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Education and inequality: historical and sociological approaches to schooling and social stratification

The 30th International Standing Conference on the History of Education was held at Rutgers-Newark from 23 July to 26 July 2008. The conference theme, “Education and Inequality: Historical Approaches to Schooling and Social Stratification” reflected our decade-long interest in both historical sociology and sociological history. One of us, a sociologist, has written historical sociology1 and the other, a historian, has written sociologically informed history.2 Our collaborations have attempted to combine history and sociology to understand the history of progressive education and the role of women in progressive reforms.3 Based on these works, the conference theme was an outgrowth of our interest in integrating history and sociology to understand important educational problems. The role of schools in either reducing and ameliorating or reproducing and exacerbating social inequalities has long been the subject of debate in both disciplines. Therefore, the papers presented at ISCHE 30 and those included in this special issue of Paedagogica Historica all examine the theme of education and inequality through a sociological and historical lens. The study of education and inequality has been a central theme in the sociology of education since the 1960s. Sociological studies have focused on a number of questions. First, what does the empirical evidence tell us about the nature and extent of social class, race, ethnic and gender achievement gaps? Second, what are the causes of these educational inequalities—that is, are they caused by factors inside and/or outside schools. Third, what do the answers to these questions tell us about the role of education in ameliorating or reproducing existing inequalities?