Lawrence J. Saha

Australian National University | ANU · School of Sociology

This article introduces ‘critical open-mindedness’ as a new sociological construct, which can be employed particularly in the studies of social attitudes and attitude change, social values, social identities, cross-cultural relations and social discrimination. By drawing on the data collected through the 2005 World Values Survey in Australia, we ha...

The purpose of this chapter is to critically review the Australian research literature from 1980 to 2017 on the relationship between race and ethnicity, education and social inequality. The chapter begins with a discussion of the Australian education system, and also Australia’s changing immigration and immigration policy. An assimilation policy ga...

The focus of this paper is whether type of Australian school attended makes a difference in student engagement in political and civic culture. Recently private schools have been said to “undermine cohesion” in Australian society. Similarly, it was argued over two decade ago that Australian private schools have skimmed the elite students from the go...

This chapter not only presents a critical review of the contemporary academic literature regarding the "social nature" (basic characteristics), "social manifestations," and "social nurtures" (determining factors, roots, bases, and impacts) of Right-Wing Populism (RWP), but also initiates a conversation to pursue a new consolidative line of theoriza...

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the key concepts of cultural and social capital in a global perspective. This will be done by first examining the origins of the two concepts and their relevance for education. Second, the global implications of the concepts will be examined. Third, the relevance of cultural and social capital for under...

This text is the first version of the article of ISA RC04 Sociology of Education for the electronic magazine Sociopedia in 2010. I added it for historical reasons in 2021. See Dworkin, Ballantine, Antikainen, Teodoro et al. 2013.

The attached document here includes paragraphs and figures which were cut from the original version of the article to match the required size by the journal. Since these sections include some important information for our readers, we wish to share them publicly. To cite this document, please follow the following format: Hosseini, S. A. H., & Sa...

How Critically Open-minded Are We? An Australian Perspective Through the World Values Survey Authors’ Complimentary Document Hosseini, S. A. Hamed Saha, Lawrence J. The following paragraphs and figures were cut from the original version of the article to save space. Since these sections include some important information for our readers, we wish...

Populism, as a concept, generally implies a mobilized support for the political, cultural and economic preferences of the populace as opposed to those of the elite, foreigners, intellectuals, media, government, corporations, scientific bodies, ethnic minorities, immigrants/refugees, or any other social group or community whose identity or interest...

Dispositions and motivations toward future adult life are crystalized dur-ing adolescence, and one of the key agents in this process is student-teacher relationships in the school. Adolescent students can be very sensitive to the differential treatments of teachers toward them and their fellow students, particularly with respect to fairness and jus...

Educational sociology focuses attention on the social factors that both cause and are caused by education. It includes the study of factors relating to education, such as gender, social class, race and ethnicity, and rural–urban residence. Educational sociology has developed a range of sociological theories to explain and guide research into the va...

The aspirations of young people have been extensively studied, and were key variables in early status attainment research in the late 1960s. The link between youth ambitions and eventual educational and occupational outcomes has never been doubted, although the ways in which the variables are related has been debated. Throughout this 50-plus years...

Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to critically review the Australian research literature which focuses on the relationship between race and ethnicity, education, and social inequality. The chapter is limited to research between 1980 and 2010 and with few exceptions is limited to secondary schools. The chapter begins with an introduction to t...

This is a published keynote address for the 18th Taiwan Forum on Sociology of Education, and the ISA RC04 Midterm Conference in Taipei. The examination of education, citizenship and civic behavior is the study of a form of social control, that is, how learning to become a citizen and all that this entails , leads to an ordered form of civic and pol...

Dispositions and motivations toward future adult life are crystalized during adolescence, and one of the key agents in this process is student experiences in the school. Adolescent students can be very sensitive to the differential treatments of teachers toward them and their fellow students, particularly with respect to fairness and justice. In ma...

This paper advances the research on migrant adolescents by comparing the occupational expectations of migrant and non-migrant students in 15 countries. Using the PISA 2006 survey we compare four categories of students: 1) non-migrants, 2) the second generation migrants who speak the host country language at home, 3) the first generation migrants wh...

This article discusses the state of art of contemporary sociology of education from a global perspective. The first part of the paper reviews the varied theoretical orientations and methodologies of the field. The second part focuses on an array of salient social issues with vitaly policy implications. These issues contain neo-liberal globalization...

Given ongoing interest in increasing productivity and participation in the workforce, understanding when talent is lost is a useful exercise. The term 'lost talent' describes the underutilisation or wastage of human potential. Focusing on young people, Sikora and Saha define lost talent as occurring when students in the top 50% of academic achievem...

