a participant research for learning methodology on education doctorial training programmes

RESEARCH AND THEORY

A participative research forlearning methodology on

education doctoral trainingprogrammes

Paul Garland and Irene GarlandDepartment of Teacher Education, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to outline a participative approach to researching education doctoralstudents’ trajectories that functions both as a form of training in research methodology and as a meansof reflection on the doctoral trajectory and what doctoral students have brought to the doctoral processthrough their experience.

Design/methodology/approach – Ten participants formed dyads and acted as both researchersand subjects of research, using narrative accounts and interviews. The collaborative approach aimedto allow “hands-on” experience of the selected methods, as well as full engagement in negotiating eachstage of the project.

Findings – Project group meetings and the data generated by participants provided a rich source oflearning about methodological issues in education research, in addition to the personal understandingsemerging from such a project.

Originality/value – This project reports an approach to “hands-on” learning of methodological andethical issues within doctoral development programmes that could be adapted for use on similarprogrammes. It suggests an alternative to the more common forms of doctoral training (such asexposition, discussion, reading, or simulation) that is of real value to doctoral students in that itenables deep reflection on the journeys that have brought students to doctoral study, whilst at thesame time providing a rich resource for methodological learning.

KeywordsDoctoral training, Doctoral trajectories, Methodology, Participative research, Research work,Professional education

Paper type Research paper

Introduction and background to the studyThis paper outlines a methodology that we have developed as part of a wider researchinterest in the engagement of educational practitioners (mainly teachers in highereducation, schools and colleges) in doctoral level study. This methodology both enablesresearch on an agreed topic – in this case: What brought us to undertake doctoralstudies? – and “hands-on” learning about research methodology. Regarding the widerresearch interest, the general question we wanted to address was: Why do someeducational practitioners engage in doctoral studies, knowing that currently themajority do not? Part of the means of answering such a question involves, inter alia,looking at structural aspects of the education field in England (and other countries), theformation of teachers and expectations regarding the academic levels of practitioners,

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Education ondoctoral training

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Received 7 March 2012Revised 27 April 2012

Accepted 14 May 2012

International Journal for ResearcherDevelopment

Vol. 3 No. 1, 2012pp. 7-25

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited2048-8696

DOI 10.1108/17597511211278625

conditions influencing the importance of having higher level qualifications forteachers, and many other contextual factors. Another potential direction for suchresearch is to pose the question at the phenomenological levels of individuals andgroups and how they understand and explain their own trajectories. This latterapproach provided the substantive topic for the research project reported here.

We present a brief account of the first year of the project as a means of drawingattention to the pedagogical possibilities of this kind of research project withinresearcher development programmes. It is not our intention to report findings, thoughwe do at times refer to some of these where they are relevant to the purpose of thearticle. Our aim here is to show how doing such research within doctoral programmescan enable learning that is not easily acquired through exposition, reading, simulation,or other common means of training. In keeping with this aim, we have devoted somespace to a narrative of the project meetings, which we hope will provide a moreconcrete evocation of the opportunities for methodological learning than might beachieved through a more analytical register. This narrative is supported by adiscussion of habitus, the organising theoretical construct in the project, its uses inother research, and its potential for developing researcher reflexivity.

Before presenting our account, we briefly outline the context in which this projecthas taken place. The participants – other than ourselves, the two principalinvestigators (PIs) (both already having PhDs) – were all doctoral students on ourprofessional doctorate programme for the Doctorate in Education (EdD). They were allexperienced professionals working in a range of contexts and subject areas, sharing acommon interest in researching education and training practice. The subject areas oftheir pedagogical practice included nursing, further education, youth work, businessstudies, autism, hospitality and air safety. Of the eight doctoral students, six hadrecently begun the doctoral programme when the project started and two were in thethesis phase of the programme, which begins at least two years after registration, aftersuccessful completion of a taught phase that comprises four assessed modules. Theresearch project reported in this article was offered to the doctoral students as anadditional activity which could enhance their understandings of research methodology– an activity which was entirely optional and not connected to any formal programmeassessment. The doctoral students met three times a semester at weekends during thetaught phase of the programme, so, for convenience, project meetings were held at theend of the daily sessions on those weekends; the other participants attended when theywere able to do so.

