The study on the core concepts of contemporary sociology of education and its theoretical construction

Abstract

Within the sphere of contemporary social sciences, the terms modernity,  post-modernity  and globalization  have penetrated, as the core concepts, into various fields of social sciences in a logical way. In constituting the concept of modernity,  sociology of education develops the educational theory, as sociological theory does, into a grand narrative  and foundationalist  theory; the contribution of post-modernity is pluralism and self-examination in an attempt to transcend modernity. Globalization, a kind of expanded modernity, makes education sociologists broaden their perspective from single and traditional nationality,  society  and nation  to an international society and even to the global society, which has broken through the research paradigm of modernity with ethnocentrism, anthropocentrism and Euro-centrism. These changes have required urgent constitution of the conceptions and theoretical frameworks of sociology of education to be applied on a global level.