Toward A Sociology of Educational Flourishing

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Identity, Belonging and Flourishing Along the Margins

Abstract

This paper develops a sociology of educational flourishing, connecting sociological research on inequality with interdisciplinary work on flourishing. Sociology of education documents how schools reproduce stratification but often overlooks what schools positively cultivate, while flourishing research highlights engagement, purpose, and belonging but underplays structural and historical constraints. The paper has two parts. First, what sociology can learn from flourishing: (1) New Outcomes and Constructs, (2) Present-Tense Well-Being, (3) Capability and Preconditions for Flourishing, and (4) Agency Beyond Resistance. Second, what flourishing can learn from sociology: (5) Expanding Conceptions of Inequality, (6) Critical Political Economy in Schools, (7) Inequality in Preconditions and Capabilities, and (8) The Historical Dimension of Flourishing. Together, these sections develop a critical-positive dialectic linking inequality and flourishing.

Author

• David K. Diehl, Vanderbilt University