"Die Organisation von Bildung" Soziologische Zugänge, Analysen und Ergebnisse
Conference organized by the Education Sections of the Sociological Associations of Switzerland (SGS), Germany (DGS) & Austria (ÖGS)
Friday–Saturday, 13–14 June 2014
University of Teacher Education Basel, Switzerland
Conference languages: English and German
Keynotes
Prof. Dr. Moritz Rosenmund, Vienna
Prof. Dr. Christine Musselin, Paris (to be confirmed)
Conference Topic
Educational organizations have become significantly important for individuals and societies. We spend a considerable part of our lives as members of educational organizations; increasingly so. The quality of educational organizations has become a key indicator of national competitiveness. Schools, academies, and universities decide on the life chances of individuals and the social positioning of families and social groups. Yet educational organizations themselves learn and develop as social actors, observing and cooperating with others as well as competing with them.
All the more surprising is thus the relative silence, in the German-speaking countries, of organizational sociology in the area of educational organizations – with the important
exception of higher education. Educational organizations are of interest for organizational sociology for a variety of reasons. These include besides others the fact that the generation of key concepts such as “loose coupling” has been developed and extended with a focus on schools and educational systems. In addition, educational organizations find themselves the subject of massive transformative challenges relating to competition, management, and human rights – with considerable differences regarding organizational type (schools or universities) and regional and national contexts.
Comparably, the sociology of education can still be critiqued for insufficiently addressing questions of organization or organizational fields explicitly. Recent sociological analyses have contributed to our understanding of the consequences of Europeanization in higher education and science, of rising marketization of education in research and teaching or of shifts in educational opportunities. Yet the impact of such processes on other educational spheres demands enhanced attention. While research on educational inequalities has flourished, the importance of factors such as organizational cultures, micro-level processes of teaching, or the logics of selection and the distribution among alternative pathways are rarely scrutinized.
The planned conference provides a forum to bring together scholars working on these and related questions. On the one hand, genuinely organizational perspectives are to be theoretically and empirically extended to include perpetual educational themes such as inequality, quality, reforms and so forth. On the other hand, educational sociology could strengthen its explanatory power by using the epistemological and methodological tools of organizational research to focus on the specifics and dynamics of organizations that produce and distribute learning opportunities and result in disparities in outcomes.
Conference Host:
Professorship for Educational Sociology, PH FHNW Basel
Local Conference Manager and Organizing Team:
Prof. Dr. Regula Julia Leemann
Rebecca Jung
Sandra Hafner
Melitta Gohrbandt