Bourdieu and Teacher Education

Introduction
Pierre Bourdieu’s theory regarding education is closely connected to class inequalities in
educational attainment and to issues of class reproduction in capitalist society. For Bourdieu
however, social position is not only affected by economic forms of capital:

It is in fact impossible to account for the structure and functioning of the social world
unless one reintroduces capital in all its forms and not solely in the one form recognised
by economic theory (Bourdieu, 1986: 241).

Thus, Bourdieu introduces the argument that social position is determined also by other forms
of capital, such as social and cultural capital. Taking each different form of capital, identified
by Bourdieu in relation to capital assets an individual may hold, these might be understood as:

Economic capital: the control of economic resources, such as money, assets and property
Social Capital: the actual and potential resources linked to a person’s network of relationships,
mutual acquaintances and their personal recognition by others
Cultural capital: A person's accumulated education, knowledge, skills and symbolic goods that
provide advantages in achieving a higher social-status and power in stratified society.

Whilst economic capital may arrive to an individual through inheritance, family wealth or
economic activity for financial gain, social capital develops through social networks, family
and community connections. Examples of cultural capital could involve familiarity with
academic language, policy, or understandings of dominant cultures in society. These are likely
to vary, according to a person’s social class. Therefore, unlike property, cultural capital is not
transmissible, because it is acquired through privilege, and over time. Cultural capital itself can
be further broken down into:

Embodied cultural capital: comprises the knowledge that is acquired over time through
socialisation into culture and tradition. It contributes to a person’s character and way of
thinking which, in turn, becomes more receptive to similar cultural influences and advantage.
Linguistic cultural capital: comprises a person’s mastery of language and its relations, their
communication and self-presentation, acquired through embodied forms of cultural capital.
Objectified cultural capital: comprises a person's property, such as forms of art, books,
scientific instruments, or attire. These objects for economic profit also symbolically convey
possession of cultural capital, via ownership and understanding of their cultural meaning.
Institutionalised cultural capital: refers to the way in which an institution, e.g. educational,
governmental or business, formally recognises a person's cultural capital, in terms of their
academic credentials or professional qualifications. Institutionalised cultural capital can be
transferred into the labour market, measured and compared against the cultural capital of
others, which facilitates its conversion into economic capital.

In Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (1990), Pierre Bourdieu, together with
Jean-Claude Passeron, discusses cultural capital to help to explain the differences amongst the
levels of performance and academic achievement of children within educational systems. The
term symbolic violence is used to describe a type of non-physical violence that might be
observed in the power differentials between social groups as cultural capital plays out in
practice. A form of unconscious agreement between parties takes place, whereby there is an
imposition of the norms of the group possessing greater social power on those of the
subordinate group. Symbolic violence manifests too across nationalities, genders, sexual
orientation, or ethnicity. Therefore, such power differentials manifest too, in education.

A key problem identified by Bourdieu, which has relevance for teacher education, is
that educational systems and institutions assume all students possess similar cultural capital.

By doing away with giving explicitly to everyone what it implicitly demands of

everyone, the education system demands of everyone alike that they have what it does
not give. This consists mainly of linguistic and cultural competence and that
relationship of familiarity with culture which can only be produced by family
upbringing when it transmits the dominant culture. (Bourdieu, 1977:494)

Assumptions in educational policy and practice that everyone is alike in their possession of
cultural capital makes it hard for students from a lower class to succeed. Therefore, for
Bourdieu, the educational system will socially reproduce the dominant culture and maintain
class inequalities.
However, the education of teachers requires them to work to reduce educational
attainment gaps, which places a lot of expectation on teachers, when educational disadvantage
is also linked to larger systemic problems in society. Indeed, many social issues
are ‘educationalised’ and are portrayed in educational policy as problems to be solved by
schools and universities (Peters, Jandrić and Hayes, 2018), and therefore by those who teach:

Those of us working in the areas of widening participation know what a struggle it is

to foster inclusivity, in a society where many other factors prevent social mobility
(Peters, Jandrić and Hayes, 2018: 248)

In this entry, some key concepts introduced by Bourdieu are examined in relation to
teacher education. These include social and cultural capital, but also habitus and field. These
theories are considered together firstly, with regard to the extent to which they hold relevance
for teachers who are seeking to understand young people’s relations within the educational
system. Secondly, expectations that are placed upon teachers in their own training, are
discussed in relation to the concepts from Bourdieu and an educationalisation of social issues,
including the notion that improving teaching quality alone, will directly raise student
attainment. Finally, given the problem raised by Bourdieu, whereby educational systems
socially reproduce the dominant culture to maintain class inequalities, a need for teacher
education to raise critical awareness of the role of educational policy discourse in maintaining
inequality, is raised. Understandings of cultural capital, educationalisation and presuppositions
in educational policy helps teachers to better appreciate both the limits and the possibilities that
surround their established teaching dispositions, institutional context and their educational
classroom practices.

