Educational Sociology

Abstract

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 various levels and types of education, and it has also contributed to the development of methodological and statistical techniques. Three current issues are discussed as examples, namely the relationship between education and social inequality, school violence and bullying, and teacher burnout and the accountability movement.

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Educational Sociology
Lawrence J Saha, Sociology, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
Ó2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract
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 various levels and types of
education, and it has also contributed to the development of methodological and statistical techniques. Three current issues
are discussed as examples, namely the relationship between education and social inequality, school violence and bullying,
and teacher burnout and the accountability movement.
Introduction
Educational sociology is one of the major subfields in soci-
ology and also in the development and production of educa-
tional research and teaching. Because of the enormous breadth
and scope of what is called ‘education’in modern society, the
sociological study of education covers a wide field and is
perhaps one of the largest subfields within sociology. As
Ballentine and Hammack (2012) point out, education starts
with birth and does not end until death. In one form or
another, either formal or informal, it takes place throughout
one’s life. However, sociologists tend to direct their attention to
the type of education that takes place in formal institutions
which are designated by society to learning in an organized,
systematic manner. Thus the sociological study of education,
and what is called ‘educational sociology,’is generally restricted
to education in a formal sense, namely schools, colleges, and
universities. Through these institutions, society ensures that
a standard body of knowledge, skills, and values get trans-
mitted to future generations.
Emile Durkheim, one of the first sociologists who studied
formal education in a systematic manner, argued that formal
education is the way that society guarantees its own survival
(Saha, 2001). This does not mean that the process of education
takes place seamlessly, and that the desired body of knowledge
and values do not change, or that it is passed on without
contestation. Durkheim himself understood that few societies
are in agreement about what knowledge should be passed on
through formal education. The divisions within society, such
as social class, religion, gender, and race/ethnic groups, usually
have some unique preferences about what knowledge should
be passed on to the young. As a result, educational policy,
particularly in modern multiethnic societies, is usually
a source of much disagreement. These disagreements not only
mean that much compromise often takes place in the estab-
lishment of formal educational systems, but that often two or
more different types of schools become established, each
passing on at least some unique knowledge and values to
those students who attend them. This explains why many
modern societies consist of a government school system and
one or more private school systems. These are some of the
kinds of phenomena that sociologists attempt to understand
through their research.
Educational Sociology or Sociology of Education
Two labels have dominated the sociological study of
education through its academic development in the English-
speaking world. Perhaps the older of the two is ‘educational
sociology.’Indeed this was the label which was used for the
title of the first dedicated journal in the United States, The
Journal of Educational Sociology. The journal originally was
established outside of the official professional academic
sociological association, the American Sociological Associa-
tion (ASA). The journal content reflected the two directions
that sociologists took in their study of education. Some were
concerned about educational policy and how education ‘ought
to be’in American society. Others, however, thought that the
sociological study of education should be more ‘scientific,’and
thus more concerned with ‘what was actually happening’in
educational institutions. However, when a move was made to
incorporate the journal into the official publications of the
ASA, the members of the latter perspective prevailed, and the
name of the journal was changed to Sociology of Education.
The two labels continue to be used, sometimes interchange-
ably. For the most part, however, the former tends to be used
by sociologists in academic departments of education, while
the latter tends to be used in departments of sociology. In the
end, both approaches are necessary, as sociologists need to
address both the factual and ‘scientific’operations of educa-
tional systems as well as the policies needed to administer
them (Dworkin and Ballantine, 2012). In this article, the
labels are used interchangeably.
The sociological study of education experienced rapid
growth in the early history of the discipline. All of the ‘founding
fathers’of sociology, namely Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and
Karl Marx, had something to say about education, although it
was Durkheim who was most responsible for establishing the
field.
There have been critics of educational sociology throughout
its development. For example, some have referred to it as “ivory
tower nonsense”(Hansen, 1967) and have noted that it has
been characterized by the “sterility of the questions that it
asked”(Corwin, 1965). However, more recently it has been
considered as “extremely rich, vibrant and diverse”with “an
exciting range of substantive issues for investigation, as well as
an equally exciting range of theoretical considerations and
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methodological tools for undertaking these investigations .”
