Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
This chapter is the conclusion to the book, and a summary of the arguments about segregation and eugenics in education is provided by using the Thinking Politically-Sociologically Framework. The argument is that political sociology enables the Critical Education Policy Studies field to think productively in relation to, first, a political sociology of and about the education reform claimocracy; and second, a political sociology for and by the field regarding positioning within and in relation to the claimocracy. It is argued that research and scholarship within and by the field of Critical Education Policy Studies is in danger and so may find the adoption of little agoras and intellectual activism helpful regarding the purposes and practices of research.
Understanding and explaining the durability of segregated education requires the Thinking Politically-Sociologically Framework. Following on from examining vantage points, viewpoints, regimes, and exchange relationships is the need to investigate the knowledge production that underpins the claimocracy. Four policy positions in relation to criticality within Critical Education Policy Studies are identified: description, science, entrepreneurialism, and scholarship, where the primacy of entrepreneurialism is examined. A case study from Theme 4: Knowledge Production is presented where the writing and conceptualisation of intellectual histories demonstrates how policy violence is based on recognising wants, needs, and likes, and the denial of intellectual activism.
Understanding and explaining the durability of segregated education requires the Thinking Politically-Sociologically Framework. Following on from examining vantage points, viewpoints, and regimes is the need to investigate exchange relationships that secure the claimocracy. Five forms of exchange relationships are presented: personal, employment, project, socio-political, and cultural, and it is argued that personal-cultural contractualism dominates. A case study from Theme 3: Policy Actors is presented, where data and analysis about local policymaking are used to demonstrate policy violence through how strategic and tactical change are understood and engaged with regarding academisation.
Segregated education services are enabled through how private and globalised oligarchies occupy the state and use governing to control the ERC through knowledge production. Oligarchies are promoters and beneficiaries of depoliticisation, and three forms in general and in education policy are identified: depoliticised privatism, corporatisation, and populism. Policy violence is examined through a focus on problem solving as a form of authorised violence. While the ERC focuses on the centrality of improvement and effectiveness through problem identification and solutions, in reality power is evacuated, relationality silenced, and action denied.
This introduction presents the case for a political sociology of education policy in order to understand and explain the use of an education reform claimocracy to defend and promote segregated education. Based on empirical and conceptual work from the Education Policy Knowledgeable Polities projects, the case is made for the interplay and deployment of Arendtian and Bourdieusian thinking tools to reveal policy violence. This policy violence is authorised, legitimate, and intelligent, and is examined in Part I of the book. Understandings and explanations of policy violence are presented in Part II of the book through a Thinking Politically-Sociologically Framework that includes: vantage points, viewpoints, regimes of practices, exchange relationships, and the intellectual histories underpinning knowledge production for and about policy.
Segregated education services are enabled through eugenicist populism, and the chapter examines five main modernisation trends in general and in education policy that enable and sustain the eugenicist fabrications that are used to justify selection and secession. Policy violence is examined through a focus on social mobility as a form of legitimised violence. While the ERC uses the language of aspiration and opportunity, the continued investment in segregation based on natural inferiority–superiority limits aspirations and opportunities for the majority of children.
Segregated education services are enabled through the use of failure, as policy mortality, that is integral to education policy. Children, professionals, and schools have to experience the fear and actuality of failure for markets and choice to operate. The ERC is a product of and shapes the knowledgeable state, where the Education Policy Knowledgeable Polity projects demonstrate data and analysis in four main themes: Theme 1: System Design; Theme 2: The Workforce; Theme 3: Policy Actors; and Theme 4: Knowledge Production. Policy violence is examined through a focus on problem solving as a form of intelligent violence that is weaponised, calculated, and enacted. While the ERC focuses on what is worth knowing about because it works, in reality this turns schools into deserts.
The segregation of education services is based on an education reform claimocracy that espouses eugenicist beliefs in order to sustain oligarchic club sovereignty as modern and modernising. This book presents empirical data and conceptual analysis from a range of projects to understand and explain segregation through undertaking a political sociology of education policy. Thinking tools from Arendtian and Bourdieusian scholarship are used to reveal policy violence through how policy is authorised, legitimised, and presented as intelligent. The book is in two parts: Part I examines the education reform claimocracy through presenting eugenicist populism as a modernising agenda, governing by knowledge production, and how modernising and knowledge are used to promote policy mortality. Part II provides a Thinking Politically-Sociologically Framework in order to describe, understand, and explain the education reform claimocracy through examining vantage points, viewpoints, regimes, and exchange relationships. The knowledge production that serves the education reform claimocracy is examined, and the plurality of intellectual history is revealed and so presents intellectual activism as integral to thinking about and for education policy.
Education policy has a long tradition of political sociology, but the dominant trend continues to be sociological.
Drawing on data and analysis from the Education Policy Knowledgeable Polity (EPKP) project, supported by funders such as the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), this book aims to restore the role of political analysis by presenting a new political sociology for framing, conducting and presenting education policy research.
In doing so, it will be the first in the field to connect political thinking from Arendt with sociological thinking from Bourdieu, producing innovative analysis for and about educational reform.
The segregation of education services is based on an education reform claimocracy that espouses eugenicist beliefs in order to sustain oligarchic club sovereignty as modern and modernising. This book presents empirical data and conceptual analysis from a range of projects to understand and explain segregation through undertaking a political sociology of education policy. Thinking tools from Arendtian and Bourdieusian scholarship are used to reveal policy violence through how policy is authorised, legitimised, and presented as intelligent. The book is in two parts: Part I examines the education reform claimocracy through presenting eugenicist populism as a modernising agenda, governing by knowledge production, and how modernising and knowledge are used to promote policy mortality. Part II provides a Thinking Politically-Sociologically Framework in order to describe, understand, and explain the education reform claimocracy through examining vantage points, viewpoints, regimes, and exchange relationships. The knowledge production that serves the education reform claimocracy is examined, and the plurality of intellectual history is revealed and so presents intellectual activism as integral to thinking about and for education policy.