The purpose of this article is to review and revitalize the concept of “talent loss” in educational theory and research. It is our contention that the concept, while it has had a long and varied history among educational researchers, has recently surfaced and is providing useful insights into inefficiencies in educational systems, which are much to...

The belief that education is positively linked to socioeconomic development has remained strong since the 1960s, when funding for schools began to be given to poor countries by national and international aid agencies. In spite of many critiques of the education-development relationship, it remains a part of taken-for-granted discourse in the develo...

The belief that education is positively linked to socioeconomic development has remained strong since the 1960s, when funding for schools began to be given to poor countries by national and international aid agencies. In spite of many critiques of the education-development relationship, it remains a part of taken-for-granted discourse in the develo...

Our first goal is to discuss new information for national policymaking which may arise from the analyses of international achievement study data. The second is to illustrate this potential by exploring determinants of students' career plans in a cross-national perspective. Using neo-institutionalism as our theoretical framework, we propose that the...

Studies have found that prior involvement in student politics while in school seems to be a good predictor of adult political engagement. While most studies of adults have obtained retrospective data on participation in school elections, there have been few studies of students about this activity. We contribute to this latter relatively unexplored...

We examine the relationship between vocational education and occupational burnout among workers in different forms of employment. Although the self-employed enjoy higher levels of job autonomy and work-related satisfaction, we do not know whether they experience lower rates of occupational burnout, and whether vocational education plays a role in t...

In this article, we investigate whether adolescent girls are more determined to enter professional careers compared to boys across countries. To this end, we analyse the data from the 2006 survey of OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). First, we establish whether girls are more ambitious than boys net of their academic abil...

The purpose of this handbook is to provide not only an update on research about teachers and teaching, but also to introduce to students, scholars and researchers new perspectives on an important educational topic which has been undergoing considerable change over the past several decades. No one questions the centrality of teachers and their activ...

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the extent to which research knowledge about teachers, and for teachers, is actually disseminated in a way that enhances the teaching profession, the teachers themselves and the practice of teaching. Teachers occupy a position of direct contact with the students that not only they, but the entire educationa...

It is increasingly recognized across both developed and developing countries that educa tion quality is of concern to more than ministries of education (Ross & Jurgens-Genevois, 2006). Pigozzi (2006), for example, observed that governments, business, and the gen eral public have begun to recognize that differentials in the academic performance of a...

This book examines issues surrounding the nation-building processes, and identity and citizenship education in the global culture, from various perspectives. Globally, there are increasing arguments both for the democratisation of education and for the use of education to promote a democratic society, based on equality, and social justice. It is ar...

Report 5 is the final report of the Youth Electoral Study. It focuses on the role of schools and curricula in the preparation of young people to become active citizens. It also examines the role of type of school attended (Government, Catholic or Independent) and also teachers and others in the political socialization process. The report concludes...

The purpose of this article is to summarise and consolidate the current state of knowledge about the aspirations and expectations of school students regarding education and occupational attainments. The article will build on, and update, Saha’s previous overview from more than ten years ago (1997). This review not only includes the socialization an...

Durkheim often has been criticized for neglecting the role of conflict and change in his theory of society. Yet, most of the understanding of his sociology stems from readings of a limited number of his works. In this paper, we argue that conflict and change were very much a part of Durkheim’s analysis of educational systems and processes. In order...

This report contains the results from the senior student survey of knowledge and attitudes toward political parties. It is part of the Youth Electoral Study (YES), Australia.

Previous research has shown that “life plan” expectations among 15 year olds are unexpectedly higher in less developed than developed countries (Saha 1992). To further explore this finding we analyse data from the 2000 and 2003 PISA surveys and find that inequality, operationalised by the Gini index, moderately but significantly increases education...

This collection provides a valuable resource for researchers, teachers and others who want to be stimulated by research knowledge about youth political participation, not only in Australia but in all Western democracies where active citizenship is a valued objective.

Claims that education research is flawed and that it has little or no impact on school practices have been circulating for at least 75 years, and this chorus of criticism has intensified in the past three decades. Yet the validity of such claims has not been investigated, write Biddle and Saha. The authors interviewed 120 school principals (81 in t...

The aims of this paper are (a) to investigate how adolescents perceive and represent the body form with respect to being fat or thin, and (b) to describe the process of how they constructed the social representations for these latter two body conditions. The data were collected by means of individual and focus group interviews with adolescent femal...

