Aust. Educ. Res.

(2013) 40:155171
DOI 10.1007/s13384-012-0083-7

The educational imagination and the sociology

of education in Australia

Julie Matthews

Received: 11 October 2011 / Accepted: 28 November 2012 / Published online: 9 December 2012
 The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc. 2012

Abstract A remarkable feature of the sociology of education is its proliferation

under a broad gamut of research themes and topics. Understanding the relationship
of education to social reproduction and social change are pivotal to the sociology of
education, and have fruitfully informed research in fields such as gender and edu-
cation, vocational education and lifelong learning, policy sociology in education,
cultural sociology of education, literacy, social justice and education, globalisation
and education. Tracking the historical trajectory of the sociology of education in
Australia, this article underlines the productivity of educational research and
methodological advances in the fields of gender, literacy, and policy. It also points
to the failure of the sociology of education and educational research to engage with
the education systems complicity in reproducing Indigenous and ethnic disad-
vantage. I argue for an sociology of education along lines envisaged by Emile
Durkheim who recognised the importance of understanding education systems past
and present, so that educators might comprehend the relationship of education to
social change. New theories, methodologies and fields of education play an
important role in informing understandings of contemporary education. However, if
education and educational research are to inform social futures, they require an
educational imagination able to account for achievements and deficiencies; an
educational imagination able to undertake theoretical deliberations about the social
and material conditions, struggles and occlusions that have and continue to con-
stitute the purpose and practice of education.

Keywords Australian sociology of education
Australian educational research

Educational futures
Research futures
Educational imagination

J. Matthews (&)
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore DC, QLD
4558, Australia
e-mail: jmatthew@usc.edu.au

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Introduction

The sociology of education barely constitutes a distinctive field of study in

Australia. Its concerns and approaches are embedded in research themes and topics
such as gender and education, vocational education and lifelong learning, policy
sociology in education, cultural sociology of education, literacy, social justice and
education, globalisation and education. What constitutes the sociology of education
remains a matter of some debate. Is it dictated by theories and methods or is the field
structured by questions it raises such as:
1. What role does education play in the life chances of different groups in society?
2. How can we best explain why some groups systematically win and others lose?
3. Is education a means of liberating individuals or is it a means of social control?
4. What is the relationship of educational outcomes to the economy and society?
5. How can educational processes best be understood?
6. What is the purpose of schooling? (Lauder et al. 2009).
I argue in this article that the sociology of education requires a theoretically
generative analytical perspective; an educational imagination. Mills (1959)
account of the sociological imagination refers to the ability to switch between,
and combine different explanatory perspectives. It is a cultivated analytical capacity
driven by the desire to make sense of the social world in all its rich complexity.
Early educational ethnographers were among the first to develop this capacity by
projecting themselves into unfamiliar educational contexts to generate theories and
explanations (see Hargreaves 1967). Importantly, the educational imagination is not
primarily focused on individual achievement, the content of what is taught or how to
teach. Rather, following Durkheim, it is concerned with the social nature of
education systems past and present, how education has come to be as it is, and how
it manages to reproduce itself and contribute to the reproduction of other social
systems. To understand this it is necessary to understand the social grounding of
education. It is necessary to understand the complex historical, political, economic,
cultural social trajectories of education the trajectories of those systems and
structures within which it is embedded. Only through the application of the
educational imagination will it be possible to go beyond the assumption that
enlightened teachers, educated individuals, curricula knowledge or educational
research can single-handedly change education and the world (Young 1998). Only
through the application of the educational imagination will it be possible to
understand the role and nature of education in its multiple aspects, forms and future
possibilities.
This article opens with a brief account of the historical development of the
sociology of education in Australia. The overview shows how political concerns
have influenced both the educational research agenda and the discipline. It is not my
intention to provide a final overarching account of the historical development of the
field in Australia, rather in sketching the contours of a disciplinary trajectory, I seek
to deepen interdisciplinary conversations about education, teaching and schooling,
and to further stimulate the development of new methodologies and emerging fields.
What is unusual about the sociology of education in Australia is its development in

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courses that are commonly located in faculties and schools of education, rather than
in sociology and the social sciences. Locating sociological orientations in
educational foundation courses dislocates the field from the discipline of sociology,
and connects it more closely to social psychology and professional studies. This
situation is partly a historical and political consequence of the distinctive
development of sociology and education in Australia since the 1970s, and partly
due to the enlargement of pivotal educational issues and questions. The situation has
been productive in enabling the discipline to expand beyond narrow sociological
concerns, but it has also been problematic in that the rigorous scholarship and
analysis that Young (2008) calls for is often channelled into a weaker inwardly
focused sociology for education (Rata 2010) comprising position taking and policy
advocacy (Young 2008).
Certainly the initial focus of the sociology of education on the nature and role of
schooling and schools has expanded to encompass non-institutional processes and
practices. Its fundamental concern with questions of schooling, meritocracy and
inequality remain, but its objects of study have expanded beyond the realm of
schools and teachers to address educational processes and practices in almost every
sphere of life. Of interest to the discipline are questions concerning education and
cultural diversity, environmental sustainability, family relations, gender and
sexuality, globalisation, internationalisation, knowledge and epistemology, leader-
ship, learning communities and networks, lifelong and workplace learning, literacy,
curriculum and pedagogy, teachers work and popular culture. A key issue for the
sociology of education in Australia is not necessarily how to secure sociological or
educational disciplinary integrity, but how to advance its extensive interdisciplinary
research agenda through an educational imagination able connect education to
social complexity and multiple theoretical and analytical positions.
At the heart of the sociology of education are questions about the role of
education in the social reproduction of inequality (Burgess 1986). However, in
failing to consider the reproduction of inequality in relation to Indigenous
background and other minority students, the sociology of education not only
sidesteps its raison detre but also limits its capacity to inform and restructure the
educational imagination. Notable exceptions are found in the ground-breaking work
on the education of non-English speaking girls (Tsolidis 1986), Indigenous
education and colonialism (McConaghy 2000), and multiculturalism and racism
(Kalantzis 1985; Rizvi 1985, 1990). However, apart from Kalantiz (1986, 1988)
Matthews (2002) and Tsolidis (1996), few studies address the persistent impact of
Indigenous background, race, ethnicity, gender and/or sexuality on educational
achievement.
Teachers and formal educational institutions are pivotal to the enterprise of
education, and the discipline requires research able to enlarge understandings of the
complex and theoretically informed judgments that knowledge workers need to
make about educational contexts, learners, knowledge and pedagogies. Because
educational institutions, systems and practices have expanded at all levels, and into
all spheres of life, the discipline must also move beyond its traditional focus on
formal institutions to examine new and disregarded areas of educational activity
such as futures and e-research methodologies, international and cross-sectorial

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contexts, and Indigenous education research (Lee et al. 2010). If the discipline is to
shape educational futures, these activities need to be informed by an educational
imagination able to apprehend educational achievements, deficiencies and poten-
tials; capable of theoretical deliberations about the contestations, decisions and
impositions that constitute the politics, purpose and practice of education. To
struggle with the place of education in larger social and cultural formations is to
advance the discipline along lines envisaged by Emile Durkheim who recognised
that educators need to understand past and present systems of education in order to
inform those of the future.1

