Social and Philosophical Foundations

Program Focus: Research In Education

The Social Foundations of Education at the University at Buffalo focuses on the role education, including, but not limited to, K-16 schools, plays in the larger society. We are a multidisciplinary program employing the methods, theories, and empirical insights of the humanities and social sciences to examine, in national and international contexts, educational ideas, practices, policies, institutions and outcomes, as well as the linkages between and among educational institutions and broader social, cultural, political, and economic formations. We examine such relations at both micro and macro levels, with solid disciplinary expertise in contemporary social/educational theories, sociology of education, anthropology of education, history of education, cultural studies, policy analysis, and comparative/international education.

Here we house two strong, separate but fundamentally interlocking key concentrations (sub-programs) in Social Foundations and capitalize upon their strength: Comparative and Global Studies in Education and Sociology of Education. Both are scholarly fields of study in their own right and bring great scholarly distinction to the University at Buffalo (the Sociology of Education was named a SUNY PhD Program of Distinction several years ago through stiff competition, and Social Foundations ranked 11th nationally in the West and Rhee study). What distinguishes the Social Foundations program at the University at Buffalo is both the strength of the faculty in these two key concentrations (with additional disciplinary expertise in related areas) as well as the ways in which said faculty weave the two concentrations together in light of changing global conditions which increasingly inform/shape local programs, policies, and practices. Our work and scholarship, therefore, is both drawn from and simultaneously rooted in an increasingly global and internationalizing context.

To be more specific; while key research questions are lodged in each concentration (Comparative and Global Studies in Education and Sociology of Education), it is in the floating of questions related to the production of inequalities through educational institutions as well as issues of attaining and promoting social justice inside radically globally based economic restructuring, for example, that enables us to gain substantial ground intellectually, ground that is not currently being covered in such programs in comparable Research I institutions across the United States. What distinguishes us are the ways in which faculty work across previously established academic boundaries so as to understand more fully what is going on inside schools in relation to the social and economic context at one and the same time as such context is increasingly shaped by changes in the global economy and movement of broader social, cultural, and political forms. This ultimately gives the program at the University at Buffalo a very distinct stamp: one not precisely duplicated at any major university in the United States.

Students

The Social Foundations program has been very successful in attracting highly qualified and intellectually robust students locally, nationally and internationally. We have approximately 60 students currently enrolled in the PhD program. Among them, approximately two fifths are international students who represent over twenty countries across the globe. Some of them hold college and university faculty and/or governmental/NGO positions in their home countries.

We educate PhD students (and to a lesser extent Masters students simply because we are overwhelmingly a PhD program) to become researchers who are intellectually on par with those coming out of the traditional humanities and social science disciplines. If students wish to become practitioners and/or policy makers (rather than academics), we educate them to be those with research based expertise so that educational practices and policymaking can become a research-based art of science rather than one that follows conventionalities.

It is the norm of our program that the students make presentations at national/international level, peer-reviewed conferences on a regular basis and throughout their graduate study (for example, the annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association, the Association for Asian Studies, and the Comparative and International Education Society). At times, our students have presented at non-U.S. based international conferences, such as the prestigious Sociology of Education Conference in England.

We have been very successful in graduating our students as fine scholars with the PhD degree. Over the past ten years, for example, more than one hundred and twenty students have completed their PhD degree under our direction. At least nine dissertations produced in the program within the past twelve years have been revised and published as book length volumes with major presses, such as Routledge, SUNY Press, LFB Publishing, and Teacher's College Press. Students have, in addition, placed articles stemming from their dissertation research in top tier journals: American Education Research Journal, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, to name two. Our throughput is good, as students enter the program and complete it with significant research experience and publication records.

In addition, we have contributed to capacity building in nations throughout the world as many of our students hold key positions in Ministries and/or universities in their home countries. Such students are often policy oriented and contribute in key ways to building research capacity in relation to the policy process.

Faculty Strengths

Faculty are top scholars in their respective fields. Bruce Johnstone is an international authority on the worldwide shift in the higher educational cost burden from government and taxpayers to parents and students. His policy-oriented work has impact both academically and practically, as he consults with key personnel in nations across the globe as they struggle with cost-sharing implementation. He has obtained close to one million dollars from the Ford Foundation, with which he has supported the research of numerous PhD students. Professor Johnstone partners with centers in China, Russia, Kenya and South Africa.