Bourdieu and educational inequalities

Bourdieu’s broad theories of social and cultural capital, habitus and field offer insights for
teachers to conceptualise social differences amongst those that they teach, and related power
relations that arise, in the teaching environment. However, for teachers to contribute to
meaningful social change, they also need to confront the fundamental presuppositions that
underpin how education is organised. This means recognising where links with the capitalist
economy rationally structure educational priorities that maintain inequalities and policy
narratives that are then communicated to help to achieve and support these (Hayes, 2019).
Different forms of capital and fundamental presuppositions
A capitalist economy depends on human capital, skills, competition and flexible labour. The
education system consisting of schools, further and higher education, has come to be positioned
as a means to deliver the skilled labour needed by a global economy (Peters, Jandrić and Hayes,
2018). An emphasis in educational policy on teaching excellence connected to student
achievement requires teaching staff to address social disadvantage and inequity through better
teaching. However, this can also mean that other ways of thinking about social inequality may
not be explored.
Bourdieu argued that education is strongly organised around “fundamental
presuppositions” (Bourdieu 1990: 68). As such, educational institutions can act as sites for
distribution of cultural capital, whereby those entering with enough cultural capital, that aligns
well with the system they are entering, will be best positioned to increase their cultural capital
further. Cultural capital then becomes an important means to determine what an individual
might achieve. It enables the privileged to acquire the education they need to stay privileged
and education itself then acts as a mechanism through which this wealth and power is socially
reproduced. For the less privileged, fundamental presuppositions, such as an assumption in
educational policy discourse that “the student experience” will be the same for everyone
(Hayes, 2019), can hamper attempts to reduce attainment gaps through teaching quality alone.
Furthermore, not all cultural capital is acquired in schools or universities. Cultural
capital may be transmitted through any of three modes of “pedagogic action”. These are: diffuse
education, which occurs informally through social interactions, family education, which is
viewed as the greatest source of any individual's cultural capital and institutionalised
education, e.g. school (Bourdieu, 1986). However cultural capital is transmitted, people then
behave in accordance with this positioning. Their personal background, or habitus, will mean
they acquire certain embodied, or acquired dispositions, prior to entering education, which may
be reinforced or disrupted through institutionalised education.

Habitus
Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is concerned with how a person’s cultural and family
background feeds into their acquired characteristics and the way in which they view the world.
Bourdieu defines habitus as: “a set of acquired characteristics which are the product of social
conditioning…totally or partially common to people of similar social conditioning” (Bourdieu,
2005: 45). This could mean, for example, that in a family where there is a tradition of leaving
school after secondary education, individuals may have a disposition that predisposes them to
leave school rather than progress onto higher education. Or it may concern different
characteristics that people are defined by, such as their accent, appearance, ethnicity, status or
possessions.
Habitus is an ambiguous term which has been widely adopted by educational
researchers because it can help to illuminate the way in which different types of capital
intersect, to shape the pathways and experiences, of students and teachers. In teacher education,
choices need to be made as to whether a pedagogical approach is adopted that seeks to
compensate for where there may be elements lacking in an individual’s habitus. Or
alternatively, a teacher might avoid such a deficit model, and instead challenge the
“fundamental presuppositions” (Bourdieu 1990: 68) that determine what constitutes success in
education, thus seeking a more emancipatory approach.

Field
In Bourdieu’s theory, field refers to the relations between people that are mediated by different
forms of capital, to develop their identity, aspirations and skills. For example, their exposure
to social capital, in the form of family connections to support a year abroad, the influence of a
multicultural upbringing where communication takes place in more than one language, or their
access to an independent means of transport to their place of study. This means that such capital
becomes recognised in a field, or what Bourdieu describes as: “the transfiguration of a power
relation into a sense relation” (Bourdieu 1986, 242).
Therefore, field is a concept that might determine how much students can feel a sense
of belonging or autonomy in an educational environment, in relation to what they experience
around them. Alternatively, they may feel marginalised in a field due to their personal position,
preferences or lack of independent means. Moving in a field to which a student is not
accustomed may also lead to difficulties in interpreting the forms of capital being presented.
Field is a means to look at the conversion of different forms of capital too. Even if
students accrue cultural capital through education, they may still struggle to convert cultural
capital into other forms of capital. As such, if two people study at the same institution they may
still recover different “rates of profit” from their “scholastic investment” (Bourdieu, 1986:
243).

Critiques of Bourdieu’s educational theory

In broad terms, the theory of Bourdieu has been critiqued as ambitious and empirically
unhelpful, due to ambiguities around concepts like habitus. Cultural capital though, despite
also being ill-defined and for some contradictory, has also been influential amongst many
educational researchers, generating a great deal of theoretical and empirical literature.
Bourdieu has provided some valuable insights into indiscriminate practices in
education, but he does not distinguish clearly between exactly which conditions are likely to
prejudice lower-class students and where lower-class students may be lacking the resources to
meet particular educational conditions in a given field. More generally, if cultural capital, as
defined in the different ways Bourdieu suggests, has some impact on educational attainment,
it still does not explain all of the social class effects that are attributable to many different
factors in capitalist systems. For the success of students in the labour market education is an
important mechanism, but the many dimensions of social class cannot be underestimated.
Therefore, this leaves the question of the extent to which education actually leads to social
mobility, or simply reinforces the differentials discussed, through social reproduction.