(Noblit and Pink, 1995: p. 27).
But as the field continues to expand into the twenty-first
century, better theories and methodological tools are opening
the door to more rigorous research. Hallinan, for example,
contends that “sociologists of education must conduct theo-
retically rich research that identifies mechanisms that link
exogenous and endogenous factors to student outcomes”
(Hallinan, 2011: p. 2).
Theories and Methods in Educational Sociology
Like other areas in sociology, the development of theory and
research methods implies a continuing vitality in the field. This
has certainly been true for educational sociology. Although the
traditional theories emanating from the ‘founding fathers’of
sociology continue to be important in the study of education,
new perspectives continually emerge which identify, clarify,
and explain educational phenomena which are unique in an
increasingly geographical mobile and technologically sophis-
ticated world population.
Theories
The early classical sociological theories, primarily from
Durkheim and Weber, made it clear that formal education, that
is schools and universities, played a vital role not only in
passing on the social and cultural heritage of society, but also in
the maintenance and formation of social inequalities. In the
case of Durkheim, these inequalities could be seen as func-
tional insofar as they helped recognize innate talent and
motivation among students. For Weber these inequalities
which emerged from schooling had more to do with the
cultural and political factors which already divided society.
Although Marx never developed a coherent theory of education
in his critique of capitalism, his ideas eventually led to a very
important neo-Marxist educational perspective which focused
on education as a form of ‘symbolic violence’whereby the
social class structure is reproduced through educational
processes (Althusser, 1971;Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977).
More importantly, this reproduction process has subsequently
been found to occur with the corporation and compliance of
the students from disadvantaged backgrounds (for example,
see Giroux, 1983;Willis, 1977).
These theoretical perspectives focused primarily on the
structures, both formal and informal, which divide society.
There emerged a completely different (and opposite) theoret-
ical perspective which pointed to micro-level interactions and
subjective constructions related to the educational processes.
Drawing on seminal work of the early interactionist theorists,
such as George Herbert Mead, Charles Horton Cooley, Herbert
Blumer, and Irving Goffman, a major sociological perspective
was launched by Berger and Luckman (1967), who argued that
reality was constructed through people’s creative action. In the
study of education from a sociological perspective, labeling
theory became a major theory which explained educational
processes and outcomes in terms of the interactions between
all parties involved in the education of young people. For
example, teachers and students have expectations of one
another’s behavior, and these have consequences on one
another’s behavior. The important work of Rosenthal and
Jacobson (1968) has generated a large body of research
which has investigated the impact of teacher labeling.
However, as Rubie-Davies (2009) has pointed out, the char-
acteristics of the teachers are as important in understanding this
process as are the characteristics of the students. Most impor-
tantly, however, this rich body of research illustrates the
importance of the interactionist perspective for research, which
has helped understand educational processes in the classroom.
Because these theories focus on the interaction of two or rela-
tively few persons, the body of theories which fall into this
category are referred to as micro-theories. Those which focus on
organizational structures, or on the major group divisions in
society, are referred to as macro-theories.
The sociological study of education has been influenced by
many newer and more general theoretical perspectives. Indeed,
it can be said that almost every theory in the social sciences has
been used to investigate educational processes of one kind or
another. These theories often occur in schools or interrelated
clusters which are dominated by a particular underlying
perspective. For example, in the 1970s a perspective called the
‘New Sociology of Education’emerged which shifted the focus
from educational student outcomes to the knowledge content
of school curricula and who controlled it (Young, 1971). This
critical approach provided not only the dual purpose of
‘exposing’what really occurred in the structure and process of
schooling, but also the liberation and empowerment of those
students (and sections of society) who were dominated and
disadvantaged by it. This perspective capitalizes on a “critical
reflection which liberates or emancipates actors from false
beliefs and subsequently leads to concrete proposals for over-
coming oppression”(Lakomski, 1997: p. 57). Thus there is not
one critical theory, but a range of critical theories, each with its
own focal point depending on what aspect of schooling is
being examined. These theoretical versions appear in educa-
tional sociological subfields such as the curriculum, educa-
tional administration, teacher education, educational policy,
and planning, to name just a few.
