ABSTRACT
This book seeks to relate sociological theory and research to teachers’ experience of classrooms and students. It grows out of our own experience as classroom teachers and teacher educators. Its primary purpose is as an introductory textbook in the sociology of Australian education for pre-service and in-service education. But while its immediate audience is beginning and continuing teachers and other students of the sociology of education, it is also directed to a wider audience in the Australian community. Here we include parents and others who want a more informed understanding of the complex and often contra dictory claims and
expectations made upon schools and schooling, and an understanding of the sensationalised media reports about contemporary education, supposedly ‘falling standards’, ‘lack of discipline’, and so on. We believe that an adequate sociological understanding of schooling, which sets it firmly in its broader relationship to Australian society, is essential for responding to such allegations and indispensable for the professional development of all teachers.