Expectations on teacher education to address social issues

Bourdieu's theory must be seen in the context of debates about class inequalities, educational
attainment and other broader questions of social reproduction of class inequality in advanced
capitalist societies. The theory of cultural reproduction refers to links between original class
membership and the class membership that individuals attain, mediated by the education
system. For Bourdieu, the education systems within capitalist societies function to legitimate
class inequalities. Success in the education system is then facilitated (or not) by a person’s
possession (or lack) of cultural capital and habitus that aligns well with that system. Therefore,
for Bourdieu, education can be said to reproduce and legitimate social inequalities, because
higher-class individuals appear to merit their privileged place in the social structure.
The issues of class inequalities in relation to educational attainment identified through
Bourdieu’s theories apply to teachers’ lives as well as to the lives of their students. The habitus
of a teacher reflects their background, values and ability to develop their identity and to
capitalise on their study at university to educate and encourage others. In a policy discourse
where teaching quality alone is expected to raise student attainment, teachers may be depicted
as agents of change. Yet due to regulatory institutional contexts and exclusive policy discourse,
they may hold little actual autonomy. Teachers are required through policy to develop and
adopt “best practices” (Hayes, 2019) to address any number of social factors that have been
“educationalised” into the teaching environment (Peters, Jandrić and Hayes, 2018).
This discourse supports the notion that improving teaching quality alone, will directly
raise student achievement and social mobility. Yet the expectations on teachers communicated
through educational policy can also leave teachers responsible for many factors that they
cannot easily control, such as a student’s mental health and wellbeing, their travel into their
place of study, or their caring responsibilities at home. Furthermore, when educational policy
documents frequently fail to attribute teaching staff or students with their own “academic
labour” (Hayes, 2019) then this contributes to a lack of recognition and also an erosion of
academic autonomy.

The limits and possibilities of teacher education to effect change

Bourdieu’s theory of practice provides one way of understanding the limits and the possibilities
for teachers to adapt from their established teaching dispositions and educational and classroom
practices. A teacher’s habitus is a “system of [educational] dispositions” (Bourdieu, 2005: 43)
which structures how teachers routinely enact their teaching practices. A teacher’s habitus is
formed over time in response to their cultural capital and to the contexts of the educational
fields they have inhabited.
Whilst a teacher’s habitus comes from their own educational history and predisposes
them to respond to educational systems in certain ways, Bourdieu argues that one’s habitus can
also:

be changed by history, that is by new experiences, education or training… Dispositions

are long-lasting: they tend to perpetuate, to reproduce themselves, but they are not
eternal. They may be changed by historical action orientated by intention and
consciousness and using pedagogic devices. (Bourdieu, 2005: 45)

Thus, teacher education could disrupt and transform the long-lasting disposition of a teacher
and prompt them to develop new pedagogic devices.
Bourdieu also notes that when one’s habitus encounters fields that are different to those
in which they were constructed:

there is a dialectical confrontation between habitus, as structured structure, and

objective structures. In this confrontation, habitus operates as a structuring structure
able to selectively perceive and to transform the objective structure according to its own
structure while, at the same time, being re-structured, transformed in its makeup by the
pressure of the objective structure. (Bourdieu, 2005:46)

This would suggest that, despite an educationalisation of social issues and the objective
structure of educational policy discourse, a dialectical confrontation between these factors and
a teacher’s habitus might take place. This gives rise to hope that habitus can be restructured
through a “process of awareness and of pedagogic effort” (Bourdieu, 2005: 47).
Such awareness would interrogate the educational structures, including policy and
cultural capital, that shape a teacher’s pedagogical habitus through their educational discourses,
beliefs, and assumptions. This could lead to more emancipatory ways of thinking about their
practice and teacher identity, given that identity is closely linked to habitus, as both individual
and social (Bourdieu, 1977). Here the importance of professional contexts where new,
provocative and different ways of thinking can be accommodated have their part to play.
However, if teacher beliefs remain unchallenged, then they may continue to inform an
underlying logic of personal teaching practices that is taken for granted, because of a belief
that this is the only way, rather than one possible way. Teachers can then contemplate what
other possibilities could support socially fair, democratic and emancipatory teaching practices.

References
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Halsey (Eds.), Power and Ideology in Education, (pp.487-511). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory and
Research for the Sociology of Education, (pp.258). New York: Greenwood.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice. London: Polity Press
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. C. (1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture (Vol.
4). Sage.
Bourdieu, P. (2005). Habitus. In J. Hillier & E. Rooksby (Eds.), Habitus: A sense of place (pp.
43–49). Gower Publishing Ltd.
Hayes, S. (2019) The Labour of Words in Higher Education: is it time to reoccupy policy?
Leiden: Brill.
Peters, M. A., Jandrić, P., & Hayes, S. (2018). The curious promise of educationalizing
technological unemployment: What can places of learning really do about the future of
work? Educational Philosophy and Theory, 51(3), 242-254.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2018.1439376.