The sociology of education remains a vibrant and robust field of study benefitting from a treasure trove of theoretical and methodological resources, as well as a seemingly endless horizon of innovative possibilities. While this should be enough to excite experienced and new researchers and authors, the field also enables social scientists to have significant positive impact on the world around them, not least in educational settings, and thus contribute to improving the lives of others. The establishment of the journal’s new section is a testament to this vibrancy and potential for impact.
Feeling inspired by these prospects is one thing. But I also believe they imply an imperative on sociologists of education to remain committed to producing research and impact of the highest quality. Implicit in such a commitment, in my view, is to champion the cause of social justice. There are those that will disagree with my position. But I have never succeeded in convincing myself that doing sociological research is a neutral endeavour, i.e., the discovery, analysis, and communication of objectively existing social realities in de-politicized spaces by dispassionate researchers. Rather, today more than ever, sociologists of education should do their utmost to ensure that their work helps to redress the injustices and inequities of social worlds in their own locales and beyond.
In the preface to the fourth edition of his highly influential book Ideology and Curriculum, Michael Apple reflects on a series of questions that guided his development as an educator, researcher, thinker, and author: “What history does schooling carry? What do schools do now? What don’t they do? What can they do? As a teacher, what could I do?”.Footnote1 I quote these questions here not to prescribe an essential list. Rather, for Apple, these questions speak to the importance of doing engaged, politically conscious research that is centred on education (including, but not restricted to, schooling) as a concrete set of practices with attendant discourses and policy manoeuvres. Furthermore, they implicate critical issues of history, power, positionality, and agency, and the interrelationships between them. Education, thus, is a contested and unequally configured site for action and knowledge production that must be analysed and understood in all its complexity. Doing so, I believe, requires sociologists to reflect honestly, ethically and in an evidence-informed manner on questions like those above.
In the third decade of the twenty-first century—and certainly for the foreseeable future—there is no shortage of global challenges to keep us busy, some long-standing, some more recent, but all with important educational ramifications. These include but are not limited to (in no particular order):
Education for environmental justice
The use of Artificial Intelligence in education
Class and wealth inequality
Gender, gender identity and sexuality inequality and misogyny
The racial and ethnic politics and practices of education
Sociological perspectives on religion and (post-)secularisms in education
Nationalisms (including methodological nationalism) and trans-nationalisms
Identity, citizenship and multi/interculturality
Educational responses to extremism
Decolonization of teaching and research
The new section of the journal offers an exciting opportunity to engage with these and other topics in novel ways. As Senior Editor, it is my pleasure and privilege to invite dedicated sociologists from around the world to use this platform to publish their work.
This reflects the core tenet of my vision for the new section: that it becomes a living repository for excellent sociological work on education representing the cutting edge of our field. In part, the success of this vision necessitates publishing a steady stream of research by emerging and early-careers sociologists, which I also hope will instigate crucial conversations and collaborations between global-south and global-north authors. But the vision also depends on engagement from established voices, whose work continues to guide and nurture the field. I am hopeful that they will increasingly see the new section as a serious place in which to publish their work. To this end, one of my aims is to offer leading figures in the field a space to share some of their “in-progress” thinking so as to stimulate ongoing debate and innovation.
These pieces will complement traditional outputs such as research papers and special issues as part of the section’s mission to contribute to the continued vitality of our field. I am excited and grateful to have the opportunity to facilitate this endeavour.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Apple, M. (2019) Ideology and Curriculum. New York: Routledge.