Twenty-seven academics from the UK, U.S., and New Zealand contribute 18 essays on the impact of social structure on educational learning, educational access, and opportunity and outcomes, in an effort to renew the debate concerning the sociology of school attainment.

Foreword, Michael F.D.Young Preface. Introduction, Mark Olssen. Human Learning in Social Context, Peter Jarvis. Bourdieu in the Classroom, Michael Grenfell. Beyond Reproduction Theory: A Multi-Level Explanation of Inequality/Difference in Education, Roy Nash. Can the Arbitrary and the Necessary Be Reconciled?: Scientific Realism and the School Curriculum, Roy Nash. Basil Bernstein: Social Divisions and Cultural Transmission, Michael Erben and Hilary Dickinson. Language, Discourse, Literacy: Stability, Territory, and Transformation, Paul Dowling. ICT in the Classroom: The Pedagogical Challenge of Respatialisation and Reregulation, Susan Robertson, Tim Shortis, Neil Todman, Peter John, and Roger Dale. Dilemmas in Designing Problems in ""Realistic"" School Mathematics: A Sociological Overview and Some Research Findings, Barry Cooper. System-wide Reform: The Role of Professional Development for Instructional Improvement, Richard Harker and John O'Neill. The Impact of School Composition: New Insights into an Enduring Problem, Martin Thrupp. Knowledge and the Curriculum in the Sociology of Education: Towards a Reconceputalization, Rob Moore and Michael Young. The Sociology of IQ: Enhancing Cognitive Skills, James R. Flynn. Ability, Selection, and Institutional Racism in Schools, David Gillborn. Race and the Politics of Educational Reform, Michael W. Apple. Poverty, Learning Opportunities, and the Social Construction of Collective Intelligence, Phillip Brown and Hugh Lauder. Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Messenger: Discourses, Dialectics and Deficits, Keith Sullivan. Gender Differences in Educational Achievement: A Socio-Cultural Analysis, Patricia Murphy and Gabrielle Ivinson. Educational Trauma and ""At-Risk"" Students, Keith Sullivan. About the Contributors.