Problematising policy: the development of (critical) policy sociology

ABSTRACT

This paper revisits and reassesses the influence of the context of production on the origin, development and use of the term ‘policy sociology’ in research in the sociology of education in the UK from the 1980s to the contemporary period. Starting with the first use of the term ‘policy sociology,’ and its definition as ‘rooted in social science tradition, historically informed and drawing on qualitative and illuminative techniques’, the paper considers the established knowledge production traditions in education policy studies that policy sociology was responding to in the 1970s and 1980s in the UK. It foregrounds the implication of a critical stance towards policy contained in that usage, as well as considering what was and is meant by the term critical in the now dominant usage (critical policy sociology), before considering how policy was and is defined, and the specific and particular contribution that sociological enquiry can make to the study of education policy.

KEYWORDS:

• knowledge production
• educational policy
• governance
• critical policy sociology
• history of education

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jenny Ozga

Jenny Ozga is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Education at Oxford University, before that she was Professor of the Sociology of Education in the Department of Education 2010-2015. Before coming to Oxford she was Director of the Centre for Educational Sociology (CES), at the University of Edinburgh. Jenny is an Honorary Professorial Visiting Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences, at Edinburgh, and she is a Fellow of the British Academy. She is currently investigating the changing relationship between knowledge and policy in governing education in the period 1986-2015 in England and Scotland and continues to research education policy in international comparative contexts, with a focus on governance and governing, through investigation of the resources that are being mobilised by new governing forms and through new policy technologies. She works in collaboration with colleagues in the UK and Europe, and in a variety of disciplines-including political science and social policy