Historical trajectory

The sociology of education arose in Australia in the 1960s, several decades after the
establishment of education as a disciplinary field. Education and sociology emerged
as major social sciences in the 1970s during the rapid expansion of schooling and
major social and technological advances (Goodman 1972). Bill Radford, the first
Director of the Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER), was
instrumental in driving educational research informed by sociological perspectives
(Lawrence Saha, personal communication, 1 August 2011).
Sociology was established as a distinct discipline in Australia in the late 1950s at
the University of New South Wales, and in the 1960s at Monash University where
programs were dominated by functionalism and positivism (Marshall et al. 2009).
The growth of other undergraduate programs coincided with the expansion of
tertiary education, which doubled in 1970 (Musgrave 1982). The sociology of
education has low visibility in a higher education sector increasingly directed
towards narrow vocational preparation and few education courses are offered in
sociology programs (Marshall et al. 2009). It is still the case that most teaching and
research in the sociology of education takes place in schools of education (Goodman
1972).
Early educational research focused more on the practical problems of teaching,
educational psychology and the history of education than the social consequences of
education (Barcan 1992). The global financial crisis of the 1930s, and challenges to
the future of democracy posed by the rise of communism in Russia, and fascism in
Germany, stimulated interest in the relationship between education and social
change. This in turn generated concern about the role of schools in social
replication, reform and change (Barcan 1992). The importance of educational
research at this time was recognised in the establishment of the ACER in 1930 by
the Carnegie Foundation. It engaged in a substantial program of educational testing
to develop normative understandings of individual intelligence, developed
1
This article was prompted by my involvement with the newly established sociology of education
special interest groups of The Australian Association of Research in Education (AARE) and The
Australian Sociological Association (TASA). While the errors and omissions in this article are entirely
my own, I am deeply indebted to the robust critique and intellectual generosity of Allan Luke, Bob
Lingard, Fazal Rizvi, Sandra Taylor, Annette Woods, Lawrence Saha and Terri Seddon and Jane
Kenway.

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curriculum materials and researched educational structures and processes (Saha and
Keeves 1990).
By 1967, almost all faculties of education in Australia and New Zealand
universities offered sociology of education or courses in the social foundations of
education. The sociology of education in Australia reached its zenith in the 1970s
and 1980s when it was compulsory in teacher education programs and paved the
way for research that stood in contrast to widely taught educational administration
subjects based in social psychology. The 1970s saw the growth of the Australian
school system and conflict between teacher unions and State Education Depart-
ments. Government reports at this time were mostly in the political arithmetic
tradition:
that is couched in terms of descriptive statistics and overtly atheoretical,
though covertly broadly structural functionalist. Much of this work was
contained in mimeographed reports from State Education Department
Research Branches and it was also largely upon such work that the Karmel
report relied (Musgrave 1982: 209).
According to Musgrave (1982), the Karmel Report hit a raw cultural nerve
because it drew attention to the fact that education did not give all Australians a fair
go. It highlighted unequal educational provision for those from low socioeconomic
backgrounds, migrants, Aborigines and girls, and called for compensatory
mechanisms, decentralisation and community participation. A pivotal debate at
this time concerned the source of educational inequity, the effect of class and its
relationship to capitalism. Critical accounts of education focused attention on the
role of schooling in the replication of social inequality and capitalist relations of
production. In the UK, (Bernstein 1977) showed how pedagogical communications
in the family and schools advantaged middle-class children. The social reproduction
thesis developed by (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977) and (Bowles and Gintis 1976)
reinforced Bernsteins work to highlight the correspondence between education
reform and the labour force needs of capitalism (Connell 2004). Schools were
regarded as buttressing and transmitting the linguistic and symbolic capital of the
middle class. The cultural dissonance between working class families and middle
class schooling resulted in social inequality while at the same time reinforcing class
divisions and replicating capitalist modes of production. Missing from these
accounts was an understanding of the complex and contradictory role of class and
gender in students responses to schooling (Arnot 2002). The focus on school/
economic relations of many critical scholars in Australia at this time accorded
family and gender relations little significance.
The publication of Making the Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division
(Connell et al. 1982) offered important insights into the relationship between
schools and society. Theorising family, school, class and gender relations the study
described life in schools:

It was equally a study of families and their strategies, of the life histories of
teachers and pupils, and of the ways family practices and personal trajectories
intersected with the institutional arrangements of education systems to

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produce class inequalities in education. These dynamics only came into view
because we were studying the working class and the ruling class at the same
time (Connell 2004: 17).

