You are invited to join us for the launch of our new books: “Learning and Teaching British Values” by Dr Sadia Habib and “Children’s Literature about Refugees” by Dr Julia Hope. Two Goldsmiths alumni are holding a joint book… Read More ›
Sociology of Education 
Call for Chapters: Bourdieu, curriculum studies, education policy and reform
Co-editors James Albright (The University of Newcastle, Australia) and Shaun Rawolle (Deakin University) Revisiting the Principes pour une réflexion sur les contenus d’enseignment (Bourdieu, 1989) Call for chapters This proposed book aims to bring together scholars that take as… Read More ›
The Neoliberal Masculine Logic: Skilled Migration, International Students, and the Indian ‘Other’ in Australia
By Michiel Baas This chapter analyses how a neoliberal masculine logic permeates discussion of Australia’s “education industry” and associated skilled migration program. Indian students play a key role in this. It is generally agreed that the initial phenomenal growth in… Read More ›
Aspiration Anxieties: Developing Middle-Class Masculinities among Black African boys in London
By Derron O. Wallace In post-Brexit Britain, who considers the impact of the aspiration agenda on ethnic minority young people –particularly Black boys? What is the role of Black boys in building the ‘aspiration nation’? Better still, what is the… Read More ›
Policy Logics, Counter-Narratives, and New Directions: Boys and Schooling in a Neoliberal Age
By Konstanze Spohrer and Garth Stahl In this chapter we argue for approaches to researching and imagining aspiration that reflect the complexities of masculinities. We suggest that future academic work on boys’ aspirations adopts an intersectional approach to considering the… Read More ›
“Gotta get that laziness out of me”: Negotiating masculine aspirational subjectivities in the transition from school to university in Australia
by Sue Nichols and Garth Stahl Aspiration is centrally concerned with becoming, and inherently frames the present in terms of the future desired self. The moment at which a young person graduates from school is a nexus point for aspirational… Read More ›
Conference: Social Mobility, Aspirations, Education and White Working-Class Youth: Urban, Rural and Coastal Contexts
A BSA Sociology of Education Study Group One-Day Conference in association with the Faculty of Education, Canterbury Christ Church University. 5 July 2017 At Canterbury Christ Church University, UK PROGRAMME This one-day conference, supported by the BSA’s Education Study Group, focuses… Read More ›
The Liberated Mathematician Stands Up to Gender and Race Inequality in Academia
This week, Dr. Piper Harron, mathematics professor based at the University of Hawaii, and a vocal feminist and supporter of under-represented groups in the academic mathematics community, published a provocative blogpost on the website of the AMS (American Mathematical Society), in… Read More ›
“I Want To Be a Soccer Player or a Mathematician”: Fifth-Grade Black Boys’ Aspirations at a “Neoliberal” Single-Sex School
By Joseph Derrick Nelson For over a decade, amid widespread neoliberal education reform in the United States, single-sex schools for boys of color have increased in popularity among urban school districts. The growing interest in this school model is… Read More ›
(Re)masculinizing “Suzhi Jiaoyu” (Education for Quality): Aspirational Values of Modernity in Neoliberal China
By Xiaodong Lin and Mairtin Mac an Ghaill In December 2016, China published a gender specific textbook for boys, aiming to help male pupils understand their gender roles in society. It emphasizes the issue of masculinity and addresses the question… Read More ›
White Working-Class Boys in the Neoliberal Meritocracy: The Pitfalls of the “Aspiration-Raising” Agenda
by Sam Baars The great meritocracy When she became British prime Minister in July 2016, the core narrative of Teresa May’s premiership was quick to emerge: “I want Britain to be the world’s great meritocracy – a country where everyone has… Read More ›
Coming of Age through the Recession: High School Imaginings of Post-Recession Futures in New York Cities
by Patrick Alexander What do you want to be when you finally grow up? In 2014, on a humid September morning, I boarded a crowded subway train to arrive at the New York City public high school where I would… Read More ›
BREAKING NEWS: Social Science Faculty at Humboldt-University Berlin occupied!
Well, this is not breaking news. The occupation of the Social Science Faculty of the HU-Berlin started last Wednesday, 18 January, but I only found out about it today. Although I work in an institute which is part of the… Read More ›
The Return of School Discipline – why children should be free.
by Deborah Talbot No, not canes and shouting, but something altogether more subtle and certainly troubling. It has been reported that St George the Martyr Primary School in London has a policy whereby children, when they walk in corridors, have… Read More ›
Sociological Catalysts and Operationalising Theory in Practice
by Yusef Bakkali Life as an academic can be a lonely and alienating calling at the best of times; lots of time spent inside one’s own head reflecting on a world playing out someplace beyond the indiscernible turrets and bulwarks… Read More ›
Academia.edu: How to reproduce inequality in several easy steps
A study waiting to be done. Somebody? Here is the trigger: So: how is academia.edu reproducing and reinforcing inequality? By spatially positioning the male academic above; By choosing an older male academic and a younger female; By listing the male as… Read More ›
Call for Abstracts: Youth, Place and Theories of Belonging
BSA Sociological Futures Proposal Youth, Place and Theories of Belonging Edited by: Garth Stahl, PhD Sadia Habib, PhD Mike Ward, PhD This proposed edited collection draws on interdisciplinary perspectives of space and place in order to investigate young… Read More ›
Going to extremes: How radical are you? Art education & British values
by Carol Wild Semantic satiation refers to the making strange of words by continual repetition until they become meaningless. Within the discourse surrounding the Fundamental British Values (FBV) since their introduction into schools in 2014 words such as extremism and… Read More ›