One important critical theoretical perspective is reflected in
feminist theories. Feminist theories not only challenge the male
bias of most educational research, but they argue that as
a consequence of this bias women’s experiences in schools are
often neglected. Some of these concern the issues of social
justice and differential treatment and opportunities in both
educational experiences, but more fundamentally the focus has
been on educational policies (Arnot and Weiler, 1993).
What is important, however, is that these approaches not
only are designed to ‘uncover’hidden features of what takes
place in schools, but by so doing, they provide the tools to
bring about change and reform. These theories stand in
contrast to research and explanations emerging from the
functional, conflict, and interactional perspectives which
attempt to describe and explain educational processes.
Afinal influential theoretical perspective has influenced
many researchers, and it focuses on the wider macro-processes
which impact on the increasing expansion of standard orga-
nizational and structural schooling models which have rapidly
spread, and continue to spread, throughout the world.
The institutional and global approach, according to Benevot
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(1997), consists of three themes: (1) a focus on the origins and
expansion of mass secular systems of schooling throughout the
world in the twentieth century; (2) a focus on the institutional
aspects of modern education, such as its selection function,
its importance in the allocation of social status; and finally (3)
the impact of education on other structures and institutions
of society, such as gender roles, the nature of work, and
even aspects of the nation-state, and the relations between
nation-states. Because of the historical and macro-foci of the
perspective, it is closely related to theories of globalization.
The spread of mass secular schooling suggests the emer-
gence of a world culture which includes universal models of
education systems, and in particular schooling. Meyer (1997)
argues that the modern nation-states, and their subsequent
educational systems, are shaped by common values relating to
education, the nation, and the state. Robertson and Dale
(2008), however, argue that these globalizing forces include
additional fundamental factors such as international economic
competitiveness and an increasingly interconnected global
economy. Thus the social and economic values placed on
education and mass schooling make this social institution
vulnerable to these forces, which in turn are manifested
through increasing standardization and accountability
measures.
It has been argued that the institutionalization and glob-
alization of schooling impacts not only the structures and
processes of school systems, but also the values and expecta-
tions of the students within them. Sikora and Saha (2010)
argue that the high levels of occupational expectations found
across societies, in particular the developing societies, are
areflection of the globalization of the link between education
and jobs. Using Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) data from 50 countries, they found that
high levels of occupational expectations were particularly
noticeable in the less developed countries. Yet these countries
are the recipients of considerable aid through international and
nation-state agencies. Ironically, Sikora and Saha argue that this
aid might itself be a conduit of the globalizing process which
drives the expansion of a standard model of an educational
system.
Looked at from a broad perspective, the theories which
guide research in educational sociology are broad in their
scope, but rich in the insights that they make possible in
understanding the many faces of educational systems and the
processes which occur within them.
Research Methods
The sociological study of education has always used research
methods adopted from mainstream sociological research.
However, because of the unique challenges in the study of
educational systems and processes, given that students are
nested in classes, and in schools, the discipline has also been
the center for the development of new research methods,
particularly in quantitative data analysis, which have eventually
made their way into mainstream sociology. The following
section provides an overview of the main characteristics of
research methods used in this field.
