Families, education and social differences edited by Ben Cosin and Margaret Hales

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book completes the series of readers for the Open University's undergraduate course EU208 Exploring Educational Issues. It brings together informed writings from a variety of research paradigms.
One of the major themes of the book is the current controversy over early years education. It explores the nursery voucher scheme, the relationship between school and parents, the goals of education, and how quality can be controlled.
The book also examines issues of inequality in terms of class, race and gender, and offers readers a chance to re-evaluate themselves and their children within new frameworks of thought, practice and policy.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction
• 1 Socialisation and the family: change and diversity
• 2 Nursery school education in Nigeria: Impact on Families and Society
• 3 Why nursery education? Early Child Development and Care
• 4 Training to work in the early years
• 5 Parents and Professionals in Effective Early Years Education
• 6 Learning begins at home: implications for a learning society
• 7 Special needs: personal trouble or public issue?
• 8 Educational inequality as a social problem: the case of England
• 9 Social mobility in Britain: An empirical evaluation of two competing explanations
• 10 Education reform, gender, equality and school cultures
• 11 Feminist theories on gender and schools
• 12 Boys will be boys? Racism, sexuality and the construction of masculine identities amongst infant boys
• 13 Swimming against the tide: Liberal Parents and Cultural Plurality
• 14 Drawn by the authors from cultural capital, ethnicity and early education
• 15 Family matters