한국 교육사회학이 정체성을 확립하고 토대를 강화하기 위해서는 주제와 이론의 개발이 절실히 필요하다. 한국 교육사회학계는 기능론과 갈등론을 이론적 준거로 사용해 왔다. 그 결과, 한국의 교육사회학은 토대가 약화되었고 제한된 몇 가지 주제들을 단조롭게 다루게 되었다. 이런 시점에 서 한국 교육사회학의 연구 풍토를 반성하고 토대를 강화하며 주제를 확대하기 위하여 고전 및 현대 사회이론을 재검토하고 영?미 교육사회학의 연구 경향을 분석하였다. 이러한 검토와 분석에 근거하여 한국 교육사회학계에 준거 이론의 다변화와 주제 및 연구방법의 다양화를 제안하였다.
Korean sociologists of education have failed in arousing students' intellectual curiosity and discovering new meaningful research topics. Nowadays many Korean sociologists of education may feel an identity crisis because they enjoyed popularity with their students and fellow scholars in the 1980s. They have not been successful in demonstrating the view that the sociology of education is constructed by various and contrasting theories and diverse research methodologies. I think that the first step to rescue the Korean sociology of education is to critically review both the activities of the Korean sociologists of education and their research papers. They have taught students and conducted research in sociology of education based only on functionalism and conflict theory. They have not seriously discussed even these two theoretical paradigms. Therefore, they have lost many meaningful classical and modern social theories, which can be used as theoretical backgrounds for the sociology of education. Sociology of education has been rapidly developed for the 20th century. We can figure out the development through reviewing three readings which were edited by (1) Halsey, Floud and Anderson(1961), (2) Karabel and Halsey(1977), and (3) Halsey, Lauder, Brown and Wells(1997). Sociologists of education in the U.S. and the U.K. have expanded the scope of theoretical reference and have applied various methodologies in conducting researches. Sociology of Education in America and British Journal of Sociology of Education, both published four times per year, have shown the variety of theory and methodology. And newly published anthologies or readings, such as Hallinan's Handbook of the sociology of education(2000) and Demaine's Sociology of education today(2001), are very useful to catch up with the research trend of active sociologists of education.