Education Policy and Social Reproduction: Class Inscription & Symbolic Control

by Fitz; John

• ISBN13: 9780415240055
• ISBN10: 0415240050
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2005-12-19
• Publisher: RoutledgeFalmer

Summary

This book takes a theoretically informed look at British education policy over the last sixty years when secondary schooling for all children became an established fact for the first time. Comprehensive schools largely replaced a system based on academic selection. Now, under choice and competition policies, all schools are subject to the rigours of local education markets. What impact did each of these successive policy frameworks have on structures of opportunities for families and their children? How and to what extent was the experience of secondary school students shaped and what influenced the qualifications they obtained and their life chances after schooling?The authors locate their work within two broad strands in the sociology of education. Basil Bernstein's work on the realisation of power and control in and through pedagogic discourse and social reproduction provides a theoretical framework for exploring the character of and continuities and change in education and training policies.The book is an important contribution to debates about the extent to which education is a force for change in class divided societies. The authors also set out to re-establish social class at the centre of educational analysis at a time when emphasis has been on identity and identity formation, arguing for their interdependence. This book will be an important resource for students, policy analysts and policymakers wishing to think through and understand the longer term impact of programmes that have shaped secondary schooling in Britain and elsewhere.

Table of Contents

List of Tables

List of Diagrams

List of Figures

Understanding Policy, Understanding Pedagogic Discourse

Introduction

Bernstein's Sociology: A language for policy

On Our Omissions

Framing Equality? The Education Act 1944

Introduction

Policy Frameworks

The 1944 Legislation

A Governing Partnership?

Tripartism: A very British settlement?

Conclusions

Selection, Class and Opportunity

Introduction

Selection and Social Class

Selection and Social Class and School Composition

Greater Equality of Opportunity?

Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?

Conclusions

Comprehensive Schooling: Challenging Inequality?

Introduction

Going Comprehensive from the Ground up

What was Driving the Change?

10/65 and After: Comprehensive schooling and its challenges

Neighbourhoods and Differentiation between Schools

Conclusions

Educational Systems and Social Mobility

Social Mobility and Education

Social Mobility, Selection and Comprehensivisation

Social Mobility, Meritocracy and Education

Conclusion

Bernstein, Social Reproduction and Intergenerational Transmission

Introduction

Pedagogic Discourse: Family, school and work

Pedagogic Discourse, Policy and Reproduction

Pedagogic Discourse: Its key features

Sifting and Sorting

Privileging Practices

Resources

Conclusions

Something Happened: The policy framework post 1988

Introduction

Centralisation: Reasserting central authority, putting on the pressure

Choice and Diversity: Power to parents?

Conclusion

Diversity: Selection and Stratification?

Introduction

From Diversity to Plurality

G1/4

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