The Sociology of Education in Canada: Critical Perspectives (review)

The first edition of The Sociology of Education in Canada: Critical Perspectives was released in 1998, and a quick scan of course syllabi in Canadian universities (and those in other countries as well) shows how central it has been to teaching the subject. This second edition threatens to become one of the few, genuine 'one stop shopping' resources for students and instructors in the field.

The current iteration has been thoughtfully revised to take in recent changes — as the author says, those both 'promising' and 'disappointing' — that have occurred in educational practice and politics over the last six years. The book is based on a powerful mastery of the educational thought and empirical research developed over the author's two decades of work in the area. Importantly, this view is based on not merely solid scholarship but experiential knowledge born from a writer with direct experience of teaching at virtually all levels of the school system. As its overall goal, the author explicitly seeks to provide the foundations for renewed critical perspectives on education against the recent turn towards a newly entrenched, uncritical acceptance of favoured truths. Moreover, given the evolving public and administrative interest in actually drawing on empirical findings, this book has an important place in broad considerations of directions for one of the central institutions in Canadian life.

In terms of audience, presentation style and special features, I think the intended audience for the text is diverse. It may be ideal for senior undergraduate and early graduate courses in sociology of education, as well as for educational studies and teacher education candidates (amongst whom I plan to use the book immediately). In terms of presentation style, the book provides particularly clean exposition. Each chapter features a set of defined key terms, annotated further reading and study questions. The book also features set-off boxes that highlight specific items or findings for discrete consideration. It is a minor quibble, but at times the boxes become frequent enough to interrupt the text a bit, at least for this reader. There is also short set of web resources included at the end, along with a strong subject/author index.

Turning to content, Wotherspoon begins with a general positioning of the discipline of sociology of education, and then nicely delimits the set of foci and approaches that define quite well a 'critical perspective'. He provides a framework that makes distinct the specific sets of critical literature he'll explore and why (anti-racist, gendered and class-based scholarship inclusive), along with brief characterizations of alternatives: structural functionalist, liberal-humanist, and interpretivist frameworks. From here, we discover a concise account of the historical context of schooling in Canada. Following these opening chapters, Wotherspoon goes on to present a series of four relatively self-contained chapters on specific topics that cover major themes in sociology of education that are eminently suited for flexible use in course teaching. These include the conflict, regulation and organizational structure of the schooling process; the political dimensions of teaching as a profession; linkages between schooling and labour markets which I found particularly well rounded; and, social reproduction via schooling. The author closes with a hearty chapter which summarizes the significance of the research as presented, and directs our attention to specific, recent questions of interests that have, in part, given rise to the new edition. In the tradition of Carnoy and Levin, Livingstone and a handful of others, here I particularly liked the author's broader conceptualization (that, more or less, runs throughout the book but which is properly tied up in the closing chapter) that amongst the specificity of debates in Canada over education, a new hegemony is identifiable. The strength of this formulation is obvious in that it provides for a model of both conflict and consent that is complex enough to account for both shifting and enduring alliances which, in turn, can demonstrate elements that are perhaps unique to the contemporary national context. At the same time, this hegemonic...