A beautiful visual celebration of the iconic LEGO® minifigure—its history, evolution, and status as a cultural icon.The LEGO® minifigure is one of the most recognizable and collectible toys on the planet. Over the span of 40 years it has evolved from a simple yellow figurine to a global pop culture icon. This landmark volume celebrates the colorful history, evolving design, and lasting impact of the one and only LEGO minifigure. Driven by compelling interviews and ...

Knowledge Production, Policy and Practice in Education: Social Realist Explorations of Curriculum, Teaching and Research brings together theoretical and empirical enquiries into curricula, pedagogy and assessment, informed by the influential traditions of social realism and Basil Bernstein’s sociology of education. The edited volume provides tools for understanding persistent educational inequalities and approaches to inclusive educational systems.The book is an edited col...

This book provides an accessible way into the ideas of Basil Bernstein. It introduces, explains and exemplifies key conceptual landmarks in the development of his theory, from his sociolinguistics in the 1960s through analyses of classrooms and the construction of curriculum in the 1970s and 1980s, to studies of intellectual fields of research through the 1990s. The book introduces how these ideas can and have been used in empirical research over the past fifty years, and how they are bein...

In 2008 the first in a series of symposia established a ‘social realist’ case for ‘knowledge’ as an alternative to the relativist tendencies of the constructivist, post-structuralist and postmodernist approaches dominant in the sociology of education. The second symposium focused on curriculum, and the development of a theoretical language grounded in social realism to talk about issues of knowledge and curriculum. Finally, the third symposium brought together researchers in a broad range ...

This book is made up of a selection of writings from an international team of scholars, highlighting the contribution made to the field of educational policy and educational policy research by Basil Bernstein's work on the sociology of pedagogy. These contributors explore, analyse and engage with contemporary political reforms of education, contemporary pedagogic debates and the changing nature of professional knowledge, relationships and structures. The subjects covered include:...

This introductory text for students of linguistics, language, and education provides background and up-to-date information and resources that beginning researchers need for studying language diversity and education.Three framing chapters offer an update on the philosophy of social research, revealing how important language is for all the processes of learning in which humans engage, whether it is learning about the world through education, or learning about the nature of social lif...

The second edition of this celebrated book by two of the world′s leading researchers in social work introduces readers to the main theories, theorists and perspectives that contribute to the debate on social work theory and social work methods. It brings together some outstanding international researchers in social work to challenge the reader to critically question how they think about social work.The new edition includes a focus on the psychosocial perspective, with three new cha...

This new edition provides a scholarly and readable introduction to all the key qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and methods, enabling postgraduate and masters-level students and new researchers to reflect on which ones suit their needs and to receive guidance on how to find out more.With chapters written by experienced research practitioners, this second edition has been extensively expanded and updated. There are seven completely new chapters, as well as:

This text successfully bridges the gap between theory and methods in social research, bringing understanding of the dynamics of social relations.

John Goldthorpe is one of Britain's most eminent sociologists and a strong advocate of quantitative sociology. In this concise and accessible book, he provides a new rationale for recent developments in sociology which focus on establishing and explaining probabilistic regularities in human populations. Through these developments, Goldthorpe shows how sociology has become more securely placed within the 'probabilistic revolution' that has occurred over the last century in the natural and s...

This expanded and updated edition of Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: The State of the Art revisits the use of complexity theory across the social sciences and demonstrates how complexity informs approaches to various contemporary issues in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, widening social inequality, and impending social and ecological catastrophe wrought by global warming.The book reviews complexity theory in the practice of the social sciences and at their...

This book provides an introduction to political psychology through a focus on European politics and topics. It describes a style of doing political psychology in Europe that has developed out of dialogue with as well as critique of North American approaches. By emphasising the theoretical and methodological diversity of political psychology, the book is intended to contribute to a greater understanding of the strength and utility of the field. • Opens up and extends the study of political ...