Two “New” Sociologies of Education: A Comment on Heap's “Discourse in the Production of Classroom Knowledge”

There are two misunderstandings in that short statement. The first is that Heap refers to an "English" tradition when at least part of the research he cites was not English but British. Some of the leading researchers are Welsh, Scottish, or Irish, and one of the key centers for the new paradigm was in Edinburgh. There is, however, a serious confusion in the passage which deserves more extensive treatment. Heap, like Karabel (in Karabel and Halsey, 1977) before him, has confused and conflated two distinct British movements within the sociology of education. Karabel and Halsey (1977: 50) announced that: