Education
Chapter 10  Summary

This chapter explores central sociological issues in education. It begins by considering the changing social context of education, including the major policy shifts of recent decades. It outlines debates about the social nature of the curriculum, explaining that, traditionally, this has been examined from both functionalist and conflict perspectives. Although they offer conflicting analyses of about the place of education in modern societies, these approaches employ similar bodies of data concerning the relationship between education, the economy and social inequality to argue their respective cases. The chapter then explores evidence about the ways in which class, race, ethnicity and gender are correlated with educational outcomes and the extent to which these relationships have undergone changes. Finally, it compares a range of sociological explanations of patterns of educational success and failure, from explanations that focus upon 'natural' differences, to those that target the schools, to accounts that explore how pupils use education in the formation of their own identities.