e) Barcelona durante la II República y la Guerra Civil

Bourdieu examines how cultural norms and power relations are reproduced through the institution of schooling. He outlines two techniques that are especially productive to the aims of this dissertation in understanding the themes of discourse, control and access in assessment in primary education: habitus and capital.

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1.2.2.1 Habitus

Pierre Bourdieu argues that the structures of an environment produce habitus - “systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures...objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attain them” (1977, p.72, italics in original). Habitus represents the unspoken or unexamined influences in an educational policy (Rawolle and Lingard, 2008). Bourdieu argues that, not only should one examine what is in a policy, but also examine what is omitted. For Bourdieu, habitus creates an environment where certain opinions or thoughts are valued more than others and become the dominant discourse. This leads to a situation where policy makers may not even know that they are reproducing these dominant ideas as Bourdieu argues that habitus is the source of a “series of moves which are objectively organised as strategies without being the product of a genuine strategic intention” (1977, p.73). This is an important technique in analysing the content of the literacy and numeracy strategy in Chapter 6. Furthermore, the notion of habitus limits the possibilities of policy making as it narrows the potential content or aims that could be included, and establishes ‘a right way’ of development and implementation. Bourdieu avers that “The homogeneity of habitus is what...causes practices and works to be immediately intelligible and foreseeable, and hence taken for granted” (1977, p.80). This is similar and complimentary to Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge and theory of governmentality outlined previously.

Bourdieu claims that habitus is reproduced and reinforced through doxa, which creates the impression that the natural and social world appear self-evident. Bourdieu states that “Every established order tends to produce the naturalisation of

14 its own arbitrariness” (p.164). As the social world appears self evident, policy makers are not inclined to question it. Not only that, there are assumptions made in policy construction that are reified, or believed to be the natural order of things. Bourdieu argues that, for those with political power, “what is essential goes without

saying because it comes without saying” (1977, p.167). In this way, ideas and power

relations are legitimised since the very question of legitimacy is not asked. Bourdieu calls globalisation the new neoliberal doxa. He states that “globalisation is not a mechanical effect of the laws of technology or the economy but the product of a policy implemented by a set of agents and institutions, and the results of the application of rules deliberately created for specific ends, namely trade liberalisation” (2003, p.84). Bourdieu’s ideas of habitus and doxa are tools to explore the construction, content and implementation of Literacy and numeracy for

learning and life. They can highlight the discourse surrounding the policy during its

development (including the notion of globalisation) and also outline the language employed to promote the policy among teachers and the wider public. These tools are also useful in investigating power relations within the document and outline whose access is assisted or compromised (policy makers, teachers, pupils) through the language and concepts that are employed within it (Chapters 6 and 7).

1.2.2.2 Capital

Bourdieu theorises that the interplay of these power relations manifests itself in different layers of capital (economic capital, social capital, cultural capital, symbolic capital), which are possessed by each citizen. He tells of how a family buys an ox after the harvest which appears absurd, only to sell it before autumn.

15 Bourdieu explains how this is a way of making it known that the crop has been plentiful – the ox acts as an “addition to the family’s symbolic capital in the late- summer period in which marriages are negotiated” (p.181). Bourdieu asserts that in today’s society domination is no longer exhibited in a personal manner. Whereas Foucault argues that domination is now exhibited through the internalisation of power relations through a series of disciplinary techniques, Bourdieu offers the theory that it is entailed in the possession of economic or cultural capital. He states that relations of domination are made, unmade and remade in and by the interactions between persons, and through social formations, such as schooling, which are mediated by institutional mechanisms, such as the distribution of titles (e.g. academic degrees).

Bourdieu states that “academic qualifications are to cultural capital what money is to economic capital” (1977, p.187). He argues that the unequal distribution of cultural capital makes people think that they deserve to be in the position in which they find themselves: “The educational diploma is not merely a mark of academic distinction; it is perceived as a warrant of natural intelligence, of giftedness” (2003, p.33). This leads to a racism of intelligence, where the perception is proffered that today’s poor are poor because they are intellectually incapable. The examination impacts on a person’s self image and, indeed, can create a person’s identity as a learner. This is an essential insight for my doctoral study. This dissertation aims to examine in an original manner, pupils’ perspectives on assessment in Irish primary education. It explores the issue that Bourdieu theorises regarding how pupils develop their perceptions of intelligence and the role of examinations and teacher feedback in this process (Chapter 9). Bourdieu argues, in any analysis of assessment or examination in education, it is necessary to break with the “illusion of the

16 neutrality and independence of the school system with respect to the structure of class relations” (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977, p.141). He believes that examination provides one of the most efficacious tools for inculcating the dominant culture and the value of that culture. Bourdieu asserts that those from working class backgrounds ‘eliminate themselves’ from examination. He summarises this argument by stating that

“When one knows how much examiners’ judgements owe to implicit norms which retranslate and specify the values of the dominant classes in terms of the logic proper to the education system, it is clear that candidates are handicapped in proportion to the distance between these values and those of their class origin” (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977, p.162).

This insight is important to dissecting the themes of discourse, control and access in assessment in primary education. Bourdieu’s argument implies that it is essential to explore the philosophical position held by the people who administer the tests, i.e. teachers, which this dissertation examines in Chapter 8. It is also vital to explore the epistemological foundation of educational policy regarding assessment and to examine the perspectives of those involved in its development (politicians, policy makers, unions), which occurs in Chapters 6 and 7. This notion is also similar to Foucault’s theory on the normalisation of people through comparisons to normative values in the process of the examination. Bourdieu argues that “any analysis of ideologies...which fails to include an analysis of the corresponding institutional mechanisms is liable to be no more than a contribution to the efficacy of those ideologies” (1977, p.188).

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