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.