This 3rd Report of the Youth Electoral Study focuses on the family in the political socialization of young people. The results are based on a large survey of Australian secondary schools, and focus groups from those schools. The main finding is that most young people are "active" learners about politics from their families Another interesting findi...

Incl. bibl., index.

This study investigates the extent to which forms of prosocial behaviour and values of social responsibility are related to various domains of political culture among Australian youth. Using data from a survey of 1311 senior secondary students from the ACT and South Australia, it was found that 14 per cent had participated in one or more volunteer...

Although considerable attention has been given to voting among youth, their preparation for, and their confidence about voting has been less explored. This article develops a social psychological perspective of voting among youth, in that it investigates their attitudes toward youth readiness to vote. Using survey data from over 1300 secondary scho...

In this article I argue that already in secondary school, students have social and political views which predispose them to be supportive towards particular social movements. These predispositions are part of the normal political development from youth to adulthood and are influenced by a wide range of factors, including demographic, home backgroun...

This first report from the Australian Youth Electoral Study (YES) provides the background of the study, including the research design, the survey and focus groups, and preliminary survey findings regarding young people's attitudes toward enrolment and voting in Australian elections.

This article describes the development of analytical techniques in the sociology of education. It argues that because of the unique methodological challenges, namely the structural, institutional and microlevel processes in the study of education, the discipline led the way in the development of increasingly sophisticated analytical techniques. The...

How do democratic personnel policies of the public school principal affect teacher burnout and how does teacher burnout affect support for democratic instructional styles? Using sequential OLS models from questionnaire data of 2,961 urban public school teachers, the research finds that teachers, who perceive that their principals are non-authoritar...

This chapter investigates the relevance of cultural and social capital in school achievement and attainment in the Asian and Pacific countries. The Western concepts of ‘cultural and social capital’ are first defined in the Asian and Pacific context, and their relevance for understanding educational processes is developed. In this article a selectio...

This published report covers two topics: the ways in which academic life has changed in the last twenty years or so, and the impact on universities of an ageing academic workforce. The first two chapters provide some background to these studies. Part 2 deals with changes in academic life. Part 3 deals with issues of ageing. The findings are based o...

The purpose of this paper is to review the theoretical and research literature on the relationship between education and active citizenship. As is consistent with the writings of Kant, Durkheim and Marshall, the paper discusses the concept of active citizenship and how it is related to knowledge, attitudes and behavior. The focus then turns to the...

Interpretations of Durkheim’s sociology rarely incorporate or integrate his writings about education. Although current scholars acknowledge that Durkheim was concerned about both consensus and conflict, and about structure and agency, his work on education in this regard has been relatively neglected. Yet Durkheim’s sociology of education reveals a...

The comparative study of educational systems has a long history. The field can be traced to the early 19th century when it became common for European governments to send emissaries abroad to find out how education was carried out in other countries. About the same time the practice became more structured and of interest to academics, as well as pra...

This paper investigates the impact of school variables on student political knowledge and political activity. The study is based on survey questionnaire data from 1311 secondary school students in South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. The analysis focuses on the importance of civic knowledge, democratic values and dispositions towar...

This chapter focuses on the sociological writings about education by the three "founding fathers" of sociology, Durkheim, Marx and Weber, and briefly discusses four other important classical sociological writers, Spencer, Mannheim, Veblen, and Znaniecki. These early sociologists continue to influence contemporary thought about education through the...

Since aspirations and expectations are related to attitudes, this chapter first discusses attitudes in social psychology, and the relationship between attitudes and behavior. The following sections then review the main issues and findings regarding the career aspirations and expectations of students, subsequent career attainments, and finally the p...

This article is concerned with social background and social status, and the problems encountered in the development of consistent and valid measurement of these variables in social research.

Available here is the full table of contents and the Preface. The preface describes the scope and organization of the encyclopedia, plus a description of each section..

In-depth interviews and standardized questionnaires were administered to samples of school principals in Australia (ACT and South Australia, N = 39) and the United States (Missouri, N = 81) about their knowledge of, and use of, the results of educational research. This chapter examines respondent's attitudes towards research knowledge. Among other...

This paper reports findings from a study of 1,014 Canberra secondary school students in 15 government and private schools. Open-ended responses concerning students' understanding of AIDS, and their views regarding prevention, are presented and discussed. Data on source of AIDS information are also investigated. In general, students understand AIDS...

This paper investigates the independent effects of country-level socio-economic variables, home background variables, and school variables on science knowledge and career plans. The data are taken from standardized questionnaires and tests in eighteen countries conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement...

