Session Information
Session 10, Paradoxes in Education: Bourdieu, Foucault, Luhmann
Papers
Time:
2005-09-10
09:00-10:30
Room:
ENG
Chair:
Zdenko Kodelja
Contribution
In January 2002, the French social philosopher died, thus bringing to an end an extraordinary academic trajectory. Born in a rural village in the South-west corner of France, Bourdieu rose to become its leading intellectual in the 1990s, rivaling the status of Sartre, Derrida, Foucault and de Beauvoir. Bourdieu's output was enormous covering a vast range of theoretical and empirical studies. However, it is probably for his work on education that he gained his largest audience. His impact in education began in the 1960s and 1970s with a new focus on pedagogical knowledge and classroom discourse. This work itself was highly philosophical in the way it dealt with educational discourses. The approach was given sustained treatment in 'Outline of a Theory of Practice' (1977/72) in which he presented the theory of knowledge behind his 'thinking tools': Habitus, Field, etc. His method was later further developed and applied to a series of empirical investigations in the 1980s and 90s. His most sustained discussion of the philosophical field appeared in 'Pascalian Meditations' (1997/2000). In this book, he addresses 'scholastic reason' and the implied bias he saw in it head on. The book is also written from a Pascalian perspective distinguishing between philosophers and the rest of the population.The proposed paper will give a brief background to Bourdieu's work and argue that it is of pressing relevance to philosophers of education. Reference will be made to both structuralism and phenomenology which heavily shaped Bourdieu's theories and his initial studies in education. It will set out the main tenets of his epistemology and the concepts it used. It will then consider his critique of philosophy and the philosophical field, and the problems he saw in 'scholastic reason'. The paper will address the principal aspects to Bourdieu's philosophical approach and relate it to such issues as objectivity, reflexivity, warranty, truth, and practical reason. The paper will consider these in the light of a selection of issues for philosophers of educations, such as authority, power, and educational knowledge. Some reference will be made to the relationship between educational knowledge and action and the implications this has for teachers, pupils and policy makers. It will set this discussion within a historical context of ongoing concerns over theory and practice. It will reflect on the methodological implications for educational research and its relationship with policy. The paper is offered as a series of 'meditations' as a way of assessing the relevance of Bourdieu's theoretical approach for educationalists and philosophers of education.
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