From the very beginning, the methods used in educational
research incorporated both qualitative and quantitative
approaches. One only has to examine the methods of the early
‘classics’in educational sociology to observe this practice. Early
studies of education processes tended to be ‘holistic’in nature,
such as a study of a school, a particular social group, or
education in a particular community, and in which both
qualitative and quantitative data were used. This was the case
in studies in many countries. For example, Hollingshead’s
Elmstown’s Youth (1947) and Coleman’sAdolescent Society
(1961) represent path-breaking sociological studies of
American education over 50 years ago, and they are regarded as
relevant even today. Similarly, in the UK Hargreaves’Social
Relations in a Secondary School (1967) and Ford’sSocial Class and
the Comprehensive School (1969) used multiple methods in their
holistic studies of single schools, and they also produced
research which has had long-lasting impact on British educa-
tional sociology. In France a classical monograph of this period
was Bourdieu and Passeron’sReproduction in Education, Society
and Culture (1977), which not only introduced the concept of
culture capital to sociology, but was also responsible for the
development of reproduction theory, which was to become
one of the dominant theories in educational sociology. These,
and other similar studies in the early years of educational
sociology, were to highly influence research for several decades,
until the emergence of more sophisticated computer tech-
nology and statistical packages made possible the analysis of
educational systems and processes in an entirely different
manner. But qualitative research methods also continued to
develop, but in a very different manner.
In her article of trends in qualitative research in educational
sociology, LeCompte (1997) describes how new approaches
developed even while the old methods, largely influenced by
anthropological and evaluation research, remained frequently
used. However, according to LeCompte, what fundamentally
changed was a move away from positivistic qualitative studies,
based on methods such as observation and other forms of field
work, to research based on critical theory and postmodernism.
With this shift, the new focus has become the perspective and
narratives of the subjects, as the objects of study, rather than
that of the researcher. In other words, by focusing on the
‘voices’of the subjects of research, the categories and inter-
pretations are those of the teachers and students, for example,
rather than those of the researcher. However the assumption is
that teachers and students have ‘stories’or narratives to tell and
to analyze, and the interpretation of their presence or absence
becomes problematic. Examples of these kinds of problems are
found in studies where the informant is low income and
mentally handicapped or where the informants have no
‘stories’at all to tell (LeCompte, 1997).
Thus, research based on stories or the life experiences of
individuals, and the analysis of narratives and biographies have
opened new paths and challenges for qualitative research.
According to LeCompte (2009) these shifts in qualitative
methodologies can be traced in the series of handbooks of
research on teaching produced under the sponsorship of the
American Education Research Association from 1963 to 2001.
While reflecting a ‘sea change’during these years in theory and
research in most social science disciplines, new epistemological
issues emerged as researchers began to ask ‘Whose story is being
told?’and whether the researchers have got the stories right
(LeCompte, 2009: p. 39). One of the driving forces of
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continued attempts to develop qualitative research methods
has been desired to avoid a ‘top-down’imposition of meanings
and understandings of educational phenomena and replace it
with new ways of researching which are more “collaborative,
participatory, and action-oriented”(p. 41).
While in recent years qualitative research methods have
continued to make a valuable contribution to research in
educational sociology, so too have the developments in
quantitative methods. For a period of time, particularly in the
1980s and 1990s, developments in qualitative methods tended
to overshadow those in quantitative research. As LeCompte
observed, “Qualitative research was embraced by the educa-
tional community with such enthusiasm that in some
academic quarters, quantitative research was relegated to the
background, caricatured as unable to address real issues con-
cerning real people”(LeCompte, 2009: p. 43).
However, during that period users of quantitative methods
were not standing still, and developments in statistical tech-
niques and modeling began to address some of the challenging
contexts that educational research presented, namely, how do
you study education processes and outcomes of students who
are nested in classrooms, sometimes taught by different
teachers throughout the day, all within different schools, and
across different countries? To further complicate this challenge,
quantitative techniques also had to be able to incorporate the
educational effects of a myriad of family background charac-
teristics as well as the effects of friendship groups and
community contexts. Fortunately, breakthroughs in statistical
packages, which emerged in the 1970s, began to reap returns
just as qualitative methods were reaching a kind of epistemo-
logical endpoint in pushing that research deeper into the
conscious world of individual students.
Quantitative research in education is divided into two main
groups, depending on whether the research design is experi-
mental or not. Researchers who come through a more
psychological or educational psychological tradition tend to
favor analyses which involve experimental designs based on
a treatment group and a control group. The advantage of this
approach is that a single variable can be manipulated in such
a way that its causal effect on the outcome can be tested.