It should be stressed here that we, the two principal investigators, thoughresponsible for the project proposal – including obtaining ethical approval, agendasetting and data storage – were also full participants in it, as outlined below. Thuswhile we have presented here a partially objectivised account, we have retained someof the more subjectivist or auto-ethnographical flavour of our own experiences in theproject. We do not want to present this article as an account of what was “done” tosome research participants: the effort throughout was to blur boundaries betweenresearcher and participant, “flipping” roles frequently in order to explore thepossibilities for reflexivity through role-taking and to gauge the levels of participationthat might be achieved. Mindful of Bourdieu’s advice (Bourdieu et al., 1999, p. 609) onreducing symbolic violence – “It is the investigator who starts the game and sets upthe rules . . . ” – we tried to ensure that all matters regarding the project were open to

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full discussion and consensual decision-making. The doctoral students were notsimply dealt with as respondents, and therefore the learning about methodology thattook place was extended to a much wider range of methodological concerns than mighthave been the case if we had asked “them” to reflect on being interviewed or to producereflective accounts for “us” to analyse. As the fifth dyad in the project (as we explainbelow), we too had to deal directly with the issues of selectivity, presentation of self,confidentiality, trust and disclosure that all the other participants had to deal with.

Our wider interest has been strongly influenced by Bourdieu’s approach to therelational analysis of field, capitals and habitus; this particular research projectinvolves working with a small group of doctoral students to try to develop acollaborative methodology for exploring habitus. Here we are exploring ways in whichpeople engaged in their own EdD study can participate in researching their own andother participants’ trajectories, with a view to developing their research capabilitiesthrough the practical activity of understanding how each other’s dispositions towardsacademic study have been formed. As such, the study contains elements of life historyand auto-ethnographic approaches, informed by the theoretical tools offered byBourdieu for understanding agency within the dynamics of a field. In our project thekey theoretical tool is the concept of habitus, rather than forms of capital and thestructure of the field, supporting the phenomenological focus. In this respect there wasa strong convergence between our general research interest, the interests of a numberof the participants who were either using or considering using Bourdieu’s work in thetheoretical framing of their doctoral research projects, and the usefulness of Bourdieu’swork as a means of encouraging reflexivity in research. The project experience thusoffers itself as a resource for learning about methodology in education research inseveral ways; specifically:

. participation in the research project (outlined below) is both active and passive(each participant has both researcher and respondent roles) and thus acts as aresource for experiential learning about methodological issues;

. the process of negotiating the phasing and direction of the project engages all inplanning decisions;

. the use of a theoretical framework and the problems of operationalisingtheoretical constructs are also matters for shared discussion anddecision-making.

Project methodOur study involved five pairs or dyads: 3 dyads of doctoral students who had notstarted the thesis stage[1]; 1 dyad in the thesis stage; 1 dyad who already haddoctorates. Within each dyad individuals wrote narrative, autobiographical accountsof their educational trajectories (this constituted phase one of the study) which servedas the stimulus for dyadic interviews (phase two), in which they discussed andexplored with their partners what they had written. The interviews were recorded and,along with all narratives, analyses and notes of meetings, were held on a secure onlinediscussion board. A third stage had been planned for individuals to write lifehistory-type accounts of their project partners’ educational careers. However, thecollaborative nature of the process meant that the approach was subject to change andcurrently (at the time of writing) participants have agreed to revisit and modify their


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phase one accounts as a result of the interviews and discussions in meetings. Theyhave also decided that they now want to reorient their attention away from a lifehistory angle on their trajectory towards doctoral study, to focus on why they havemanaged to continue with it (having seen a number of their peers – though none of theresearch participants – drop out of the programme). Recently we, as two of theparticipants and the PIs (as required by our university for approval of such projects),were asked to write an initial analytical paper following discussions with participants,and this article has developed from that. However, it is envisaged that all participantsshould have the opportunity to contribute to and develop the analysis as the researchprogresses. As the research is on-going, this paper dwells mostly upon methodologicalaspects, although there is some reporting of empirical work to illustrate our points.

The project experience as a resource for methodological learningParticipants were invited using an initial, one-page, outline of the proposed researchentitled: Research Project: what influences decisions to undergo doctoral study? that wasposted on the virtual learning environment (VLE) in February 2010. This outlineincluded a brief discussion of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and its relevance forhelping us develop a reflexive awareness of research as practice. The proposed dyadicapproach was also explained, along with its potential for achieving the “double back”that Bourdieu thought so necessary in order to “objectify more completely one’sobjective and subjective relation to the object [of study]” (1990, p. 1). Our proposedmethodology was presented as an attempt to work through some of the issues raisedby Bourdieu in a practical way by linking his discussions of habitus (Bourdieu, 1990,2001) with strategies that are more closely associated with phenomenological thinking,such as narrative, analytic auto-ethnography, and life history approaches.

Nine people came forward in response to this call, and we met to discuss theproposal in more detail. A detailed proposal was then drawn up and submitted to thefaculty ethics committee for approval. Potential participants were thus involved indesign issues from the outset and they were sent all initial documents and the finalproposal for comment.

