Abstract:
For Karl Marx, structured social conflicts derive from the unbalanced power relation of social classes. As this power-led perspective provides a convincing account explaining social inequity, many researchers have adopted this approach and, in turn, Marxism develops and dominates the research of sociology of education. Key theories, such as habitus, code theory and critical pedagogy, can be viewed as milestone of its development. Even though these theories belong to Marxism, there are variations between them because while both habitus and code theory focus on the analysis of curriculum knowledge structure, critical pedagogy addresses ideologies embedded within curriculum contents. This article further argues that the predominant influence of these theories is not simply determined by Marxism but rather due to the fact that educational inequality remains firmly embedded in modern society. This correlation highlights an axiom that the value of individual theories is mainly determined by the social context.K