The influence of home background factors on educational outcomes are so pervasive that it is obviously unsound to carry out analyses of the effects of other factors , such as attitudes and the sex of the student without taking into consideration variables involving the social class or the socio-cultural characteristics of the home. In this chapter,...

This chapter examines the relationship between the educational expansion that has occurred in ten countries, and whether there is evidence that expansion has resulted in greater equality of opportunity for students from different social backgrounds. The chapter draws on data collected in the First and Second IEA Science Studies, conducted by the In...

This article looks at one important factor which should be considered in the development of HIV/AIDS educational programs -- that is, the youth language of AIDS -- and argues that this language reflects the way that young people understand, and therefore react to, that is being imparted in educational programs.

This volume is not an attempt describe historically or debate politically all the details of current changes in Australian education. Rather, as a sociological analysis, of the Australian educational system, it focuses on the structures and processes which explain this system, both past and present. It is concerned with the social forces out of whi...

This article traces the history and practices up to the 1990s of sociology of education in Australia in universities and other institutions. It examines both research and teaching during this period, and also points to textbooks and curricula content of courses. It concludes with a discussion of future trends.

This article critically investigates two seemingly theoretical competing paradigms in the sociology of education. It traces the history of these paradigms, and concludes by discussing whether they are competing or complementary.

This paper critically evaluates the current and proposed school participation profiles in view of early and late school leaving. Unlike many other Western advanced industrialized countries, Australia has historically evolved a structure which institutionalizes both early and late school leaving. There are few "dropouts" as in the American system, b...

In Australia, students can leave high school after Year 10, the approximate end of compulsory schooling, or continue through Year 12. Some early high school leavers enter into apprenticeships or enroll in vocational training programs, the impact of which has not been extensively examined. The availability of vocational training programs to early sc...

Incl. bibl., index

This chapter highlights that education is only one of the several social institutions that both affects and is affected by the political system. There is fairly consistent evidence that in capitalist societies committed to democratic processes, schooling socializes the young into the system, instills in them greater political awareness, and recruit...

This chapter discusses the link between education and development. It presents the examination of the concept of development along with the conviction that no discussion of education strategies can be effective without first clarifying the desired development strategy. There have been few concepts in social and economic thought that have been as am...

Education represents a major agent for the control of social change, and has seen how this belief very early was responsible for the increase in educational facilities and expenditures. In more recent times, the two major theoretical and policy-relevant orientations were largely responsible for the complete confidence by researchers and policy-make...

This chapter discusses the education, modernization, and quality of life. Apart from the discussion of basic human needs, there is little doubt that the process of modernization as experienced by individuals has brought about increasing control over, and the rationalization of, many aspects of the human condition. Organization for Economic Cooperat...

This chapter focuses on the question of educational reforms. The term reform is frequently used in a vague and diffuse way and is usually defined as an attempt to change things for the better in a country or a part of a country, particularly its population. Despite of very thorough educational reforms, the formal educational systems of today do not...

This chapter describes the evaluation of education in development policy. Most concerns about the relationship between education and processes of change and development is some kind of potential for reform. Even if a school system is achieving its desired educational objectives, there is always the possibility that the task can be done more effecti...

This chapter presents the relationship between education, economic growth, and development. The problem of education is not only that it is both determined and a determinant of the society in which it is located, but those other factors likewise contribute to the mobilization of human resources. Looking ahead to future needs with respect to educati...

This chapter discusses the various kinds of relationships between education and development. Dialectics as a logical principle assumes that contradictions and their resolutions in either systems of knowledge or in history are necessary if progress is to be achieved. To unravel the complexity which seems to surround the education-development debate,...

This chapter focuses on three aspects of the relationship between education and development. The first of these concerns the tendency to regard education in a deterministic manner, thus exaggerating its potential for change. The second concerns the contradictions for society and for individuals inherent in rapid educational expansion, and the third...

Examined the factors related to the occupational plans of 2,135 imminent Australian urban school leavers, with attention directed to differences by gender and level of school attainment (grade level). The conceptual distinction between preferred and expected occupational plans is discussed. Generally, males had higher career plans than females, as...

This paper investigates the causal link between characteristics of the social system and career orientations cross-nationally. This is done using the notion of "the revolution of rising expectations" as applied to the rapid increase in education in less developed countries. The theoretical model and the methodological procedures are then utilized i...

Flows of academic talent among nations are an important factor in the transmission of values and knowledge throughout the world. As a point of entry for a study of international networks through which these flows occur, appointments to all universities in a single society, Australia, are examined for the years 1961–1974. During this period approxim...