INTRODUCTION

There exist theories that aid in elucidating the reasons behind and mechanisms behind specific
events occurring as they do. They are devices that aid in our understanding of the world; they are
carefully built using current knowledge and validated by empirical facts. Sociological theories of
education have been developed to address a variety of problems, such as problems with daily
classroom interactions and school finances, as well as the reasons why some people succeed
while others fail. It can be difficult at times to categorize and assess the importance of
sociological theories of education. Because educational research is conducted for a variety of
purposes by a variety of groups, including governments, educational administrators, participants
in education, and researchers from multiple academic disciplines, it frequently lacks theories of
education or is incredibly diverse and dispersed. In their warning against the abundance of
findings from educational research that are not integrated into any theoretical framework, Parelius
and Parelius (1987) state that "a glut of discrete findings, with no organizing framework, can be
as useless as the untested speculations of the "armchair" theorist." At the same time, it can be an
imposing task to make sense of the sometimes bewildering array of theoretical alternatives in a
field like the sociology of education, which is commonly characterized as being in a 'constant
state of flux' represented in the '3Ds' of divergence, disagreement, and difference (Levinson and
Sadovnik, 2002: 3).
Expanding upon the fundamental sociological inquiries explored in Chapter I, this section
investigates exemplary educational philosophies. The three primary theoretical stances—
structural functionalism, interpretative sociology, and critical analysis—are examined at the
outset of the conversation in order to provide a framework for discussing disagreements among
the proponents of these theories and a basis upon which numerous hybrid theories and critical
alternatives have grown. Rather than being exhaustive and comprehensive in nature, the
discussion of sociological theories of education in this chapter highlights important issues and
models of analysis that characterize each approach, and it concludes by proposing guidelines for a
sufficient understanding of educational problems.
Functionalist Theories of Education

Emile Durkheim, allegedly the founding father of sociology of education, sees education as a
social fact “external to individual and constraining his/her behavior” (King, 1983, 16). While
examining their usefulness to society rather than individuals, social facts also have to find an
appropriate way to serve “the general needs of social organism”. The major functions of
education, therefore, are to provide necessary social glue in order to maintain solidarity; to
supply necessary technical knowledge and skills in accordance with the needs of work-place and
changing technological conditions; to socialize and humanize people “by providing the
normative and cognitive frameworks they lack” (Blackedge & Hunt, 1985).

Functionalist approaches have been described by applying the famous analogy between human
body and society, an analogy supposing that society like a human body has particular organs
with specific functions. In the body, lungs take oxygen, heart pumps blood, veins carry blood
etc. interdependently. Any kind of malfunction in one of these will affect the whole system’s
harmony. Similarly, education as a social institution and part of social organism, for example, is
connected in various ways to the economy, the family, and the political and religious systems. It
has its own functions to perform within an organized whole. In other words, working in a
harmony and for specific functions to perform in “perfect whole” are central to this approach
(Karabel & Halsey, 1977; King, 1983; Meighan, 1981, Blackedge & Hunt, 1985; Majoribank,
1985). In this regard, knowledge that will be included in curriculum is justifiable and legitimate
only if it is part of a common culture, that is, it must work towards solidarity and integration
rather than pluralism and differentiation. Needs of the society are always paramount to those of
individuals. Thus teachers as agents of this legitimate knowledge transmission, as well as moral
models and moral beings for next generations, should constrain themselves with teaching only
for societal goods. In Durkhiem’s own words: “…The teacher must therefore be committed to
presenting (the rule), not as own personal doing, but as a moral power superior to him, and of
which he is an instrument, not the author” (Durkheim, 1961, quoted in Meighan, 1981). Here,
students are seen as blank sheets, tabula rasa, passive beings ready to be filled with common
social goods by the agents (teachers) of the society.

Another form of the functionalist approach has been introduced by Talcott Parsons during the
1950s as refined basic ideas of Durkheim and an extension of structuralism (Meighan, 1981).
Parsons’ Structural Functionalism was a dominant sociological perspective in analyzing society
until the 1960s (Majoribank, 1985). According to Karabel & Halsey (1977), after the Second
World War, and as a preemption to increasing “Soviet threat,” embodied in the war of
technological development and competition grounded on the belief that “technological
superiority could be converted into military dominance” (p.8), structuralfunctionalist theory
came into prominence by remarking the “importance of educating potential talent and attack[ing]
traditionally entrenched conceptions of a limited pool of educability” (p.9).

