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.
This article is part of the BERA Blog special issue ‘Researching the Curriculum in schools and colleges: Practice, Professionalism and Innovation’ (read more). Danielle Pée’s BERA blog post (5 April 2018) resonated with a key theme... [...]
There have recently been calls to adopt approaches to the study of the social world that deny the need to address ontological and epistemological issues. Advocates for these approaches give the impression that they are operating outside of and in... [...]
Research is an integral part of many postgraduate programmes, and in many disciplines, such as health and education, research is frequently related to the professional role. In programmes such as the Doctorate in Professional Practice (DProf),... [...]
This symposium aims to explore the relevance of theories of neoliberalism to contemporary education research and to intervening upon and shaping education to create positive change. A key focus of the symposium will be to address whether... [...]
Today’s educational policy is co-produced, through policy bureaucrat’s words and technocrat’s lines of code. The global move towards digital governance and the digitising of educational practices relies heavily on the presence of software... [...]
The under-achievement of white working class boys in England is well documented. They are the lowest academic achievers at the age of 16 for any socio-economic class grouping (Sutton Trust, 2016), with only 24% of them achieving 5+ A*–C GCSEs... [...]
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