Researchers from this perspective tend to use analysis of vari-
ance, or a variation of it, as their primary statistical tool. This
statistical procedure has persisted for generations of
researchers, and continues to be popular today.
However, for researchers who take a more sociological
approach in the use of quantitative data, the use of survey
designs is more typical. The primary difference between
experimental and survey designs is that the latter tend to have
only one study group, the research participants tend to be
larger in number, and there are more variables included in the
analysis. However, unlike experimental designs with control
and treatment groups, survey designs are multivariate and the
isolation of a single causal variable is replaced by multivariate
and assumed multicausal models. Nevertheless, the develop-
ment of new statistical techniques and the increasing
frequency of longitudinal survey designs make both the
identification of the multicausal effects easier to identify and
the disaggregation of the between-student, between-class,
between-school, and between-country effects possible. While
correlational analysis and multiple regression techniques
remain widely used, they are often limited by conditions
where demonstrated causality or the disaggregation of effects
between levels is less important.
One attempt to solve the problem of multicausality
emerged in the 1960s with the development of path analysis.
The use of path models was stimulated by an interest in the
factors which explained occupational attainments. Following
Blau and Duncan’s study of occupational attainment among
adults in the United States, Sewell and his colleagues at the
University of Wisconsin used path analysis to study the
attainments of high school graduates who were then followed
through university and subsequent occupational careers. What
made the work of the so-called Wisconsin model so important
for educational sociology was the inclusion of educational
variables. For over a decade the use of path analysis to study the
determinants of both educational and occupational attain-
ments became dominant among quantitative educational
sociologists. Further developments of this approach, using
partial least squares (PLSpath) and maximum likelihood
techniques (LISREL), made it possible to create a latent variable
from a number of observed variables, thus increasing the
number of variables and refining their relationships and
meanings for path models. However, for the study of school
students, there remained the problem of nested data and
problems of differentiating between the student, classroom,
school, and, in the case of comparative studies, country-level
effects.
Major breakthroughs in solving these latter statistical chal-
lenges began to occur in the 1980s with the development of
hierarchical linear modeling through which the overall ability
to explain educational or occupational attainments could be
disaggregated into the various nested levels. Further develop-
ments which incorporated both path analysis and multilevel
modeling have emerged, and procedures such as AMOS,
MPLUS, and STREAMS have been developed and are increas-
ingly being used by quantitative educational sociologists, with
the result that there have been pressures to collect higher
quality educational data which these procedures demand.
Overall, these developments have greatly improved the
understanding of the complex relationships and multiplex
determinants of educational processes and attainments.
Perhaps equally important has been the gradual adoption
of these highly sophisticated and complex procedures into
mainstream sociological research. Thus advances in the quan-
titative research into education, to meet unique conditions in
educational research, have been of benefit to sociology as
a whole. For a more detailed description of the history and
development of these procedures, and their importance for
educational sociology, see Keeves (1997),Saha and Keeves
(2003), and Keeves and Darmawan (2009).
Apart from the above types of research techniques, there are
other approaches which have investigated education from
a completely different perspective, namely the importance of
the interconnection between individuals and the benefits or
disadvantages they bring to educational attainments. Network
analysis is a growing type of statistical analysis which makes
possible the study of the effect of friendship and peer groups
among students on educational attainments (Klovdahl, 1994;
Saha, 1994). Theoretically, network analysis can be linked with
the notion of social capital, a concept which originated in the
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work of Coleman, which focuses on the human resources that
individuals possess that can be used for various social attain-
ments, including education (Coleman, 1988). For example,
Rizzuto et al. (2009) found, in their study of American
university students, that the connectivity (network density) of
students in a university classroom had a significant, though not
the most important, effect on academic performance. In an
innovative use of archival data, Eckles and Stradley (2012)
found that students who were closely interconnected through
residence and classes were more likely to remain at university,
compared to those who dropped out, who were less socially
connected. These two recent examples illustrate the utility and
importance of social network analysis in educational research.
