Rob Moore

Position/Status
E-mail Address

rm233@cam.ac.uk

Phone

01223 507301

Qualifications

BSc (hons) Sociology, London
PGCE, London
Academic Diploma in Education, London
MA Education (Sociology), London
PhD Sociology, London

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Profile

At various times in my teaching career, I have taught at primary, secondary, further and higher levels in English education. My principle experience in schools was as a social education teacher and multicultural education teacher in Inner London Education Authority secondary comprehensive schools. In FE I was involved with the Youth Training Scheme. In higher education I have taught sociology and sociology of education at a number of institutions in London University, the Open University, at the University of the South Bank and at Anglia Ruskin University. The main areas in which I teach involve sociology of education, sociology of knowledge, social theory and sociological research methods.

Academic Area/Links

I currently teach a range of sociology of education courses that cover sociological theory and perspectives, sociology of knowledge and the curriculum, social inequality and educational differentiation, vocationalism and youth sub-cultures, social exclusion, and childhood and the family. I am especially interested in epistemology and the problems of knowledge, the philosophy of science, sociology of knowledge and social theory, critical realism, education and social change, educational differences and youth transitions.

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Research Topics

Recent research involved a study of university students and citizenship with John Beck (Cambridge) and John Ahier (Open University) that formed the basis of a book, Graduate Citizens: issues of citizenship and higher education (Routledge/Falmer), published in 2002. Previous research was concerned with sixth-formers and educational decision-making and with education and the world of work. My book, Education and Society: issues and explanations in the sociology of education was published by Polity in 2004 and attempts to provide a critical review of the sociology of education from Durkheim and Weber to contemporary debates about social inequality, educational change and the problems of knowledge. A collection of previously written works is to be published by Continuum Press with the title 'The Sociology of Knowledge and Education'.

Current Research Projects

My major current interest is in a set of issues in the sociology of knowledge. The first concern has been with a critique of relativism and post-modernism and support for a critical realist approach to knowledge. The second is with the character of intellectual fields and the conditions that govern their forms and productivity. The third is with the structural conditions that might bring about change in intellectual fields. These interests are being developed through concepts based in the later work of Basil Bernstein and the explication and development of Bernstein's thinking is a central project. These interests are being located within the historical context of the emergence of the public sphere in England in the early modern period and the relationship between modes of critical academic scholarship and forms of 'sociality' in civil society in liberal democracies.

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Course Involvement

B.A. Routes 1 and 2, M.Phil, Ph.D.

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Publications

The Sociology of Knowledge and Education, Continuum Press, forthcoming.

Hierarchical Knowledge Structure and the Canon: a preference for judgments, in Christie, F.and Martin, J. (Eds) Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy, (Continuum Press, 2006).

Knowledge Structures and Intellectual Fields: Basil Bernstein and the Sociology of Knowledge, in Knowledge, Power and Educational Reform: applying the sociology of Basil Bernstein, Editors: Rob Moore, Madeleine Arnot, John Beck and Harry Daniels, (RouledgeFalmer, 2006).

Going Critical: the problems of problematising knowledge in education studies, Melbourne Studies in Education, Special Edition, Autumn 2006.

Education and Society: issues and explanations in the sociology of education, (Cambridge: Polity, 2004).

Cultural Capital: objective probability and the cultural arbitrary, British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol 25 no 4, pp445-456, (2004).

Ahier, J. Beck, J. and Moore, R. (2003) Graduate Citizens? Issues of citizenship and higher education, (London: Routledge/Falmer).

Basil Bernstein and Social Theory, in S. Power (ed) Essays in Memory of Basil Bernstein, (London: Institute of Education London University, 2002).

Moore, R.and Young, M.F.D. (2001) Knowledge and the Curriculum in the Sociology of Education: towards a reconceptualisation, British Journal of Sociology of Education, (Dec 2001).

For Knowledge: tradition, progressivism and progress in education - reconstructing the curriculum debate, Cambridge Journal of Education, vol 30, no 1, pp17-36, (2000)

Moore R The Correspondence Principle and the Marxist Sociology of Education, in S. Ball, (ed), The Sociology of Education: major debates, (London: Falmer, 2000).