Bringing the School Back to School Research: Toward an Integrated Organizational Sociology of Education

Abstract

School research has been dominated by perspectives focused on human capital and program effects; what has receded is the organizational perspective highlighting the school bureaucracy, teaching profession, conflicting actors, and socialization of students. However, this loss of an organizational perspective runs the risk of studies that are deterministic, individualistic, and ahistoric. Highlighting the “organization” as both entity and process, this essay integrates concepts for an organizational sociology of education. First, I synthesize theoretically dispersed studies on school leadership, policies, and processes with the concept of school structures as the organization of relationships, resources, and information—consequential for instructional effectiveness, support, and change. Next, I suggest that networks actualize these structures through interpretation and interaction, and through leveraging social and cultural capital. Then, I argue how ecologies of schools, educational bureaucracies, and school improvement industries drive inequalities, innovations, and institutionalized practices. I conclude with how this integrated perspective provides synthesized schemas for key topics in the sociology of education and reveals gaps for further research.