From Habitus Clivé to Hybridization: How Taiwanese Teachers Blend Exam Inertia with Holistic Demands

• In Event: 30609 - Cultural Studies

Abstract

Scholars have long used the concept of habitus to explain how individuals’ dispositions transform as they move across social spheres. However, little research has explored the inertia of habitus—how old dispositions persist and how new elements are selectively incorporated—for individuals under institutional changes. This study draws on a year of ethnographic fieldwork to examine how selective high school teachers in Taiwan respond to admission reforms shifting from standardized testing to holistic screening. I find that while teachers add new content such as essay writing and interviews to reflect holistic demands, they structure these elements as another test—guiding students to memorize rehearsed answers, and correcting students’ essays to imitate exemplar essays, which they view as ‘standardized answers.’ This hybridity reveals how conflicting logics—exam-based and holistic—are not simply replaced but co-exist in blended practices by mixing the old style and new content. By showing this hybridity of habitus, this study advances habitus theory by highlighting how inertia and adaptation operate simultaneously under field change.

Keyword: habitus, inertia, college admissions, field change

Author

• Ruo-Fan Liu, Stanford University