Analyzing 10 books on sociology of education published in the U.S. and the U.K. and 579
articles published in the American journal, the Sociology of Education(SOE) and the British journal,
British Journal of Sociology of Education(BJSE) between 2000 and 2010, I examined research trends
in the American and British sociology of education since the beginning of the 21st century. From
the analysis of the books on the sociology of education, I found the trend of expansions of
theoretical perspectives, studies on ‘education and globalization,’ sociological studies on ‘higher
education’ and the scope of ‘social systems and environments affecting the educational system.’ As
for SOE and BJSE, the proportion of articles related to globalization was still small(4.3%), but
increased greatly from the first half of the period for the present study(2000-05)(1.7%) to the second
half(2006-10)(7.1%). Studies on preschool education and adult nonformal lifelong learning were few
and the majority of studies dealt with formal schooling at the target of school-age children and
youths. The researches on ‘individual socioeconomic achievement and social mobility’ which had been
one of the major research subjects of the sociology of education took up only a small proportion of
the articles(3.1%) and the proportion decreased from the first half(3.7%) to the second half(2.5%) of
the period for the present study. In addition, the two journals included a large proportion of studies
on other countries than their own country, that is, the U.S. or the U.K. and these studies increased
from the first half(21%) to the second half(27.3%) of the period for the present study, which
indicates the globalization of researches on the sociology of education. While researches of SOE
tended to make too much of certain subjects, BJSE dealt with a variety of research subjects in a
more balanced way. Besides, the majority of the former(81.4%) depended on the quantitative research
methods, whereas the majority of the latter relied on the qualitative research methods(56.1%) and the
analysis of literature(32.8%). This imbalance of research methods has been strengthened in more
recent years.