Distal and Proximal Vision: A Multi-Perspective Research in Sociology of Education

Abstract

Drawing inspiration from the research conducted in Italian schools involved in the reform process, the article proposes to investigate two visions in the research on Sociology of Education: one distal and the other proximal. The distal vision is offered by quantitative research nowadays supported by extensive public funding and framed as comparative international programmes, while the proximal one concerns mainly qualitative methodological and epistemology perspectives. In an attempt to bring the strengths of each into focus, the article approaches these two visions.

Everyday politics of care and exclusion: Conceptualising agency in rural south India

“…In contrast, more proximate views may reveal how 'objective explanations' rely on the work of interpretation that uses tools like surveys and statistics (Krarup and Blok, 2011;Latour, 1988). Crucially, proximal views may be based on approaching entities as subjects (rather than objects) embedded in their contexts (Giancola and Viteritti, 2014).…”

“…While it is widely accepted that cultural values and norms are political – that social power is exercised through them (e.g. Giddens, 1984), material things may be approached and articulated as objects assumed to be neutral or apolitical. This assumption overlooks that social hierarchies of gender and caste can be partially enacted through the manipulation and mobilisation of ecologies as resources (Bijker, 2007; Naz, 2015; Parthasarathy, 2002); and through the designs of technological materials such as irrigation infrastructures and heavy machinery (Cockburn, 1985; Shah, 2003).…”

Socioeconomic Inequality and Student Outcomes in Italy

“…This dynamic was produced on the one hand by exogenous factors (broader reform processes aiming at increasing the efficiency of the public administration, pressures towards a rationalization of public spending, the need for integration between the various national educational systems) and, on the other, by factors endogenous to school systems (new conceptions of learning processes promoting a more flexible and targeted view of educational processes) (Giancola, 2010). The opening of the European Education area and the role of supranational agencies (Giancola & Viteritti, 2014) have pushed the educational system simultaneously towards an increasing role of local governance and a growing similarity with the other European educational systems (Benadusi, Giancola, 2016).…”

Exploring Sociology of Education in the Promotion of Sustainability Literacy in Higher Education

“…Sociology of Education has several paradigms and methodologies [71,109,110,111]. The fact that Sociology is multi-paradigmatic is vital [31,112] in this great epistemological complexity at two levels of construction of the scientific object, "(i) the way in which social reality is broken down into data, collected and analysed, and (ii) the way in which this data is framed and made to recursively influence future sociological knowledge production" [116] (p. 98).…”