As this exposition has made clear, the theoretical and
methodological approaches within educational sociology are
varied and diverse. At times this diversity has resulted in
conflict within the field. On the other hand, recent discussions
of this diversity have seen it as a strength rather than a weak-
ness. For example, Weis and her colleagues, in documenting
the struggles between competing theories and methodologies,
argue that working across the divisions, rather than maintain-
ing boundaries, will be more productive for the discipline in
the long run (Weis et al., 2009).
Some Current Topics in Educational Sociology
As should already be apparent, educational sociology is a broad
and inclusive subarea of sociology. Because of the importance
of education in society, hardly any aspect of social life is
unaffected by it. The topics which are studied and researched
are almost endless, ranging from early forms of education
through socialization and preschool experiences, through
formal educational experiences, both academic and vocational,
and finally to forms of lifelong learning which follows the
completion of formal educational studies. Furthermore, these
educational experiences are often studied in the context of
family background characteristics, friendship and peer group
experiences, and other similar social contexts. It would be
impossible here to summarize issues relating to these topical
areas in this brief exposition. Therefore, three current key topics
will be examined here to illustrate recent work by educational
sociologists. These are education and social inequalities, school
violence and bullying, and teacher burnout and the standard-
ized testing and accountability movement.
Education and Social Inequalities
The direct relationship between education and various forms of
social inequality has probably been the earliest and most
widely theorized and researched topic in educational sociology.
The general pattern in all societies is that the more education
a person has attained, the greater will be other valued social
attainments. But educational attainment is not equally
distributed, so that those groups which acquire more education
also enjoy more social benefits. The dimensions of these
attainment inequalities generally are many, ranging from
gender, ethnic and race origins, rural–urban residential loca-
tions, government and private school attendance, types of
family socialization practices, and social and cognitive
disabilities, to name just a few. What has been most striking is
that, with the exception of gender inequalities, most of the
traditional inequalities have persisted in spite of much research
on education and educational reforms. Furthermore, these
inequalities exist across societies.
Early theorizing about education and inequality was based
on the functional perspective which argued that, because
a social role of education is to sift, sort, and allocate the most
talented and motivated students into the most important and
lucrative social positions, the inequalities are a product of
merit, and a sign that the education system is working. The
complex process by which this comes about has been labeled
the status attainment model. Basically the model assumes that
there are many determinants of how much education a person
attains, including home background factors, aspirations and
expectations, and prior attainments. Then the amount and type
of education acquired lead to other occupational and social
attainments.
However, because the meritocratic process, studied in this
way, always seemed to favor students from privileged back-
grounds, countertheories argued that the continued existence
of social inequalities in educational systems represented a form
of social reproduction which was not merit based, but one
based on hegemony, privilege, and power over the education
system itself. Starting with Bernstein’s research between class-
based language codes in England, and their importance in
academic achievement (Bernstein, 1971), Bourdieu and
Passeron (1977) also found the mechanisms of the reproduc-
tion of social class in education in France, not because of
a meritocracy but because of the transmission of what he later
called ‘cultural capital.’Thus the concept of cultural capital, and
Coleman’s related concept of social capital, provided an alter-
native explanation for the pervasiveness of social inequality
and education.
Empirically, the quantitative studies of the link between
education and social inequality found that the relationship
existed in most western industrial societies (Erikson and
Goldthorpe, 1992), and that class of social origin was a main
contributor, although other research found that its effects were
diminishing (Dronkers, 1993). Nevertheless the differences
between the social classes and education have been found to be
persistent across countries (Shavit and Blossfield, 1993).
The direct relationship between education and social
inequality has also been found to vary between countries,
depending on characteristics of the political and economic
systems and also on characteristics of the educational systems.
For example, countries with more social democratic systems
tend to have lower educational and social inequalities than
countries with liberal market economies (Beller and Hout,
2006). Similarly countries which have early selection of
students into tracks based on presumed innate ability, or on
vocational or academic occupational destinations, compared
to countries with nontracked comprehensive education
systems, tend to have stronger links between educational
attainments and other social attainments (Marks, 2005).