Class and gender relations occur within family, school, and workplace relations.
While they have different and sometimes related histories, they are interdependent
spheres, which interact to:

create dilemmas (some soluble) provide resources (or deny them) and
suggest solutions (some of which dont work): to which the family and the
school must respond in its collective practice (Connell et al. 1982: 73).
Although Making the Difference included descriptions of school life it was not a
school ethnography in the same sense as early UK and USA ethnographies which
often involved the application of sociological conceptual frameworks to historical
data (Musgrave 1982: 211). In Australia innovative quasi-anthropological studies
investigated school/community relationships, sexism, promotion, the education of
Aborigines, migrants, ethnic groups and curricula developments (Musgrave 1982).
The new sociology of education stimulated by Knowledge and Control: New
Directions for the Sociology of Education (Young 1971) had a big impact in the UK
and USA. Although Branson (1980) and Musgrave (1980) claim it made few waves
in Australia, it found its way into a number of introductory Foundation of Education
courses in the late 1970s. Informed by phenomenological perspectives, Youngs
edited collection interrogated the organisation of knowledge; its social definitions
and management particularly in relation to the curriculum. The muted impact of this
work in Australia was to some extent due to the pragmatic and somewhat uncritical
approach of curricula and educational interventions derived from a tradition of
measurement and social arithmetic. In addition, teaching and research informed by
the history of education had a longer and stronger grounding than sociological
approaches. Importantly, the control of Australian education by state bureaucracies
left little opportunity for curriculum research by teachers and educationalists, indeed
such work was regarded as problematically progressive and radical (Davies 2004).
Concern about the effects of inequality was limited to local studies of classroom
interactions and curricula, and often neglected theorisations of the ways social
structures connected to and shaped daily lives (Branson 1980).
Since the late 19th century, the Australian education system has been based on
the provision of free, compulsory and secular school education. Each of the six
colonies, later to become states of Australia, introduced state education acts
outlining their legislative responsibilities for public education. State governments
continue to hold responsibility for the provision of educational services in Australia.
However, the Commonwealth Government decides eligibility requirements for
higher education funding, research and allocation of student places; in addition it
has assumed increasing responsibility for funding private non-government schools.
This funding anomaly has left state governments with greater responsibility for
public government schools, which cater disproportionately to disadvantaged
students. The cornerstones of free public education in Australia have been
substantially eroded by neo-liberal policies concerned with stimulating market

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values such as school choice, competition and accountability measures (Meadmore

2001). Tension between the Commonwealth government and the States remains a
defining characteristic of the Australian education system. Since 2009 the Australian
government has funded state and territory governments provided they commit to
national school performance and reporting requirements involving national testing,
national reporting, reporting to parents, publishing performance information and
information for school-level reporting (Matthews 2011).
The States have legislative and regulatory responsibility for the registration and
accreditation of teachers and teacher education, and provide most university funding
for teacher education however a range of national agreements and Commonwealth
financial conditions impinge on the regulatory capacity of the States (Matthews
2011). The Australasian Forum of Teacher Registration and Accreditation
Authorities (AFTRAA) was recognised in 2006. Its Framework for the National
Recognition of Approved Pre-Service Teacher Education Programs (AFTRAA
2006) set out the broad requirements that each authority in the Australian states and
territories must include in their program approval process. It requires teachers to
know, understand and take account of the disciplines they teach, as well as
philosophy, teaching and learning theories, and diverse social cultural and special
learning needs. Faculties of education have traditionally responded to the need for
teachers to be able to understand social political and ethical dimensions of teaching
by providing distinctive or differentiated courses in: the philosophy of education;
the history of education; comparative education; and the sociology of education.
Problematically, the sociology of education has been regarded as superfluous to the
education of teachers. When announcing the 2005 inquiry into teacher training
Brendan Nelson, the Minister for Education claimed that there were problems with
teacher training and preparation and: in too many instances Ive had teacher
education faculties of education described to me as quasi-sociology departments
(Nelson, cited in Guerrera 2005).
During the 1980s, State restructuring in Australia sought to achieve greater
productivity and competitiveness through a proliferating mesh of accountability
regimes. Education became the effect of a reconstituted relationship between the
Commonwealth government and the States in the creation of a national economic
infrastructure, which subsumed social and cultural agendas. Key aspects of
educational restructuring involved corporate managerialism, devolution and mar-
ketisation (Taylor et al. 1997). Managerialism sought efficiency and effectiveness
by measuring outcomes and performance through the application of performance
indicators tied to strategic mission statements. At the same time as it centralised
performance priorities, devolution decentralised decisions about how centrally
determined priorities would be achieved. Finally, marketization dehumanised and
decontextualised education by bringing the logic, purpose, language and practices of
the market to it. Reconceptualised as a quasi-market, schools were expected to
produce measurable educational outcomes in a competitive environment, where
consumer choice facilitated the success or failure of its products (Marginson 1997;
Taylor et al. 1997).
The National Goals of Schooling (1997) linked funding to testing in an effort to
achieving equity by measuring outcomes. The expansion of accountability

