This outstanding collection of original essays written by academics from coast-to-coast examines the complex relationship between school and society. A distinctly Canadian perspective on the sociology of education is showcased with coverage of Canadian issues, policies, institutions, and data. Chapters range from the theoretical to the empirical, and from substantive concerns affecting student's lives to those affecting governance issues. Taking a critical approach, the text urges readers to ask difficult questions about teaching and schooling. By illustrating the multiple sociological forces that come into play for educators and learners, Canadian Perspectives on the Sociology of Education challenges the reductive and pragmatic approach adopted in conventional education courses.

Introduction Section One: Theory and Practice 1. New Institutional Theory and the Weberian Tradition, Scott Davies and David Zarifa 2. Feminist Approaches to the Sociology of Education in Canada, Jane Gaskell 3. Assessing Pierre Bourdieu's Theoretical Legacies for Feminist Sociology of Education: Culture, Self, and Society, Jo-Anne Dillabough 4. Theorizing Anti-Racism, George J. Sefa Dei 5. Multicultural, Anti-Racist Education, and Black Feminist Pedagogy, Joyce Barakett and M. Ayaz Naseem 6. The Stranger Side of Education: A Dialogue with Psychoanalysis, Lisa Farley and Judith P. Robertson Section Two: Process and Equity 7. Streaming In/For the New Economy, Alison Taylor and Harvey Krahn 8. School Rules, Bodily Discipline, Embodied Resistance, Rebecca Raby 9. African Canadian Students, Identity, and Diaspora Literacy, Jennifer R. Kelly and Lorin G. Yochim 10. Rethinking Culture Theory in Aboriginal Education, Verna St. Denis 11. Addressing Homophobia and Heterosexism for all Children in Canadian Schools: A Responsibility of Educational Leaders, Gerald Walton 12. Class Encounters: Working Class Students at University, Wolfgang Lehmann 13. 'The Future is Female': Mapping Postmodernist Panics over Failing Boys and Over-Successful Girls in the UK and Canada, Jessica Ringrose 14. The Road to School Leads Out of Town: Rurality and Schooling in Atlantic Canada, Michael Corbett Section Three: Reforms and Consequences 15. Education Governance in Canada, 1900-2003: Trends and Significance, Claude Lessard and Andre Brassard 16. British Columbia: Whose Education? What Reform?, Charles Ungerleider and Ernest Krieger 17. Painting the Mountain Green: Discourses of Accountability and Critical Practice, Ann Vibert 18. The Assault of Neo-Liberalism on Education Reform, Restructuring, and Teaching in Ontario Secondary Schools, Goli Rezai-Rashti 19. Race, Parents, and the Organization of Education Policy Discourse in Ontario, Kari Dehli 20. Public Schooling, Public Knowledge, and the Education of Public School Teachers, Don Dippo, Marcela Duran, Jen Gilbert, and Alice Pitt 21. The Privatization of Higher Education in Canada, Claire Polster Index