Bioscience and the sociology of education: the case for biosocial education

Abstract

This article makes a case for biosocial education as a field of research and as a potential framework for education practice. The article engages with sociology of education’s contemporary interests in embodiment and affect, the possibilities offered by concept studies, and uses of assemblage and complexity theory for thinking about educational phenomena. It also considers broader social science and political theory engagements with epigenetics and neuroscience. The article examines the legacy of the biology/sociology split and the risks, limits, and potentialities of degrounded collaborative trans-disciplinary biosocial research. It considers developments in biosciences that may have particular resonance and promise for education, in particular the epigenetics of care and stress and the metabolomics of diet. The article argues that sociology of education should engage with bioscience to interrogate the folding together of the social, cultural, biographical, pedagogic, political, affective, neurological, and biological in the interactive production of students and learning.

Keywords:

• Biosocial
• epigenetics
• Omega-3
• complexity
• assemblage
• degrounding

Acknowledgements

This work has been enriched by ongoing conversations and collaborations with a number of biological scientists, neuroscientists, and social scientists, key amongst which are Dr Martin Lindley (molecular biology), Prof. Kimron Shapiro (neuroscience), Dr Andy Bagshaw (neuroimaging), Prof. Samantha Frost (political theory), Prof. David Gillborn (critical race theory) and Dr Ian McGimpsey (sociology of education). My sincere thanks to all of these, and to the participants at the University of Birmingham–British Academy Biosocial Research workshops and the University of Birmingham–University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Bio-Humanities and Bio-Social Methodologies workshop.