Bridging Fields of Practice: A Comparative Analysis of Two Secondary Composition Teachers

• In Event: Bridging New Literacy Studies, Classroom Language Ethnography, and Bourdieu’s Social Philosophy

Abstract

The purpose of this paper in the overall symposium is to explore Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of field (Bourdieu, 1984) and how teaching practices are performed in the field of an urban high school. The fields of practice are two English classrooms in the same secondary school in Toronto, Canada with a focus on the practices and habitus of two high school teachers.

Perspectives or Theoretical Framework: The theoretical framework rests on Bourdieu’s notion of field as a space in which agents mediate identity and social and interpersonal positionings (Bourdieu, 1984). Drawing on Bourdieu’s book Distinction, practices are seen as performed in fields and these practices can be diverse, drawing on habitus (Bourdieu, 1984). Fields carry specific ‘laws’ or conventions (Bourdieu, 1984) that frame practice. In this way, practices carry the content of fields. Tensions can, and often do, exist among habitus, practice, and field. In this presentation, I will examine how two high school teachers frame their practice within common fields and how this framing impacts students’ notions of writing, composition and the creative process.

Methods, Techniques, or Modes of Inquiry: The research is ethnographic in nature (Green & Bloome, 1997) in that context, social practices, and researcher reflexivity play a key role in analyzing data. To provide a detailed picture of two classrooms, I will consider pre- and post- interview data, classroom observational fieldwork, and artifactual data (Pahl, K And Rowsell, J 2010). This corpus of data will be collected and analyzed in line with Wolcott’s framework for data collection (Wolcott, 1994).

Data, Objects, Materials: Data comprises: interview transcripts; researcher fieldnotes; and, artifactual data (e.g., lesson plans, assignments, photographs, and some video footage).

Results and/or Substantiated Conclusions: Detailed observations of two versions of writing composition and creative expression in grade eleven English class throw into relief contrasts in practice within common fields of setting, students, community, etc. Such research spotlights not only how two teachers interpret student needs and interests in common fields, but also how both teachers sediment their identities (Rowsell & Pahl, 2007) into their teaching practice.

Scholarly Significance: With research that draws on Bourdieu to extrapolate ethnographic data (Grenfell et al, 2011), the reported research illustrates a complementarity of ethnographic methods with Bourdieusian sociology. Taking a New Literacy Studies approach to literacy as a social practice and combining it with Bourdieusian sociology has allowed me to excavate two quite different versions of English teaching in common fields of practice – permitting a deeper, more ideological interpretation of teaching practice.

Author

• Jennifer Rowsell, Brock University