Furthermore, it has also been argued that even as the general
levels of educational attainment in some societies have
appeared to become more equal, for example in the expecta-
tion that everyone can attend university and obtain a university
degree, there remain hidden factors which bring about negative
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and unequal consequences. These emerge when the realistic
possibilities among students of attaining goals are not recog-
nized or acknowledged, with the result that failures are worse
than if realistic lower level goals were pursued to begin with
(Rosenbaum et al., 2011). Thus, ironically, the ideal or
perfectionist views about how to reduce or eradicate the link
between education and inequality actually have been shown to
maintain them, although through hidden processes. Clearly
much sociological research remains to be done, and policies
need to be developed, at both the school and the political and
economic level to reduce the link between education and social
inequality, if that is, indeed, the goal of a society.
School Violence and Bullying
Recent years have seen a rapid increase in various forms of
violence taking place in schools in many countries of the world.
Because schools serve young children and teenage youth, they
are seen as places that should be free and safe from various
forms of psychological and physical harm. Apart from the
disruption that these harmful forms of behavior cause to the
teaching and learning process, school students are extremely
vulnerable and powerless to protect themselves when con-
fronted with them. Similarly, it has been demonstrated that
teachers suffer negative consequences, such as burnout, when
they are made to work in an unsafe and threatening school
environment. Therefore, sociologists, parents, and education
administrators and policymakers have contributed much to our
understanding of the factors which contribute to unsafe schools.
Violence in schools can take many forms, ranging from the
1999 shooting at Columbine High School in the United States
to physical and emotional abuse between students. While the
Columbine High School incident may have been the result of
individuals with social and emotional problems, the frequency
and diversity of incidents such as these, not only in the United
States but elsewhere, poses important sociological research
challenges and subsequent policies. For example, the experi-
ence of violence among youth generally, whether domestic or
in the school, can have disruptive consequences for academic
performance among students, as well as their relationships
with other, and their own psychological well-being (Huang
and Mossige, 2012).
Bullying, in particular, has attracted considerable research
attention from both sociologists and psychologists. Although
school bullying had been regarded by many as a normal part of
school life, ever since the seminal and influential work of
Olweus, who began to study bullying in 1970 in Scandinavia, it
has become regarded as an important social problem in
schools. Olweus’research has focused on both the bully and
the victim, and takes into account both psychological and
sociological factors (Olweus, 1993). Recent researchers on
bullying have also included both sets of variables. For example
Cassidy (2009), in his study of adolescent youth in the United
Kingdom, found that bully victims were more likely to be girls,
were more likely to come from less supportive families, and
were more likely to have a lower group identity and to
be poorer in problem-solving skills. Bibou-Nakou et al. (2012),
who studied Greek secondary school students using a qualita-
tive approach, found that the students themselves thought the
school was partly responsible because of the competitive
environment it fostered. Thus programs directed at lowering or
eliminating the incidence of bullying in schools, such as that
put forward in Norway, include primarily sociological vari-
ables, such as the promotion of more empathetic relationships
between students and strong leadership by the teachers in
fostering a more cooperative and an antibullying environment
(Roland et al., 2010).
Bullying continues to be considered a serious issue in
educational systems throughout the world. Rigby and Smith
(2011) argue that, overall, the incidence of bullying has
declined, largely because of the various intervention programs
which have been put into place to reduce or prevent it.
However, because of the growing dominance of electronic
technology, new forms of bullying, such as outside-of-school
cyber bullying, appear to be replacing the traditional
in-school bullying. Research into both in-school and out-
of-school bullying continues to expand our knowledge of the
causes and consequences of this type of violence among youth.
Sociological research has made considerable contribution to
the better understanding of bullying in schools, and how to
treat and prevent it.
The Accountability Movement and Teacher Burnout
The teacher counterpart to the consequences of bullying among
students is teacher burnout. Teachers play a crucial role in
educational processes, but at the same time they are caught
between a number of conflicting pressures, in particular those
relating to the expectations of parents, the indifference or even
the hostility of students, and the authoritarianism or unsup-
portive posture of school principals and other administrators.
