This volume brings together an international set of contributors in education research, policy and practice to respond to the influence the noted academic Professor Michael Young has had on sociology, curriculum studies and professional knowledge over the past fifty years, and still has on the field to this day. It provides a critical analysis of his work and the uses to which it has been put in the UK and internationally, discussing implications for debates on the purpose of education and how school curricula, as well as programmes in other educational settings, could be run and teaching undertaken, based on his contribution. Following Michael’s long and distinguished career – dating back to before Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, which Michael edited in 1971 – recent years have seen an upsurge in both academic and policy interest in his work, including the new concern he expressed for knowledge in his 2007 book Bringing Knowledge Back In. The book concludes with an appreciation and a response to the authors from Michael Young and a Coda from Charmian Cannon, who was on the Institute of Education panel that appointed Michael to his post in 1967. This timely book is a unique critique and celebration, written by experts whose own careers have been affected by Michael, and will appeal to all those with an interest in the work of Michael Young.

SECTION 4 A response and memories -- 19 Appreciation and a response -- 20 Michael Young - some memories -- Index

This book presents a new way for educators at all levels - from early years to university - to think about curriculum priorities. It focuses on the curriculum as a form of specialised knowledge, optimally designed to enable students to gain access to the best knowledge available in any field. Papers jointly written by the authors over the last eight years are revised for this volume. It draws on the sociology of knowledge and in particular the work of Emile Durkheim and Basil Bernstein, opening up the possibilities for collaborative inter-disciplinary enquiry with historians, philosophers and psychologists. Although primarily directed to researchers, university teachers and graduate students, its arguments about specialised knowledge have profound implications for policy makers.

Selected writings from an international team of scholars, highlighting the contribution made to the field of educational policy and educational policy research by Basil Bernstein's work on the sociology of pedagogy.

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.

This volume covers issues in the sociology of knowledge, the educational system and policy, professional autonomy, vocational education, educational research and teaching, as well as the nature of such disciplines as cultural studies, English, science and the arts. The chapters also directly address the nature of sociology of education itself.The realist position developed in the book challenges two major currents of thought that have for a long time been prominent and influential in sociology and education: postmodernism and progressivism/constructivism. This well-edited collection of papers is provocative and original in that it represents a sustained, collective critique that offers a genuine alternative to these current orthodoxies.

In Knowledge, Curriculum, and Preparation for Work, the editors offer a timely collection of chapters approaching debates on economic and social change and employment within different types of economies. Considering questions of knowledge and curriculum, these works interrogate ways of thinking about relationships between different forms of work and education. The focus is both on the curriculum – the ways in which different types of knowledge affect the quality and organization of curricula that are intended to prepare for work – and the factors influencing and constraining what education can do to prepare for work, as well as how these factors shape and limit the role of educational preparation for work.