Instructor: Leslie Roman, Associate Professor, Educational Studies

Email: Leslie.Roman@ubc.ca

the short description:

This course considers how different traditions within the sociology of education explain the relationship between schools and society. We focus in particular on the assumptions each theoretical framework makes in its explanation of the role of schooling in creating or transforming gender, racial, and class inequalities. The course examines and compares the premises of structural functionalism with those of conflict, reproduction and transformation theorists. Our investigation proceeds by showing how each of these theoretical frameworks involves implicit and explicit normative assumptions about the purposes and effects of education in the larger society. These assumptions alter the interpretations, evidence, and methods used within each of the theoretical frameworks in order to explain the relationship between schools and society.