“Durable but Not Eternal!” Arts-Based Educational Reform and White Teachers’ Changing Habitus

• In Event: Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: Negotiating Culture and Power in Arts Education

Abstract

For equitable reform to occur teachers must understand their own and their students’ habitus. We analyze qualitative data using Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural capital, field, habitus, symbolic violence and misrecognition to explore teachers’ and students’ experiences to determine the extent to which power and privilege are challenged within schools participating in an arts-based reform initiative. We explore ways in which teacher habitus has shifted to recognize, include or become empathetic to student habitus as a result of Project ARTS curricula, co-teaching and professional development. Finding markedly fewer teacher narratives confirming the social reproduction of inequitable power relationships than when the project began, we conclude by discussing the transformation of teacher habitus, student outcomes, and school climate after five years.

Authors

• Susan A. Woollen, Illinois State University

• Stacy Otto, Illinois State University