work which applies and develops ideas and concepts from social theory to education research, as well as exploring and critiquing the contributions to education of major social theorists. Our primary focus is substantive research applications of social theory, but we will also seek to support the development of new theoretical work and reflexively consider the role of theory in relation to research and the analysis of data.
Associate Professor at Durham University
Cristina Costa is Associate Professor in the School of Education at Durham University. She has a strong interest in educational and digital practices and inequalities. She particularly interested in exploring the intersection of education and...
Professor of Education and Technology at De Montfort University
Richard Hall is Professor of Education and Technology at De Montfort University. A National Teaching Fellow, Richard directs the research and evaluation work of the Decolonising DMU project. He is the author of The Hopeless University:...
Associate Professor in Educational Leadership, Management & Governance at University of Bath
Dr Denise Mifsud is Associate Professor in Educational Leadership, Management and Governance at the University of Bath. She has many years of practitioner experience in education settings in both teaching and top-level leadership roles within the...
Following Covid-19's acute phase, educational researchers/practitioners have been forced to reconsider their work, cultures, and institutions in relation to crisis, including in the entangled...
Following the publication of the Palgrave International Handbook of Marxism and Education, this session will centre three international interventions, demonstrating how a range of contextualised...
The incoming editors of the British Educational Research Journal (BERJ) intend to publish a number of special issues during their tenure, which commences in January 2024. They are therefore...
In the past two or three decades there has been a fundamental shift from seeing higher education in essentially educative terms to seeing it almost exclusively in transactional terms. Young people...
Continue reading blog postFeminism is a concept and a practice. As a concept feminism is polysemic, semantically contested, networked, interactive, powerful and dynamic. An important binary that has had real effects in the...
Continue reading blog postThe United Nations Member States adopted The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in 2015. This Agenda continues to provide a global focus on peace and prosperity, both for people and the...
The future of academic publishing
The BERA Conference 2023 was held at the Conference Aston/ Aston University, 12-14 September 2023. We are pleased to announce the conference award winners. Please click below to view the ECR Best...
