Relation between Education and Sociology

Emile Durkheim was the first person who indicated the need for a sociological approach to education. He considered education “to be essentially social in character and in its functions and that as a result the theory of education relates more clearly to sociology than any other science.” He emphasized that education is not a static phenomenon, but a dynamic and ever-changing process.

Educational sociology is a discipline which studies education sociologically, with the premise that it recognizes education as a social fact, a process and an institution, having a social function and being determined socially. Educational sociology could appear only when it accepted the social nature of education.

Meaning of Sociology of Education : Sociology of Education may be defined as the scientific analysis of the social processes and social patterns involved in the educational system. Brookover and Gottlieb consider that “this assumes education is a combination of social acts and that sociology is an analysis of human interaction.” Educational process goes on in formal as well as in informal situations.

Sociological analysis of the human interaction in education may include both situations and might lead to the development of scientific generalizations of human relations in the educational system.

The sociology of education is the study of how public institutions and individual experiences affect education and its outcomes. It is most concerned with the public schooling systems of modern industrial societies, including the expansion of higher, further, adult, and continuing education. It is a philosophical as well as a sociological concept, denoting ideologies, curricula, and pedagogical techniques of the inculcation and management of knowledge and the social reproduction of personalities and cultures.

It is concerned with the relationships, activities and reactions of the teachers and students in the classroom. It emphasizes sociological problems in the realm of education. Sociology is concerned with such general concepts such as society itself, culture, community, class, environment, socialization, internalization, accommodation, assimilation, cultural lag, subculture, status, role and so forth.

Educational sociology is a branch of discipline of sociology which studies the problems of relationship between society and education. It evolved as a discipline designed to prepare educators for their future tasks. It uses the results of sociological researches in planning educational activities and in developing effective methods of realizing these plans. The main aim of educational sociology was to study social interaction.

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