Parson argues that school, as a major agency of socialization, is a true reflection of society
because of its uniqueness of being the only institutional place that teaches skills and roles
(Selakovich, 1984). Parsons sees the schools as neutral places organized to provide students with
necessary skills and knowledge they will need to function in the wider society. He also looks at
schools as venues that pave the way to equal opportunity that facilitates the promotion of
students’ standing in the social hierarchy (Giroux, 1983). This equal opportunity, however,
brings some differences in attainment. These differences are theorized to originate from ability,
family orientations, and individual motivations or level of interest in education. Differences in
educational attainment are acceptable because, even though students are born into unequal
cultural or material conditions, education has the ability to erase these differentiations, based on
the proposition that those who do well in school are highly rewarded (Parsons, 1961). These
“natural” outcomes do not change the fact that schools are organized to disseminate opportunity
to all members of society equally and that every society has such “common culture” (Blackedge
& Hunt, 1985).

In modern societies, the major link between social structure and education is the economy.
Therefore, schools need to respond to economic changes by “carrying out the functions of
selection and training of manpower,” (Meighan, 1981, 214) as well as stimulating economic
change through research.

Functionalist theories of education have been criticized in various ways and replaced by radical
theories of educations, as well as some mainstream approaches such as human capital theory.
First, they have been criticized for neglecting the role of ideology and conflict in society
(Karabel & Halsey, 1977). School is never defined independently and the idealized functionalist
description of schools has been seen as totalitarian and inadequate due to the lack of solid
explication of what qualifies certain schools to be deemed “successful” or how these can be this
much responsive without posing any problematic to the needs of society and the work-force
(King, 1983). Especially in the second half of the 1960s, the main legacy of structural
functionalism, “schools are neutral places,” has been challenged by many studies, mainly
Coleman’s 1966 report. While being cognizant about the pitfalls of overgeneralization about the
break points in a certain field, it is safe to argue that the Coleman’s research in 1966 about
educational opportunity and its relation to students’ backgrounds has set a different agenda for
sociology of education for many years to come. Much effort has been given to social
stratification and status attainment problematic, as well as to uncovering to what extent students’
social background influences access to schooling experiences and how success and failure in
school impact later life opportunities (Coleman, 1968).

Critical Theories of Education

A group of intellectuals whose roots can be traced to the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and
to Marxist and neo-Marxist theoreticians has appropriated the concept of “critical perspectives”
in the field of education (Pinar and Bowers, 1992).

Critical theory came out during 1920s in Germany with the foundation of Institute for Social
Research at Frankfurt. The works of the Institute have been emerged primarily as a Marxist
critique of capitalist society, as well as challenging the traditions of modernity as the major
product of capitalism. In this sense, they developed theories of consumerism and culture, science
and technology as new forms of social control and by products of modernity.

The term “critical theory” has been coined by Horkheimer who became the director of institute at
1930 in order to define the theoretical agenda of Frankfurt School. On the other hand, while
recognizing historical contribution of Frankfurt School, we should aware the wider tradition of
critical philosophy, “stretching back to Kant and Hegel, and in sociology to Weber, and also the
ways in which the term has recently been appropriated to apply aspects of contemporary
thought…structuralism, semiotics, and poststructralism”. (Peters, 2003, 5) What makes critical
theory different than other mainstream theories according to
Kellner (1989) “Critical theory is distinguished from traditional mainstream social science
through its multidisciplinary perspectives and its attempts to develop a dialectical and material
social theory (Kellner, 1989, quoted in Peters, et al, 8)”

Critical theories have three major concerns: mapping injustices in education, tracing those
injustices to their source, seeking and proposing remedies to those injustices. They began to
work by defining inequalities in education. Working class kids or certain minority groups have
been stayed at the center of discussions because of their relatively low performance in education
in comparison to their white middle or upper class counterparts. (Gibson, 1986)
During 1960s fueled with the social movements, in the form of “Marxist conflict” theories, they
challenge the liberal theorizations of structural-functionalist approach in education, later on they
evolved through reproduction to resistance theories in following years (Karabel & Halsey, 1977)
A group of educational researchers in England in 1970s claimed that the relationship among
social structures, power, and schooling practices should be central to the work of sociology of
education. The earliest manifestation of this understanding has been thrown up in Michael F.D.
Youngs’ edited book Knowledge and Control. (Karabel & Halsey, 1977; Sarup, 1978) Young
argued that it has not been questioned by sociology of education that “what counts as educational
knowledge” (Ladwig,1996, 16). In this regard, they criticized structural-functionalist view of
education and promoted necessity of “phenomenological” agenda what has later been named as
“interpretivist” view in sociology of education. (Karabel and Halsey, 1977; Ladwig, 1996;
Davies, 1995) Jean Anyon, Michael Apple and Henry Giroux in the United States marked the
beginning of new sociology of education. Young’s (1971) book is considered as the germinal
book in the field of the sociology of curriculum.

After, according to Apple (2000, 75) most of critical analysis in education focused on three
major issues; “the debate over functionalism and economic reductionism or over what is called
the base/superstructure issue; secondly closely related arguments between structuralists and
culturalists in education; finally class reductionism.”
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