Based on interviews with key actors in the policy-making process, this book maps the changes in education policy and policy making in the Thatcherite decade. The focus of the book is the 1988 Education Reform Act, its origins, purposes and effects, and it looks behind the scenes at the priorities of the politicians, civil servants and government advisers who were influential in making changes. Using direct quotations from senior civil servants and former secretaries of state it provides a fascinating insight into the way in which policy is made. The book focuses on real-life political conflicts, examining the way in which education policy was related to the ideal of society projected by Thatcherism. It looks in detail at the New Right government advisers and think tanks; the industrial lobby, addressing issues such as the National Curriculum, national testing and City Technical Colleges. The author sets these important issues within a clear theoretical framework which illuminates the whole process of policy making.

Critical Theorist Carlos Alberto Torres offers a political sociology of adult learning and education, based on Critical Social Theory and the always inspiring work of Paulo Freire. Empirically grounded and theoretically sophisticated, this new book follows the footsteps of his classic book published in the early nineties The Politics of Nonformal Education in Latin America. Torres book offers comparative and international sociological analyses of adult learning and education, an area in which there is an obsession with ‘practice’ and an aversion to theory, with some notable and laudable exceptions, but which has the potential to provide avenues for social justice education in ways that no other systems and policies can. This book revitalizes social theory in education, and provides ample evidence of the power of adult learning and education, examining a variety of policy documents connected with the various adult education congresses promoted by the UNESCO, which are thoroughly scrutinized for what they bring to or omit from the policy agenda. In the context of new developments in adult learning and education, particularly the impact of multiple globalizations, neoliberalism, and the new role of international organizations in reconceptualizing lifelong learning, new evidence-based research, new narratives, and the vibrancy of social movements striving for a new and possible world, it is clear that new theoretical designs were needed making this is a must-read book.

German professors and academic intellectuals are often blamed for passivity or complicity in the National Socialist rise to power. Karl Mannheim was a leading representative of a vital minority of university personalities who devoted themselves to making sociology and higher education contribute to democratization. Sociology as Political Education is both an analytical account of Mannheim's efforts as well as an illustration of the application of sociological knowledge to the world of practical action. Together with a second biographical volume by the editors, forthcoming next season, it comprisesa complete record of Karl Mannheim in the university life of the Weimar period. The comparatively new discipline of sociology was looked upon with favor by the Weimar Republic's reformers of higher education. In advancing its methods Mannheim had first to contend first with prominent and influential figures who attacked sociology as a mere political device to undermine cultural and national values for the sake of narrow interests and partisanship. He then had to meet the objections of fellow sociologists who were convinced that the discipline could prosper only as an area of specialized study with no claim to educational goals beyond the technical reproduction. Finally, he had to separate himself from proponents of politicized sociology. Sociological thought should be rigorous, critical, and attentive to evidence, but, Mannheim argued, its system had to be open and congruent with the ultimate responsibility of human beings for their acts. Loader and Kettler supplement Mannheim's groundbreaking volume with previously untranslated Mannheim texts, among them a transcript of his 1930 sociology course in which Mannheim answered his critics and clarified his intentions. Sociology as Political Education is not only of historical significance, but also shows Mannheim's relevance for current discussions of academic integrity and politicization. This volume will be of interest to sociologists, cultural historians, and political scientists.

Bringing together the sociology of knowledge, cultural studies, and post-foundational and historical approaches, this book asks what schooling does, and what are its limits and dangers. The focus is on how the systems of reason that govern schooling embody historically generated rules and standards about what is talked about, thought, and acted on; about the "nature" of children; about the practices and paradoxes of educational reform. These systems of reason are examined to consider issues of power, the political, and social exclusion. The transnational perspectives interrelate historical and ethnographic studies of the modern school to explore how curriculum is translated through social and cognitive psychologies that make up the subjects of schooling, and how educational sciences "act" to order and divide what is deemed possible to think and do. The central argument is that taken-for-granted notions of educational change and research paradoxically produce differences that simultaneously include and exclude.

The rise of a radical 'new' sociology of education during the early 1970s focused attention on the nature of school knowledge. Although this new approach was set to revolutionize the subject, within a few years, many people considered these developments an eccentric interlude, with little relevance to curriculum theory or practice. First published in 1985, this book offers a more positive view of the new sociology of education and its contribution to our understanding of the curriculum. In doing so, it argues that some of the radical promise of the new sociology of education could be realised, but only if sociologists, teachers and political movements of the left work more closely together

The author investigates the discourse of contemporary educational reform using a thematic perspective (rather than a chronological one) of 19th- and 20th-century history. The book begins with an examination of the central conceptual and historical issues in the study of educational change.