Over the past decades, each generation in most Western European countries attended school longer than their parents. This ‘massification’ of education tremendously influenced the outlook and working of contemporary societies. Education is now regularly presented as a universal solver for all kinds of individual and societal problems. In the research line sociology of education TOR assesses these trends and their implications.

We organize our activities along four sublines:

1. The study of educational trajectories (in higher education) and all factors that impact on them (e.g. truancy, anti-social behaviour).
2. The study of pedagogical discourse both from a historical perspective and from a focus on the social reproduction of education.
3. The extent to which educational position and educational capital become a source of identity.
4. Changes in the teacher profession, the end of career of teachers and the societal position of teachers.

Common to all these lines is the attempt to study the educational field not in isolation but from a perspective that puts heavy emphasis on the mutual relationships between the educational field and other spheres of society.

Current projects:

• Policy Support Centre for Central Testing in Education.

Previous projects:

• Policy Support Centre for Educational Research.
• Policy Support Centre Study and School Careers.