Introduction

It was evident that new ideas and different research projects were emerging in the sociology of education with the publication of Michael Young's Knowledge and Control ¹ and R.K. Brown's Knowledge Education and Cultural Change ² , and the construction of relevant courses for the Open University. Subsequent commentary and debate has been chiefly confined to the educational press and professional publications. The editors of this book hope that the essays included here will help to open out this debate to wider audiences of students and teachers. Before any self-styled new sociology of education becomes the sociology of education we feel that it is the time to present some theoretical doubts and internal criticisms. For this reason the contributors have shown a concern to locate the issues they are discussing within the broader parameters of sociological work. The most obvious tensions here are those between what may be broadly termed a phenomenological sociology and a sociology focusing on macrostructures and the sociohistorical dimensions of society. It should be said, of course, that within this duality there are equally significant divisions.