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mechanisms into education moved into the classroom in the form of national
literacy and numeracy tests. The first Australian National Assessment Program
Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) was initiated in 2008 to test students in years 3,
5, 7 and 9. Teachers and researchers challenged standardised tests for narrowing the
curriculum and causing schools to teach to the tests. The publication of NAPLAN
data on the My School website in 2010 confirmed fears that NAPLAN information
would be used to identify successful and unsuccessful schools. Policy initiatives,
such as the proposed payment of teacher bonuses based on test results, demonstrate
government misunderstanding of how schools and classrooms work. Moreover,
aggregated test results told teachers and educationalists what they already knew
that results largely reflect the student demographic (Reid 2009a: 21) and that
simplistic measures of success and failure in literacy and numeracy fail to account
for complex and deep seated social, cultural and educational factors.
The fraught relationship between education institutions and government is
based on a longstanding expectation that education research should simply
inform and legitimate state policy (Singh 1994). Government funding priorities
reinforce state prescriptions, as well as research paradigms that avoid complexity
by privileging empirical, quantitative approaches such as computer modelling
and psychometrics. Concealment of state interests in managing educational issues
is not necessarily deliberate but as Yates (1993a: 177) observes occur because:
contested meaning, contested lines of exclusion and inclusion, contested vision,
are excluded in the terms of its own discourse. Reports informing educational
policy rarely indicate authorship and are often based on specially prepared
consultancies using specially prepared social statistics; processes of policy
formation and sociological research are assumed to be irrelevant (Singh 1994).
Policy proliferation in education over the last three decades has increasingly
sought to manage and control by auditing the minutiae of educational practice in
all sectors and at every level. In response, Australian education research since
the 1980s has increasingly directed attention to exposing the way policy restricts
the meritocratic and social justice capacity of education, while at the same time
directing education towards transmitting a particular kind of culture (Connell
1998).

Interdisciplinary productivity

In the 1970s a major factor in the spread of the sociological perspective in

Australia and New Zealand tertiary institutions was teaching sociology to students
of education (Bates 1973). Today sociological perspectives, along with philosoph-
ical, historical and comparative approaches to education are commonly introduced
in teacher education foundation courses, although the professional orientation of
many universities has diminished the visibility of educations disciplinary work
(Terri Seddon, personal communication, 1 August 2011). Such courses are
important if education is to resist the pressure to limit itself to the technical aspects
of educational practice, and to assist teachers and educationist to understand and
address the social and political elements of education.

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Despite the varied and extensive address to social dimensions of education

