SOCI44715: Education and Social Inequality

• None.

• Should your personal timetable allow, students wishing to specialise in the sociology of education could take the School of Education Critical Perspectives in Education EDUC45730 which runs in term 2.

• None.

• To give students theoretical and empirical tools for understanding educational inequality.
• To understand how education can play a role in either reproducing or transforming existing social structures and inequalities.
• To understand how education policy is shaped by particular ideologies.
• To develop practical and critical analytical tools for understanding educational change.

• The following topics related to the sociological understanding of educational inequality will be explored over the ten week period:
• Race, class, gender and disability in education
• Schools and school policy
• Universities and higher education policy
• Critical pedagogies and alternative models and institutions of education
• Ideology, policy, markets and the state in education.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Upon successful completion of this module, students will have demonstrated:
• An understanding of key educational theories of reproduction and transformation.
• Knowledge of key contemporary and classic research within the field of the sociology of education.
• Understanding of key contemporary debates among education policy-makers and practitioners about the role of education in social reproduction and transformation.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Upon successful completion of this module, students will have demonstrated:
• Analysis and selection of critical texts and research in the sociology of education.
• Ability to map and understand the field of research in the sociology of education.

Key Skills:

• Upon successful completion of this module, students will have demonstrated:
• Critical analysis of academic research and theory.
• Ability to discuss key debates.

• 10 weekly two-hour sessions combining lecture and seminar style teaching, including the opportunity to discuss key debates with peers.
• Formative essay: you will be asked to submit a 750 word essay plan which will be due in the second half of the term.
• Summative essay: this module will be summatively assessed by a 3,000 word essay.

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