Introducing Network 28

Here you find the work and the initiatives of the Sociologies of Education network of the European Educational Research Association (Network 28 of EERA).

 

The network developed out of a meeting held in Oxford in April 2010 with Jean-Louis Dérouet and Romuald Normand from UMR Education & Politiques, INRP/ Université Lyon II, Sotiria Grek and Martin Lawn from the University of Edinburgh, Adel Kiss from the Hungarian University of Transylvania, Paolo Landri from CNR-IRPPS, Rome, Eric Mangez from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Eszter Neumann from Eotvos Lorand University and Jenny Ozga from the University of Oxford.

 

The network intends to look at the sociologies of education, that is at the complex reassemblages of ideas, technologies, humans and knowledges, making up education in contemporary societies, and at the development of novel vocabularies/methodologies to describe these associations in education.

 

The Foci of the network are:

 

1        ‘Common School’ in Europe and beyond:

Its fabrication, modernization, its impact on equality and justice, legitimation crises, its republican character, the post-Soviet common school. The investigation of post-comprehensive scenarios.

 

2        Shifts in the governing of education. Transformation of education state:

Voluntarism, private companies and privatisation, private foundations, civic movements, religion, regions.

 

3        Mobilities, Space and Education:

Learning spaces and technologies, mobile learning, individualisation, construction of self, relation to systems, lifelong learning.Inequalities, (im)mobilities, and education.

 

4        Knowledge, Expertise and Standards in Education:

Data, knowledge production, ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ knowledge, travellers and translation, the transnational flow of knowledge, classification, standards and standardization in education policy, professions and practice.

 

5        Sociological research in education across Europe:

Sociological work in academy and outside universities. Different traditions of sociology of education.Sociological knowledge in educational professions.

 

6        Post-Comparative Education:

Europeanisation, Internationalisation: reflexive approaches to comparison.

 

The network is interested in working with perspectives that combine political science and sociology in ‘political sociology’; along with a renewed interest in materialities, in actor-network relations; the sociology of knowledge and science/technology; and cultural political economy as a way of approaching the changing social relations and processes of the societies that constitute the European space. Methodologically, the network invites to explore how data and sociological theories contribute to shape the worlds of education, and welcomes the reflexivity on data, theories and methodologies.