particularly in respect to areas such as cultural diversity, gender and sexuality,
policy and literacy studies in schools of educationthe failure to cross-reference
education courses with sociology and social science programs is disappointing and
means that sociologists are likely to be unfamiliar with new and innovative
methodologies and fields pursued in education; and educationalists interested in the
social, political, historical, comparative and philosophical dimensions of education
may have cursory knowledge of these fields. However, the focus on techniques of
practice rather than theoretical and methodological matters in educational faculties
is not simply an Australian characteristic (Branson 1980). Indeed, in an era where
education has become regarded as employment currency, where its key theoretical
insights and concepts are sidelined, and where successor theories are overshadowed
by a focus on technical refinements (Collins 1992), disciplinary contraction in
education may contribute to intellectual stagnation in other disciplines.
Interdisciplinarity has productively informed the strong tradition of Australian
educational research in gender, sexuality, ethnicity and multiculturalism. Much
of this work derives from feminist and Indigenous critiques of the failure of
mainstream educational research to address and represent the experiences of
marginalised and minority groups. In the early 1990s groundbreaking research
investigated gender equity policy in education and the formation of gendered
subjects (Henry and Taylor 1993; Yates 1993b). Studies were funded by federal
gender equity curriculum reform projects interested in the complex dimensions of
gender disadvantage and their intersection with ethnicity, poverty, rurality and
sexuality. A focus on non-sexist education and equality of opportunity in the 1970s
and 1980s gave way in the 1990s to mainstreaming and a focus on different
dimensions of inequality. This in turn paved the way for approaches to Indigenous
education. Importantly the alliance of activists and femocrats in Commonwealth
bureaucracies facilitated the landmark National Policy for the Education of Girls in
1987 (Gibert 1998). According to Gilbert (1998), little mention was made of
sexuality in the report, however it did recognise ethnic and Indigenous diversity, and
the impact of racism and school structures. The National Action Plan for the
Education of Girls 19931997 addressed gender relations, naturalised sexualised
practices and the social construction of femininity and masculinity. It also
inadvertently paved the way for equity matters concerning girls and education to be
subsumed by stories about the boys, which drew on biological inheritances
(Gilbert 1998: 19). Naturalised discourses of gender were challenged by researchers
who reiterated the relevance of social and embodied constructions of masculinity
and their impact on literacy and schooling (Gilbert and Gilbert 1998).
The adoption of multiculturalism in Commonwealth policy in the 1970s
established Australia as a leader in multicultural education. Pedagogical and
curricular innovations at this time included: English as a second language provision;
first language maintenance; community language teaching; culturally inclusive
curricula; parent participation and antiracism. However, in the 1990s multicultural
education was charged with inconsistent implementation and lack of focus. More
recently, it has been downgraded in the Australian national curriculum (Lo Bianco
2010). Parallel but separate developments facilitated the centralisation of Aboriginal

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policy and the inclusion of Indigenous languages and perspectives in school

curricula (Lo Bianco 2010). However, the on-going and profound educational
disadvantage of Indigenous Australians has remained the focus of numerous
government reports and policy. The trouble with government interventions into
Indigenous education is that universal mono-dimensional education solutions are
often sought for complex multi-dimensional social issues that involve intergener-
ational disadvantage and trauma, ongoing socio-economic disadvantage, lack of
sustainability of school reform and embedded racism, as well as top down policy
governance models (Gray and Beresford 2008). While schools and education
contribute to the replication of social inequality, education based on technical and
managerial solutions and decontextualised evaluations cannot compensate for
society (Bernstein, cited in Edwards 2002).
Concern with educational inequality has generated an abundance of research
describing neo-liberal reforms in education and the impact of these on social justice.
Unfortunately, this work has not always translated into theoretically informed and
robust debates about social justice and change in education (Seddon 2003). The
policy analysis field tends to be dominated by commentary and critique (Gale 2006)
rather than theoretical debate informed by methodologically rigorous research.
Exceptions to this are found in policy sociology in education, look at the ideological
and discursive production of policy at national and global levels from a Bourdieuian
perspective (Lingard et al. 2005) and studies using critical discourse analysis to
track social justice and equity goals (Taylor 2004).
Sociological analysis of literacy reform have given rise to a rich vein of critical
studies of literacy and literacy education (Luke 1989). Fundamental to this work is
the idea that literacy is socially and politically constructed and in and of itself, can
neither enslave, emancipate, cognitively enable or preclude all that has been
claimed for its practice (Luke 1989: 11). The absence of a historical sociological
understanding of literacy enables a great many problematic assumptions to go
unchallenged. These include: (a) manufactured moral panics periodically generated
about the crisis of literacy and declining literacy standards, (b) the assumption that
literacy simply involves the technicist application of best practice pedagogies and is
devoid of ideological concerns and political agendas (Luke 1989: 2), and (c) the
idea that literacy has the capacity to drive economic, political, social and personal
development and emancipation. A multifaceted literacy myth has dominated 20th
century educational discourse and asserts that:
for a given society literacy is a prime engine of economic, cultural and
social development; that for the individualthat entity invented in the
Enlightenmentliteracy is a necessary and sufficient cause for cognitive
development and social participation; that institutional transitionliteracy via
schoolingis a viable means for achieving the above; and that pedagogical
science can deliver the goods (Luke 1989: 2).
Awareness of the impact of economic and cultural conditions of communications
conducted through new media and technology gave rise to the multiliteracies
approach developed by The New London Group (1996). Multiliteracies was a
response to the increasing diversity of both students and texts in schools. To counter

