The strategies and interventions which we make in most spheres of human action, including education, rest at least partially on what theories we use of the social world. How we see the world and frame possible ways of acting in it gets shaped through our concepts, interpretive schemes and narratives of how people act and what constrains their actions. We deploy certain images of the processes and institutions which make up the contexts of action. These are what enable us to spot the constraints on a situation as well as the possibilities within it. Social theory provides a repertoire for conceiving of all these and is thus an indispensable element in the intellectual apparatus of the activist, policy-maker, researcher, curriculum designer and so on, whosoever wishes to seriously engage with the challenges of the social world. A grasp of the gaps and strengths in various ways of theoretically grasping the world would enable them to better understand their own and others' positions and perspectives.
This course would introduce students of APU's MA Education programme to a systematic study of contemporary theories of the social world. The students would already have encountered several of them across various courses as they are essential building blocks through which to make sense of and strategise for social change. However they will usually not have been studied to see the layers and nuances within them. This course would enable students to build a more systematic grasp of contemporary social theories, with a sense of their genealogies, complementarities as well as contradictions. This would permit a second order grasp of their implications and applications than would have been possible through the students' first encounters with them. It would help students eventually launch into deeper engagements and reflections with a complex and many-faceted social reality.