Fresh Perspectives on the School Transformation—Reproduction Debate: A Response to Anyon from the Antipodes

Abstract

The decade of the new sociology of education has been extremely exciting for anyone involved in the study of education from a sociological perspective. The period has been punctuated by a series of exchanges between sociologists and philosophers as writers have sought to develop a sound theoretical basis for the claim that knowledge was being used as a form of social control, and that schools had not advanced much from the days when they began with the chant God Bless the Squire and his relations, and help to keep us in our social stations. Yet, as is so often the case, most of the writing remained at the theoretical level. In the United Kingdom-the outstanding research of Willis's Learning to Labour excepted -the lack of empirical work is virtually complete; in Australia and New Zealand the only relevant work is Johnston's (1978) account of dangerous knowledge, Connell and his colleagues' (1981) investigation of ruling class schools and Ramsay and his colleagues' (1981, 1983) investigation of schools with special needs. In the light of this lack of research elsewhere it is encouraging to find that a tradition of empirical