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increasing pressure on teachers to devise ever more precise scientific quantitative

mean-ends directed basic skills, The New Basics Project (DET 2004) and
Productive Pedagogies (Hayes et al. 2006) sought to initiate radical changes that
would enable students to read the multiple and conflicting textual, visual, audio
and gestural communication mediums of the 21st century. The maxim of
multiliteracies is that new times demand new approaches and the multiliteracies
project sought to generate new educational paradigms based on blended forms of
textual and symbolic practice (Luke and Luke 2001: 96).
The reinvigoration of Australian sociology has a great deal to gain by paying closer
attention to education research. Likewise, the productivity of educational research
owes a great deal to interdisciplinary cross fertilisation. A first and obvious move
towards tempering technicism and reinforcing disciplinary productivity would be the
cross listing of educational courses. This occurred at the University of Queensland in
the 1980s and 1990s where the education department took responsibility for teaching
the sociology of education (Bob Lingard, personal communication, 1 August 2011).

Methodological and theoretical innovation

40 years ago Goodman observed that studies of educational inequality made

disadvantaged groups the objects of research and relied too heavily on descriptive
empirical research supported by statistical data (Goodman 1972: 121). Sociological
approaches were required that grasped the connection between education and
economic, political, social and cultural aspects of society. While we may have
moved into an age of uncertainty brimming with new and competing post-
traditional theories of the contemporary (Kenway and Bullen 2000: 266),
approaches to research drawing on quantitative statistical data remain privileged
in Australian education policy. To address the relationship of education to
continuing patterns of inequality it is necessary to comprehend the nature of
contemporary culture. A capitalist consumerist culture of commodity production
enmeshing young people and schooling in the production of citizen consumers and
dedicated workers (Fitzclarence et al. 1998). Evidence based research must go
beyond qualitative/quantitative research binaries and attempts translate the facts of
quantitative science into actions. It must generate instead broad and rich
multidisciplinarily data comprising equally rich interpretations and analysis (Luke
2007: 2010); it must exercise the educational imagination.
Indeed, a strength of todays educational research is its capacity for methodo-
logical and theoretical innovation derived from descriptive and interpretive,
quantitative and qualitative, empirical and hermeneutic approaches that draw from
varied theoretical models of education and schooling, knowledge and culture, the
learner and society (Luke et al. 2010: viii). The methodological and theoretical
sophistication of the sociology of education is an effect of its embeddedness in the
interdisciplinary field of education, and dialogue with other disciplines and fields
(Terri Seddon, personal communication, 1 August 2011). It is important that
scientific and statistical sensibility be deployed not just in the generation of data and
research but also in robust and thorough critique of their application and misuse in

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education. In an age of uncertainty, we need to be able to identify and critique

