Thinking with Stephen J. Ball


Book Description

This edited volume explores how Stephen Ball’s work has shaped the field of the sociology of education worldwide. Written by internationally based researchers who are Ball’s former PhD students, it draws on different strands of his work to show what it means to think, write, and do research inspired by Ball’s theory, methodology, and epistemology. The contributions revolve around a wide range of themes including: the ethics of doing educational research, disability studies, the bio-politics of the child’s soul, lived experiences of marginalisation in education, educating migrant and refugee women in the borderlands, and post-Brexit reflections on the Bologna process. Chapters draw on different lines of thought from the corpus of a significant and influential figure in the sociology of education to present, explicate, and discuss a wide range of research projects, themes, theoretical directions, as well as methodological approaches in the field of the sociology of education today. More than celebrating Ball’s scholarship, this volume shows new and innovative directions in the sociology of education. It will be highly relevant reading for researchers, scholars, and students in the sociology of education, educational policy, and politics and educational theory.




Education Policy and Social Class


Book Description

This book brings together in one place Stephen Ball's key writings. Drawing on over 20 years' work, Professor Ball has selected his most seminal work - from education policy and sociology to his work on education and social class.




The Education Debate


Book Description

Education is a hot-button political issue across the globe. It is seen as a crucial factor in ensuring economic productivity and competitiveness and in generating social mobility and tackling social inequality--but are these goals feasible or compatible? Focusing on education policy in the United Kingdom, Stephen J. Ball, in this fully updated third edition of The Education Debate, guides us through the flood of government initiatives and policies of the past twenty years. Ball looks at how policy interventions have changed the landscape and meaning of education, turned children into "learners" and parents into "consumers," and played their part in the reformation of contemporary governance.




Foucault and Education


Book Description

First published in 1990, this book was the first to explore Foucault's work in relation to education, arguing that schools, like prisons and asylums, are institutions of moral and social regulation, complex technologies of disciplinary control where power and knowledge are crucial. Original and challenging, the essays assess the relevance of Foucault's work to educational practice, and show how the application of Foucauldian analysis to education enables us to see the politics of educational reform in a new light.




Foucault, Power, and Education


Book Description

Foucault, Power, and Education invites internationally renowned scholar Stephen J. Ball to reflect on the importance and influence of Foucault on his work in educational policy. By focusing on some of the ways Foucault has been placed in relation to educational questions or questions about education, Ball highlights the relationships between Foucault's concepts and methods, and educational research and analysis. An introductory chapter offers a brief explanation of some of Foucault's key concerns, while additional chapters explore ways in which Ball himself has sought to apply Foucault's ideas in addressing contemporary educational issues. In this intensely personal and reflective text, Ball offers an interpretation of his Foucault--That is, his own particular reading of the Foucauldian toolbox. Ideal for courses in education policy and education studies, this valuable teaching resource is essential reading for any education scholar looking for a starting point into the literature and ideas of Foucault.




Foucault as Educator


Book Description

This book considers Foucault as educator in three main ways. First, through some consideration of what his work says about education as a social and political practice. That is, education as a form of what Allen (2014) calls benign violence – which operates through mundane, quotidian disciplinary technologies and expert knowledges which together construct a ‘pedagogical machine’. Second, through an exploration of his ‘method’ as a form of critique. That is, as a way of showing that things are ‘not as necessary as all that’, a way of addressing what is intolerable. This suggests that critique is education of a kind. Third, through a discussion of some of Foucault's later work on subjectivity and in particular on ‘the care of the self’ or what we might call ‘a pedagogy of the self’. Each chapter introduces and discusses some relevant examples from educational settings to illustrate and enact Foucault’s analytics.




The Micro-Politics of the School


Book Description

Stephen Ball's micro-political theory of school organization is a radical departure from traditional theories. He rejects a prescriptive 'top down' approach and directly addresses the interest and concerns of teachers and current problems facing schools. In doing so he raises question about the adequacy and appropriateness of the existing forms of organizational control in schools. Through case studies and interviews with teachers, the book captures the flavour of real conflicts in schools - particularly in times of falling rolls, change of leadership or amalgamations - when teachers' autonomy seems to be at stake.




Class Strategies and the Education Market


Book Description

Class Strategies and the Education Market examines the ways in which the middle classes maintain and improve their social advantages in and through education. Drawing on an extensive series of interviews with parents and children, this book identifies key moments of decision making in the construction of the educational trajectories of middle class children. Stephen J. Ball organises his analysis around the key concepts of social closure, social capital, values and principles and risk, while bringing a broad range of up-to-date sociological theory to bear upon his subject. From this thorough analysis, valuable and thought-provoking insights emerge into the assiduous care and considerable effort and expenditure which goes into ensuring the educational success of the middle class child The middle classes are a sociological enigma, presenting the social researcher with considerable analytic and theoretical difficulties. Class Strategies and the Education Market provides a set of working tools for class analysis and the examination of class practices. Above all, it offers new ways of thinking about class theory and the relationships between classes in late modern society.




Education, Globalisation and New Times


Book Description

Education, Globalisation and New Times comprises a selection of the most influential papers published over the twenty-one years of the Journal of Education Policy. Written by many of the leading scholars in the field, these seminal papers cover a variety of subjects, sectors and levels of education, focused around the following major themes: education, globalisation and new times policy theory and method policy and equity. Compiled by the journal's editors, Stephen Ball, Ivor Goodson and Meg Maguire, the book illustrates the development of the field of education policy studies, and the specially written Introduction contextualises the selection, whilst introducing students to the main issues and current thinking in the field.




Leaders in the Sociology of Education


Book Description

Leaders in the Sociology of Education: Intellectual Self-Portraits contains eighteen self-portraits written by some of the leading sociologists of education in the world. Representing the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong, the authors discuss a variety of factors that have affected their lifetime of scholarship, including their childhoods, their education and mentors, the state of the field during their “coming of age,” the institutions where they have worked, the major sociologists during their lifetimes, the political and economic conditions during their lifetimes, and the social and political movements during their lifetimes. These autobiographical essays reveal a great deal not only about their work and their influences, but also about themselves. Taken as a whole, the book provides sociology of knowledge about the creation of sociology of education research since the 1960s. It reveals a number of important themes central to all of the authors’ work, including educational inequality; the influence of the classical sociological theorists, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim; and the influence of more recent classical sociologists of education, Basil Bernstein, Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman. The authors’ research represents a variety of theoretical and methodological orientations including functionalism, conflict and critical theory, interactionist theory and feminist theory, as well as quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods research. Finally, the editors discuss a number of lessons to be learned from the lives and works of these sociologists of education.