Creating a dialogue between sociological and egalitarian theory in education

Sociological work on high ability is framed by social constructionist theorising and/or takes a social justice approach, and hence particular analytical intellectual traditions are foregrounded. Whilst these approaches have contributed the main critique of essentialist psychological understandings of high ability, they can eclipse normative discourses and the ethically situated meaning of high ability for individuals. This paper explores why epistemological questions about high ability cannot be separated from values-based ones and assesses where this has happened in relation to sociological approaches to high ability. It suggests that a narrative approach is one way of enriching sociological theories and discourses of high ability and that this can progress not only sociological, but interdisciplinary theorising in the field.

Section: Educational Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Educational Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Extending sociological theorising on high ability: the significance of values and lived experience

Smith

2014

“…Although this project raises substantial methodological challenges well beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth noting that other authorsspeaking from within both normative and empirical traditions of work -are increasingly stressing, and arguing for, the need for greater co-operation or integration between these traditions, for example, Birnbacher (1999), Callahan (1999), Flyvbjerg (2001), Sayer (2000)[2] and within the sociology of education, for example Lynch (2001). (See also Bennett & Cribb (2002); Gewirtz, 2003.…”

Section: Four Problematicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent readings of social reproduction: Four fundamental problematics

Gewirtz

Gribb

2003

Since the inception of the discipline, social reproduction has been arguably the central theme in the sociology of education. Much, if not most, work in the field has been implicitly informed by a theory of social reproduction even where there has not been an explicit engagement with the concept. In recent years ideas about social reproduction have become more sophisticated, as sociologists have attempted to grapple with and respond to some of the weaknesses in earlier, radical left theories of social reproduction (weaknesses which were first discussed in debates about the concept in the early 1980s). In this article, we want to identify some of the key questions and problematics brought to the surface by these more recent and more sophisticated readings of social reproduction. These problematics, we suggest, all reflect shifts in dominant conceptions of knowledge and the social world, and of the relationship between sociological knowledge and agency, and they have important ethical as well as epistemological implications for reproduction theory.

“…2 K. Lynch et al nowhere in theoretical terms; because of this, values are implicated in both our theories and our purely empirical claims (Lynch, 2001).…”

mentioning

confidence: 94%

Breaking silence: educating citizens for love, care and solidarity

Lynch

Lyons

Cantillon

2007

Self Cite

An indifference to the affective domain and an allegiance to the education of the rational autonomous subject and public citizen are at the heart of formal education. The impact of Cartesian rationalism is intensifying with the glorification of performativity measured by league tables and rankings. The citizen carer and the care recipient citizen are only recognised in the educational arena when professionals are being trained to manage those in need of care. Education for informal care labour, solidarity work and love labour is generally not part of the formal educational trajectory. Because the scholarly understanding of work has been equated with economic self preservation and self-actualisation through interaction with nature, education is seen as preparation for this type of work. Education is indifferent to other-centred work arising from our interdependencies and dependencies as affective, relational beings. In particular it has ignored the centrality of nurturing for the preservation and self-actualisation of the human species. In this article the authors argue that sociologists need to engage with the extensive feminist scholarship on care if they are to challenge the deeply care-less view of the citizen that is implicitly accepted in new and older forms of liberal thinking. The rational economic actor model of the citizen is contrasted with the care-full view of the citizen and the implications of both for education are explored. Neglect of the affective domainA deep dichotomy has been drawn in the social sciences between fact and value. Following from the work of Weber (1949) in particular, a division of labour exists between normative political philosophy and 'objective' social scientific research (Sayer, 2005). While it is understandable why social scientists wanted to separate the normative from the empirical at a time in history where religion and related ideologies were paraded as absolute scientific truths, the dichotomy that has been created between fact and value is a false one. Values influence what we choose to study, the methods we employ and the interpretive paradigms we invoke. There is no view from