Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education

Welcome to the Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education research unit website.

We undertake critical, comparative research around the social and societal frameworks within which children grow up and responses to them within and outside education systems. One key element of this perspective on the social construction of individual educational processes involves the generation of productive interactions between theoretical and empirical approaches. In pursuing this aim, we examine research questions drawn from the fields of research into childhood and adolescence, biographical and life course research, the study of scientific and academic disciplines, and research on the pedagogical professions. Specific topics of interest include (1) processes of learning and education in school and non-school settings and their interactions; (2) the conditions within which children grow up in the context of regional and socio-spatial change; and (3) the evolution of educational science as a discipline and the effects of its study in higher education contexts on the associated professions and on the labour market.

Our teaching endeavours to enable students to reflect critically on these fields and issues and on their own views of professional actions in the education context and of the children and young people thus addressed. We believe that such reflection is vital to the development of mature pedagogical judgement as the fundamental basis of an identity as a professional educational practitioner.

Up