Lois Weis is a noted scholar in the area of political economy, education and social identities. She has written extensively about the current predicament of white and minority working class and poor youth and young adults and the complex role gender and race play in their lives in light of the contemporary dynamics associated with de-industrialization, new patterns of emigration, and the movement of cultural and economic capital across national borders. Professor Weis has obtained 1.2 million dollars from the Spencer and Carnegie Foundations and many PhD dissertations have been produced under her direction. . Both Johnstone and Weis have received numerous academic awards over the years. Most recently Bruce Johnstone was named SUNY Distinguished Service Professor and Lois Weis was named UB Distinguished Professor.

Greg Dimitriadis is a tenured Associate Professor in the Sociology of Education. Professor Dimitriadis' work has explored the potential value and important contribution of non-traditional educational curricula (for example, popular culture), programs (arts based initiatives) and institutions (such as community centers) in the lives of disfranchised youth. He won the prestigious AERA Division B Outstanding Book of the Year Award and also won the AERA Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies SIG Early Career Award in 2004. He is Director of GSE publications (which now has, as a result of his work, a direct link to SUNY Press) and is editor of a new book series with Routledge.

Yoshiko Nozaki is Assistant Professor of Comparative Education. Professor Nozaki is interested in international studies of gender and women's education, nationalism and curriculum/textbook controversies, most prominently the Japanese textbook controversy regarding Japan's role during World War II. She has an edited book released by SUNY Press in 2005, and is working on a first single-author book forthcoming from Routledge. She was awarded the prestigious National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, which she used to further her work on the Japanese textbook controversy.

A Community Of Scholars

Our Foundations community is intensely academic and focused on research at every turn. Students engage with literature, produce and consume original research and scholarly presentation across Comparative and Global Studies and Sociology of Education. Our large student community represents a "community of difference" at its very best, working across racial, ethnic and national boundaries in exceedingly productive and exciting scholarly ways. Our program is unique in that we merge the vibrant fields of Sociology of Education and Comparative and International Education through careful focus on knowledge, culture, student and teacher identities, social stratification, and funding patterns both within and across national context. We take the world condition seriously as we attempt to locate and explore academic problems. Although we are primarily a PhD and research driven area, we participate actively in the preparation of teachers and other educational professionals through a range of faculty taught courses that serve the broader GSE community. Opportunities exist for advanced level PhD students to participate in the teaching of these courses. Our students are prepared to conduct research and present at key scholarly meetings.

We have built a thriving community of scholars which cuts across faculty and student lines. One of the important means for us to share each other's research interests and findings has been to hold brown bag seminars. As a program, we have two distinctive scholarly brown bag series of note, both of which draw students and faculty from across GSE and the broader university community: Sociology of Education Brown Bags and the Center for Comparative and Global Studies in Education Brown Bags.

The Sociology of Education Brown Bag series is well rooted in the Graduate School of Education and has been able to highlight the work of key scholars such as Michael Apple of the University of Wisconsin, Paul Willis of Keele University in England, Miki David similarly of Keele University in England, Sheila Slaughter of the University of Georgia and National Science Foundation, Cameron McCarthy of the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana, among others. This is a highly successful series, becoming increasingly popular as well as building a scholarly reputation, and is now in its fourth year. This series has also invited a number of editors from academic publishing houses and journals, informing the Graduate School of Education's faculty and students about the trends in academic research and publication.

Similarly, the Center for Comparative and Global Studies in Education Brown Bag series has invited prominent scholars within/without the United States: To name a few, Phil Altbach of Boston College, Nandini Manjrekar of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India, Teshome Yizengow, Vice Minister and Head of the Department of Higher Education, Ethiopia, and Peter Mateju of the Institute for Social and Economic Analysis, Czech. In addition, the Center has been privileged to co-sponsor events organized by two unique student groups: the Asian American Model Minority Myth Research Group and the Association of International Education, Research and Activism. The speakers in these co-sponsored brown bags include: Stacey Lee of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch. Numerous faculty and students across the University at Buffalo now participate in these exciting discussions.

These Brown Bag series draw upon the good will of numerous friends and colleagues so that we can personally interact with scholars of prominence on a continual basis. Well over fifty faculty and students generally attend these brown bag events. The Brown Bag events serve as a focal point of our Social Foundations scholarly community, and a number of PhD dissertation research topics of our students can be traced directly to intense scholarly debate in this seminar.

• Sociology of Education
• Comparative and Global Studies of Education

1. Guidelines for Writing a Dissertation in GSE
2. Sociology of Education Brown Bag Series 2003-2005
3. Sociology of Education Brown Bag Series 2005-2006
4. Dissertations completed by Social Foundation students, 1990-1995
5. Dissertations completed by Social Foundation students, 1996-2000
6. Dissertations completed by Social Foundation students, 2001-2005