Sociology of education

The sociology of education is one of the branches of the Sociologie which studies the education.

Although older, it currently counts two principal schools, the school of Pierre Bourdieu and the school of Raymond Boudon.

The theory “conflictualist” and the theory “externalist”

The theories of Pierre Bourdieu are qualified conflictualists just like those of Bernard Lahire or Baudelot - Establet; one opposes them (but are supplemented) to the theories externalists of Boudon.

At the first, in fact the social reports/ratios will determine the school orientation, the success or the failure. The social origin has an importance but not only. He speaks about the school like " Machine of reproduction of the inégalités" ; the second considers that the individuals are free and rational beings which make calculations costs/advantages to be directed. The social origin would play here only as an economic factor. However Berthelot wishes to exceed this conflict and explains why the parents are free of their choice but which there exist surdéterminations: temporal, geographical and positional.

Interactions of the children and the company

For Jean Piaget, which is interesting to study in sociology of education it is the whole of the interactions of the children and the company in which they evolve/move. The children know an evolution by alternation of successive stages, ruptures and re-establishments. It is about passage of equilibrium cycles to phases of imbalance to recognize a stabilization then. One speaks about operation " homéostatique" to indicate the mechanism by which the human beings change and evolve/move. For Piaget, socialization corresponds to an active process of discontinuous adaptation to the environment and mental or social forms increasingly complex. This vision is rather distant from that of Durkheim which conceives socialization like a continuum. The concept of structure is important at Piaget, for him the mental structure is mainly the resultant of two dimensions: cognitive and emotional. The adaptation of the individual is carried out through two movements: the assimilation (incorporation) and accommodation (adjustment of the structures).

One can distinguish 4 great stages from this development:

  • passage of the absolute respect (parent-child) to the mutual respect (parent-child/child-parents),
  • passage of the obedience personalized with the feeling of the rule (concept of contract, social norm, mutual agreement.),
  • passage of total heteronomy to reciprocal autonomy (friendship),
  • passage of energy to the will (differentiation of the duty and the pleasure).

Lautrey will take again the theses of Piaget to explain the bonds between the social position of the parents and academic success, it is interested in the flexible rules (easy families), with the weak rules (families of the popular classes), with the rigid rules (middle-classes).

See too

Related articles

Bibliographical resources

See also: important Publications in sociology

  • Emile Durkheim, moral education , 1902-1903, Lira in line (classiques.uqac.ca)

  • Emile Durkheim, Education and sociology , 1922, Lira in line (classiques.uqac.ca)
  • Jean-Pierre Terrail (to dir.), the school in France. Crises, practices, perspective , the Argument, Paris, 2005

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