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Through pedagogical case studies and dialogues, this book sheds new light on concepts and boundaries in public sociology education. With sections on publics, special knowledges and practices in the field, the book offers bold thinking on important questions including the purposes and targets of sociological knowledge. The book begins with a focus on public sociology that demonstrates affinities with radical education practice and debates in the dialogue between public sociology and radical education at the edges of academia. It refers to a methodology which facilitates the critical dialogue between practitioners of public sociology and education. It then discusses the constitution of 'publics', production of sociological knowledge, and different contexts of pedagogical practice. Dialogue is central to the practices of public sociology education, and it is through this means that the book reflects on concepts and aspects of public sociology education linked by critical dialogue.

Degrees of Freedom is the first book to examine The Open University’s pioneering work with people in prison. This unique book gives voice to prisoners and ex-prisoners whose lives have been transformed by education. The first five chapters offer analysis from OU academics on the history and contexts of OU prison education. The other nine chapters are from people with first-hand experience of studying with the OU in prison. These vivid personal testimonies are supplemented by nine shorter reflective vignettes that combine to demonstrate the diversity of interest and experience among OU students in prison. Published in December 2019 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of The Open University, this book is a valuable resource for students, scholars and anyone curious to know more about prisons, education and universities. Widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest educational innovations, The Open University has developed a powerful reputation for delivering education in prisons. In doing so it fulfils an important part of its mission to promote social justice. The Open University’s work in prisons gives form and substance to its founding declaration ‘to be open to people, ideas, methods and places’. The men and women who have built this reputation by undertaking their studies in uniquely challenging circumstances have rarely had the opportunity to tell their story. This book changes that by presenting their accounts of learning inside prisons with The Open University and the effects it has had on their lives beyond prison walls.

This book explores the interface between social work academia and social policy in diverse societies across the globe. It does so by employing a unique cross-national comparative perspective and by focusing upon a field of academic and professional activity in which engagement in socially-relevant activities and those related to the policy process has particular resonance. Based on survey data on social work academics in 12 countries analysed by country experts in each of the nations, the chapters shed light on the policy engagement of faculty members in schools of social work. The findings indicate that social work academics believe that the academic world should play a role in society and, while the level of engagement is only modest, they report engaging in diverse types of policy-related activities. These are undertaken mainly in the public sphere, focus more on changing the discourse than on offering detailed policy proposals, and are generally conducted in partnership with social workers, social work students, service users and advocacy organizations. The level of engagement is affected by the motivation and competencies of the social work academics, by the support they enjoy from their institutions and the access that they have to the policy process in their countries.

With rising levels of student debt and precarity, young people’s lives in university are not always smooth. Lorenza Antonucci has travelled across England, Italy and Sweden to understand how inequality is reproduced through university. This book provides a compelling narrative of what it means to be in university in Europe in the 21^st century, not only in terms of education, but also in terms of finances, housing and well-being. Furthermore, this book shows how inequality is reproduced during university by how young people from different social classes combine family, state and labour market sources. The book identifies different profiles of young people’s experiences in university, from ‘Struggling and hopeless’ to ‘Having a great time’. Furthermore, the book discusses how the ‘welfare mixes’ present in the three countries determine different types of semi-dependence, and reinforce inequalities. The book identifies a general trend of privatisation of student support in higher education, which pushes young people to participate in the labour market and over-rely on family resources in order to sustain their participation in university. Not only does this protract young people’s semi-dependence, but it also increases inequality among different groups of young people. In addition to the current policy focus on access to higher education, and transitions to the labour market, the book calls for a greater attention on the policies that can change young people’s lives while in university.

What opportunities do digital technologies present? How do developments in digital media support scholarship and teaching yet further social justice? Written by two experts in the field, this accessible book is the first to look at scholarly practice in the digital era and consider how it can connect academics, journalists and activists in ways that foster transformation on issues of social justice. The terra firma of scholarly practice is changing. This book offers both a road map and a vision of what being a scholar can be when reimagined in the digital era to enliven the public good, as it discusses digital innovations in higher education as well as reflecting upon what these mean in an age of austerity. It is ideal for students and academics working in any field of humanities or social sciences with a social justice focus.

Teacher education in times of change offers a critical examination of teacher education policy in the UK and the Republic of Ireland over the past three decades, since the governments of all five nations started making major interventions. Written by a research group from the five countries, it makes international comparisons and covers broader developments in professional learning, to place these key issues and lessons in a wider context. The approach taken is a broad cultural historical one that seeks to deploy a ‘home international’ comparative methodology. After analytical accounts of policy developments in each of the five nations, four themes are considered cross-nationally: standards and accountability; research; higher education; and partnership. The major conclusion reached is that there are distinctive elements both in policy processes and in policy outcomes in all five of the nations but also significant commonalities that appear to reflect some of the wider trends in teacher education internationally that may be associated with globalisation. The analysis provided by the book demonstrates the deep political, sociological and educational significance of teacher education in contemporary democratic societies.

Research by universities plays an increasingly important role in shaping education policy around the world yet there is much dissatisfaction with the ways that they share that work. This much-needed, original book analyzes efforts and systems in nine countries to mobilize research knowledge, describing the various factors that support or inhibit that work. Beginning and concluding chapters offer analytical lenses for understanding these various elements across the cases. Together, this collection from a wide range of experienced contributors, provides an unprecedented international view of the way education research is produced and shared, and provides excellent signposts for improvement for researchers and those interested in more impact from research in education.

International education is a global market. Many nation-states regulate the welfare experience of incoming international students through formal regulation, students self-regulate and they are regulated by informal means through trans-national social and family networks. The central objective of this book is to conduct a comparative analysis of the Australian and New Zealand regimes of international student welfare regulation and to explore the international and global implications of the two regimes. Regulation theory provides the analytical framework and empirical evidence was gathered using in-depth interviews with 200 students in Australia, 70 students in New Zealand and 24 service providers and policy makers across the two countries.The book argues that the Australian and New Zealand regimes use different language in formal regulatory instruments but that the student welfare experience in the two countries is strikingly similar. This raises questions for the potency and relevance of formal regulation, elevating the significance of informal regulation and self-regulation. Just as importantly, the analysis calls for greater attention to the trans-national regulatory sphere and the streamlining of that with the national level in order to construct a new, trans-national form of student citizenship. The book draws upon lessons from the national public policy and global governance and regulation literatures.

This book offers a comparative analysis of alternative education in the UK, focusing on learning spaces that cater for children and young people. It constitutes one of the first book-length explorations of alternative learning spaces outside mainstream education – including Steiner, Human-Scale and Forest Schools, Care Farms and Homeschooling. Based on original research with teachers, parents and young people at over fifty learning spaces, it demonstrates the importance of a geographical lens for understanding alternative education. The book argues that the geographies of alternative education are diverse: from the variegated ways in which alternative learning spaces connect and disconnect with the ‘mainstream’, to the significance of material ‘mess’ in children's learning, to the broader role that some alternative learning spaces play in challenging the increasingly neoliberal mainstream. The book will be of direct interest to academics and postgraduates in the fields of geography, sociology, education and youth studies, in particular those concerned with education. It will have broader appeal to readers from various disciplines, interested in contemporary theorisations of autonomy, emotion/affect, intergenerational relations, habit and life-itself. Given ongoing concerns about the State's role in providing children's education, and an increase during the early 21^st century of the number of alternative education providers in the UK and elsewhere, the book also highlights a series of critical questions for policy-makers and practitioners.