The shifting powers of educational knowledge: power relations between sociology and economics of education

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the ‘hope’ and ‘disappointments’ experienced over time about the results of rapid educational expansion, as well as the research agenda which aims to improve educational outcomes in the developing world and particularly in Africa.

Our interest is in the development and nature of policy-oriented bodies of knowledge that address the issue of educational inequality in poor countries. More specifically, we examine the state of knowledge production in sociology of education in relation to the question of educational inequality. We do this through an exploration of its interface with economics of education, starting with an examination of literature in the developed world. We argue that there was an initial collaboration in the 1950s, shifting to something of a separation from the 1980s, to what could be seen as a colonization of education in research on developing countries. This is facilitated by the way in which sociology of education has developed into silos of topic-based research—reducing its explanatory and political power. Some silos are marginalized, and some are dominated by claims on ‘what works’ produced by economists.

KEYWORDS:

• Sociology of education
• economics of education
• powerful knowledge
• educational inequality
• economic constraints

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the South African National Research Foundation, through the SARCHI Chair: Skills Development, as well as a catalytic grant from the South African National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. We would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers for critique and discussion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The advantage of reviews of a knowledge tradition is that they bring to the fore assumptions, key questions which occupied researchers in different periods. Reviews provide one with an overview of the history of the discipline, its institutionalization, the influences of its founders (and of its parent discipline), debates on research approaches, and criteria for relatability of accounts, changing research emphases, explanations and arguments which gained significance over time, and the relationship between them. All of these aspects shape the development of a tradition and allow one to understand the evolution of explanations. The disadvantage of reading reviews is that they are not meant to construct an overall argument on one particular phenomenon.

2. We acknowledge that sociology of education in the US has a different trajectory, and many of its writings were developed and sustained a positivist lens and a focus on large data sets. We do not include this work in our analysis. American sociologists of education which had powerful influence in debates on educational inequality in the UK, and in South Africa more specifically, are Bowles and Gintis and Michael Apple. In this review of sociology of education, we are limited to the above reviews, specifically focusing on the work which emanated from the collaboration between sociologists and economists in the London School of Economics.

3. Basil Bernstein (1977, p. 162) argued that ‘The approach bore the hallmarks of British applied sociology; atheoretical, pragmatic, descriptive, and policy-focused’.

4. For a comparative statistical study of 40 years of educational reform see (Heath & Clifford, 1990).

5. The National Child Development Study followed children born in 1958.

6. ‘Elaborating’ is structured by a gap, ‘by a discursive space’ between the material and the symbolic, he says (Bernstein, 1990, p. 182). This gap creates potential for debates and contestations of approaches and perspectives (or ‘alternative realizations of the relation between the material and the immaterial’ (1990, p. Ibid).

7. ‘like passing beads on a frame rather than following a planned sequence’ (Bernstein, 1961, p. 170).

8. For an excellent review of the evolution of theories of underpinning comparative education see Carnoy (2019).

9. This is based on our experience and interaction with many researchers involved in the kinds of interventions being discussed, in South Africa and other African countries.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation [SARCHi Chair in Skills Development]; National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences [Catalytic Grant].

Notes on contributors

Stephanie Allais

Stephanie Allais is Research Chair of Skills Development and Professor of Education at the Centre for Researching Education and Labour at Wits University. Her research is located in the sociology and political economy of education, focused on relationships between education and work. Her research focuses both on political economy of transitions from education to work and curriculum and knowledge aspects of educational preparation for work. Her books include Knowledge, Curriculum, and Preparation for Work, published in 2018 by Brill/SENSE, with Yael Shalem, and Selling Education Out: National Qualifications Frameworks and the Abandonment of Knowledge, published in 2014 by Sense.

Yael Shalem

Yael Shalem is an honorary associate professor of education at the Wits School of Education, based at the centre for Researching Education and Labour. Her research interests include sociology of education, professional knowledge, and the relation between education and work more broadly. Her books include Retrieving Teaching: Critical Issues in Curriculum Pedagogy and Learning, co-edited with Shirley Pendlebury. The book was written in memory of Wally Morrow, the founder of educational theory in South Africa, published in 2010 by Juta. Her recent book is Knowledge, Curriculum, and Preparation for Work, co-edited with Stephanie Allais, published in 2018 by Brill/SENSE.