Micro-sociological approaches to education emphasize face to face interactions and social construction of meanings and relationships in everyday life. The four main approaches here include: symbolic interactionism and its focus on negotiations and process in schools; the ethnomethodological approach and its concern with how life at school is ordered through hidden rules and meanings; the “New Sociology of Education” with its concern with knowledge and power in the curriculum and classroom interactions; actor-network theory and the creation and maintenance of order through performances in networks. The social construction of meaning and its implications for the interpretive character of sociology have fundamentally affected the way we understand what happens in education and how it relates to the broader structure of society. The challenge of simultaneously comprehending structure and agency suggests that we see human actions contributing on a daily basis to creating, reproducing and changing structures, which in turn constrain and guide those actions.
Core Readings
Giddens, Anthony. 2010. Sociology. 6th ed. Cambridge and New Delhi: Polity Press and Wiley. Chapter 7 "Social Interaction and Everyday Life"
"Micro-Interpretive Approaches: An Introduction" pp 233-248 in Blackledge, David A., and Barry Dennis Hunt. 1985. Sociological Interpretations of Education. Taylor & Francis.
Rist, Ray C. 2007. “On understanding the processes of schooling: the contributions of labelling theory.” pp. 71-82 in Sociology of Education: A Critical Reader, edited by Alan Sadovnik. New York and London: Routledge.
"The 'New' Sociology of Education" pp 290-294 in Blackledge, David A., and Barry Dennis Hunt. 1985. Sociological Interpretations of Education. Taylor & Francis.
Additional Readings
Advani, Shalini. “Experience of Schooling.” Economic and Political Weekly 38, no. 49 (December 6, 2003): 5169–5170.
Archer, Margaret. 1982. “Morphogenesis Versus Structuration: On Combining Structure and Action.” The British Journal of Sociology 33 (4) (December): 455–483.
Barton, Len and Stephen Walker, Chapter 20 "The Action Perspective" pp 299-315 in Meighan, Roland, Stephen Walker, Iram Siraj-Blatchford, Len Barton, and Clive Harber. 2007. Sociology of Educating 5th Edition. 5th ed. Continuum.
Brown, Phillip. 1990. “The ‘Third Wave’: Education and the Ideology of Parentocracy.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 11 (1) (January 1): 65–85.
Goffman, Erving. 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. 1st ed. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Social Science Research Centre. Introduction pp 1-9. Chapter 1 "Performances" pp 13-22.
Gracey, Harry L. 1968. “Learning the student role: Kindergarten as academic boot camp.” Pp. 63-71 in Readings in Introductory Sociology, edited by Dennis Wrong and Harry L. Gracey. New York: Macmillan.
Kaufman, Peter. 2005. “Middle-Class Social Reproduction: The Activation and Negotiation of Structural Advantages.” Sociological Forum 20 (2) (June): 245–270.
King, Anthony. 2005. “Structure and Agency.” In Modern Social Theory: An Introduction, ed. Harrington, Austin, 215–232. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kumar, Krishna. 1989. Social character of learning. New Delhi: Sage. Chapter "Learning to be backward"
Latour, Bruno. “On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications.” Soziale Welt 47, no. 4 (January 1, 1996): 369–381.
McFarland, Daniel A. 2007. “Resistance as a Social Drama: A Study of Change-Oriented Encounters.” Pp. 416-429 in Sociology of Education: A Critical Reader, edited by Alan Sadovnik. New York and London: Routledge.
Payne, George C.F. 1976. “Making a lesson happen: an ethnomethodological analysis.” Pp. 33–40 in The Process of Schooling: A Sociological Reader, edited by Martyn Hammersley and Peter Woods. London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Pollard, Andrew. 2004. “Towards a sociology of learning in primary schools.” Pp. 285-291 in Routledge Falmer Reader in Sociology of Education. London and New York: Routledge Falmer.
Woods, Peter, and Bob Jeffrey. 2002. “The Reconstruction of Primary Teachers’ Identities.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 23(1):89-106. Retrieved February 18, 2011.
Woods, Peter. 1983. “Coping at School through Humour.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 4(2):111-124. Retrieved February 18, 2011.