EDST1108 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Pierre Bourdieu, Cultural Reproduction, Cultural Capital
9 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
11. 14/05/18 The politics and practices of knowledge
• Culturally responsive teaching
Cultural politics of schooling
• “Education that is multicultural can be delivered to a classroom containing
students from the same culture: the content presented is representative of
various cultural perspectives/ Culturally responsive pedagogy must respond
to the cultures actually present in the classroom” - Richly and someone
Language
• Language patterns and usage are significant
• Eg. “shall we take our seats?” - is this a question or a command? Is it a
legitimate question? Rhetorical - culturally loaded / coded question
• Answer to this question might depend on your cultural background
• Cultural capital - the students who have that capital and understand social
cues from the teacher are often looked upon with more fondness by the
teacher
• The virtual backpack
‘Cultural capital’ and ‘cultural wealth’
• French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
• Material wealth is linked with a favouried and dominant culture, which is
passed on to children
• Schooling becomes a ket context for the conversion of economic power in
transmitting and reproducing cultural and political power
• Cultural reproduction is sustained through schooling privileging curricular,
pedagogic and assessment ‘codes’ and practices
• Addressing inequity in society - address ideas of cultural deficit thinking
• Society constructs those who lack in certain cultural capitals as problems -
need to be ‘fixed’
• A challenge: resisting and interrupting ‘learned powerlessness’
• Don’t know
• Can’t understand
• Too busy
• Not my job / area
Cultural workers
• Schooling is a key location where cultural transmission occurs
• Language is important and powerful - educators as cultural workers
• Production of meanings, identities, and agency
• Opportunities and constraints that come with language
• Border pedagogy
• Shifts the emphasis of the knowledge/power relationship away from
the limited emphasis n the mapping of domination toward the
politically strategic …
The culture of power
• The culture of power is a way of conducting schools in a way that favours
Whites as the dominant racial group, but makes the process and outcomes
appear natural
• Demystify the presence of cultural power, the codes and rules, can be
empowering for students when encountering it - ie. do not shy away from this
• If at school we don’t work with young people in a way that helps them feel as
though they can question ideas, have the capacity to question / change the
world and its dominant practices
Resource pedagogies
• More than building cultural bridges
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