processes of education within the confines of the nation state, and also beyond, as
they work through the processes and ideologies of globalisation and the power of
the media/popular/consumer culture (Kenway and Bullen 2000).
Despite achievements in the areas of gender, literacy, and policy detailed above,
low achievement persists among students from remote, low socio-economic, and
non-English language backgrounds. Indeed Australia has the worst Indigenous
educational outcomes of any comparable Western settler society (Gray and
Beresford 2008: 204). The replication of educational and social inequality is an
effect of on-going colonialism and racism as well as low school attendance, low
socioeconomic background, low employment, single parent and blended families,
language other than English, student disabilities and transience (Gray and Beresford
2008). It is ironic that while the educational outcomes of Indigenous students have
yet to be addressed there is increasing recognition of the importance of pedagogical,
methodological and scientific significance of Indigenous knowledge (Sheehan and
Walker 2001; Green 2010; Nakata 2007; Somerville and Perkins 2010). The
reproduction of educational inequality is also of concern in the education of newly
arrived refugee students; many schools are poorly equipped to deal with students
with interrupted schooling (Miller et al. 2005; Matthews 2008).
Areas of growing interest in educational research include; learning communities
and networks (Seddon et al. 2005a); curriculum and pedagogy (Green 2003; Hattam
et al. 2009); teachers work (Smyth et al. 2000; Connell, 1985); leadership studies
(Blackmore and Sachs 2007; Smyth 1989); teacher education; disciplinarity, code
theory (Maton et al. forthcoming); place-based pedagogy (Somerville et al. 2009);
education for sustainability (Fien and Tilbury 2002) and environmental education
(Reid 2009b). As mentioned earlier objects of educational research have
historically been tied to the institution of schooling, however related and distant
objects of study have come to the fore, particularly in light of climate change,
environmental sustainability and awareness of the fundamental relationship between
social and environmental justice. It is unfortunate that at the very same time we
most need to engage the capacity of education to secure planetary survival by
equipping students with the practical skills, analytical abilities, philosophical depth
and moral wherewithal to remake the human presence in the world (Orr 2004),
accountability and productivity regimes increasingly channel education towards
techno-economic imperatives (Bullen et al. 2004).
In the 1970s, concern with how societies transmitted cultural beliefs and values
located the sociology of education at the core of sociology (Goodman 1972). The
ability of the sociology of education to address both theory and practice gave it the
capacity to stimulate theoretical and methodological innovation. This is why the
sociology of education became: the most vibrant and respected area of sociological
research (Karabel and Halsey 1979, cited in Saha and Keeves 1990: 9). Educational
research in Australia remains methodologically and theoretically vigorous due to its
interdisciplinary connections. The educational imagination enables a good deal of
educational research to apprehend the capacities and constraints of the relationship
of education to broader historical, political, economic and social formations and to
call on various theoretical and analytical positions.

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The educational imagination and sociology of education 167

Conclusion

It has been argued that educational research requires a research agenda able to
engage with and comprehend both the recentering of formal and informal
educational systems in particular historical, social, political and economic contexts,
and the decentering of social, political and economic conditions of educational
practice (Seddon et al. 2005b). A pedagogical disposition is also required if
educators are to stimulate and disseminate educational discussions and play a
leading role in social science theorising (Lingard and Gale 2010: 41). The
educational imagination is pertinent to these agendas. Changes to social, political
and material conditions of educational practice are effectively understood through
historical investigations of how present systems came to be as they are, and how
challenges can and have been mounted in light of current need and moral
demands. Such investigations require theoretically deliberative analytical work.
Education is fundamentally concerned with the transmission of culture, values,
beliefs, knowledge and skills. These may be directed towards the achievement of
knowledgeable individuals, rational thinkers, sustainable communities, and/or
individual and national economic advancement (Rizvi and Lingard 2010). It is
because the moral, social, political or economic purpose of education are neither
self-evident nor automatically given, that it is important for a pedagogical
disposition to cultivate an educational imagination which nurtures sensitivity to
past and present social conditions and the capacity for theoretical and analytical
deliberation.
We would do well to recall that Durkheims interest in education was prompted
by an awareness of its critical significance to sociology. From 1887 to 1902
Durkheim taught a weekly 1-hour lecture to primary school teachers. He believed
that an education system was only as good as its teachers and without the critical
self-consciousness of pedagogie, teachers were doomed to the mindless and
mechanical repetition of their own education. Pedagogy for Durkheim was the
practical theory of education and an intermediary between art and science. It was
not limited to the technical skills it commonly references today. Durkheim
understood that teachers and educators must be researchers and that disciplines and
fields of study were immaterial because: there is only the investigation of how
education has been in the past, why it is as it is in the present and what it could
become in the future (Collins 1977, xxi).

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The educational imagination and sociology of education 171

Author Biography

Associate Professor Julie Matthews is a sociologist of education and interdisciplinary researcher with a
background in education, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies. Her work brings socio-cultural
perspectives to bear on a broad range of contemporary issues and problems. She has expertise in
postcolonial, Foucauldian and feminist theory and an interest in innovative research methods. Dr
Matthews is also Associate Director of the Sustainability Research Centre: Transforming Regions. She is
convener of the Sociology of Education thematic group in the Australian Sociological Association
(TASA) and a member of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) and the
International Sociological Association (ISA).

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