The teacher has been the object of study virtually since the
beginning of the sociological study of education itself, begin-
ning with Durkheim’s study of education, especially what he
called ‘moral education.’Durkheim contended that a funda-
mental purpose of education was to form children into adults
who were fully integrated into society and its norms. For him,
the teacher played a central role in this process, especially
in providing discipline, integration into social groups,
and the gradual development of autonomy (Durkheim,
1961(1925)). Two important early sociological works on
teachers were Waller’sSociology of Teaching (1932) and Lortie’s
Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (1975).
Lortie (1975) foreshadowed some of the current problems
facing the teaching profession and teachers when he observed
that teachers, at least in America, were ‘both honored and
disdained,’partly because they are deemed to be professionals,
but at the same time are paid relatively low wages (p. 10).
According to him, they occupy a ‘shadowed social standing.’
This insight seems to have been predictive of many of the
pressures on teachers today in light of their loss of autonomy
and professional status, and their increasing subjection to
accountability policies about which they have little control.
These kinds of pressures have produced what contemporary
sociologists and psychologists call ‘burnout.’
Although psychologists consider burnout to be primarily
a problem internal to the individual, sociologists see it as
a product of a work environment which removes the meaning
and power from the teacher. Thus Dworkin (1987) has argued
for a sociological approach to the study of teacher burnout
294 Educational Sociology
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which focuses more on the organizational structure of schools
and the relationship between teachers and school administra-
tors rather than with students and parents. Thus, rather than
focus on the psychological characteristics of the teachers,
a sociological approach would focus on aspects of the school,
and in particular the administrative style of the principal and
other aspects of the relationships between the teachers them-
selves. Indeed, Dworkin et al. (2003) found that teachers in
schools with a more democratic environment and more teacher
autonomy were less likely to experience burnout symptoms.
In contrast to the above, one feature of the current global-
ization process is the increase in the use of standardized testing
of students to assess not only the students’performance, but
also that of teachers and principals. As Natriello (2009) points
out, there are negative consequences for teachers with the
introduction of standard testing, with costs to teachers for the
low performance of students, thus the name ‘high stakes
testing.’The introduction of this form of standards-based
policy is part of an increasing global movement which is
removing teacher professional autonomy and reducing the
profession to that of perfunctory bureaucratic personnel in the
system. Sociologists who study education are increasingly
turning their attention to the changing nature of the teacher
profession under these new organizational circumstances.
Conclusion
The sociological study of education is a broad-ranging part of the
educational and sociology disciplines. Because of the pervasive
nature of education into all sectors of the lives of individuals,
and also into the functioning of society as a whole, the discipline
is extremely inclusive and there is hardly a sector of society where
it is not relevant. Educational sociology has changed extensively
since Emile Durkheim began to lecture about it to his students at
the Sorbonne. But just as during the early days of sociology, so
too today the study of education from a sociological perspective
addresses important contemporary issues across societies. Some
of these issues are common to all societies, such as those relating
to inequality, while others are more unique to the characteristics
of individual societies, for example issues relating to social and
economic development. Educational sociology occupies
a central place in the disciplines of education and sociology. In
terms of both theory and research methods, it has made
important contributions to the studies of education and also to
wider fields of sociological research generally.
See also: Burnout, Psychology of; Coeducation and Single-Sex
Schooling; Cognitive Development, Educational Theories of;
Coleman, James Samuel (1926–95); Comparative Research in
Education: IEA Studies; Defiant Behavior during Adolescence
and Cultural Variations; Durkheim, Émile (1858–1917);
Education: Anthropological Aspects; Effects of Stress on
Development during Childhood; Ethnicity and Educational
Achievement; Family and Schooling; Globalization in Education;
Marx, Karl (1818–83); Motivational Development, Systems
Theory of; Social Inequality and Schooling; Socioeconomic
Status and Academic Achievement; Teacher Stress and
Burnout: Methodological Perspectives.
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