Organising the unconscious: Towards a social psychology of education

This chapter aims to bring together historical developments in work in the social analysis of education, the changing social context in which it takes place, and the possibilities for practical transformative activity. The dynamism of the new sociology of education was that it was theory and research for practice, where practice was a concretely specifiable social project. The social and theoretical bases of a radical social theory of education have themselves changed. The change in the content and social form of education, where mass communications are seen as the foreshadowing or anticipation of emergent education, is the basis for thinking about what would a transformative, counter-hegemonic education be up against in such a society. Organizing the unconscious is a way of underlining some aspects of a counter-hegemonic education in a semiotic, oppressive, class society. Academic social psychology of education remains the last bastion of functionalist sociology: socialization, roles, influence, group dynamics, and leadership in the classroom.