Following approval of the proposal (April 2010) a first meeting was arranged forMay 2010, the main purposes of which were to agree the phasing of the project and itsinitial tasks, agree the dyads, and agree protocols for data sharing and storage.Agreement on the dyads was relatively straightforward in that some pairings hadalready been decided by those interested in participating and others were made on thebasis of ease of contact, or prior acquaintance. One person was left without a partnerinitially but this problem was solved by the decision of another to withdraw. Wediscussed the proposed first phase, and the pros and cons of interviewing our partners,after writing our first autobiographical accounts. The thinking was that, havingwritten an autobiographical account, we would be sensitised to some extent to our ownunderstandings of key events, influences and developments in our own lives. Thiswould mean that each of us would have “surfaced” some of our “dispositional factors”,making them more amenable to conscious scrutiny and to their existence as possiblepersonal “agenda items” influencing our approach to the interviews.

This is a complex issue that was discussed at some length at the time and hassubsequently been identified as an area for further exploration, especially aroundquestions of presentation of self (Goffman, 1959) and the relation between performance

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of one’s “personal front” and sincerity or “truthfulness” in accounts of the self. As forinterviewing, we decided to leave it to individuals to decide just how they shouldconduct their interviews – partly to avoid too much “clutter” in the early stages of theproject and partly because during their programmes individuals would be receiving, orhad already received, specific training in interviewing. Moreover, we did not provideguidance on interviewing because we did not want to prescribe approaches, assumingthat dyads would develop their own styles by “negotiation-through-interaction”, or byexplicitly agreeing how they would conduct their interviews. Although this might beseen as a dangerous assumption, given the group (all experienced educationalpractitioners) and the already established rapport between individuals in their dyads,we did not think it likely that there would be any serious communication breakdowns.What happened in the interviews and the forms they took could then be discussed atsubsequent meetings, or subjected to analysis. Indeed, it was striking when conductinga third party analysis of some of the interviews, to see how their (the interviews’)direction and flow revealed as much about interviewers’ assumptions, values andpriorities as they did about the interviewees. This was particularly highlighted whereinterviewers posed follow-up questions that carried certain assumptions about theways in which their partners must have experienced particular events.

We agreed that the overall methodological approach was open and emergent, andwe intended to keep decisions on method (re)negotiable throughout the project.However, regarding security of data there was firmer direction from us as the PIs: alldocuments and audio-files would be lodged with us and these would be held in a securearea of the VLE accessible only to project participants. At this stage it was clear thatissues relating to participants’ dual roles of both researchers and researched neededrevisiting, as did issues relating to our roles as the PIs and as “meta-analysts” inaddition to our other roles. The feeling of the group was that once we had somematerial (“data”) these questions would become more concrete.

The discussions in this first meeting illustrate a number of issues in developing aparticipative research project – issues that were directly experienced by participants.Not the least of these are issues of trust and informed consent. Here, it would seem, thefocus of the trust issues was both formal (relating to data storage and security) andsomething far less tangible: the question of trust in undertaking an open-ended anduncertain project. As for the latter, the fact that most of the participants had knowneach other and the PIs for no less than 7 months through the doctoral trainingprogramme (and a few had known us and each other for much longer) helped. Inaddition, those who had agreed to participate were clearly interested in the approachand could see potential benefits for their own development, including theirunderstanding of Bourdieuian concepts. We consider it an asset that all theparticipants were experienced educational professionals; we could assume that theywould feel relatively confident of their capacity to deal with open-ended and contingentsituations.

Clearly, using such an approach with less professionally experienced doctoralstudents may require a different degree of flexibility in certain matters, dependentupon the profile of the group. The flexibility exercised here in the direction of theproject was governed by a concern to maximise the methodological learning potentialwithin the group, whilst enabling the project’s continuation. The agreed actions for thisfirst meeting were that each individual would write an initial autobiographical account


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of how s/he had come to do doctoral studies; length, format, historical “reach” were leftentirely for each person to determine. Following this, dyads would arrange to intervieweach other before the next project group meeting and record interviews on digital audiofiles. This may mean learning new skills and possibly making a purchase, both ofwhich were considered worthwhile because they were likely to be useful for otheractivities. Some reading from Bourdieu (Chapter 3 [on habitus] from The Logic ofPractice) was also distributed, along with – later – a range of materials explaining keyconcepts used by Bourdieu, and put together by one of the doctoral students with aspecial interest in Bourdieu.

The next meeting, in June 2010, was an impromptu meeting asked for by those ofthe project group (6 out of the 10) who were present at the EdD weekend. Here, thosewho had already written their first autobiographical accounts discussed theirconsciousness of self-revelation when writing these accounts. The question of sharingdata outside of the dyad was raised and it was agreed to reserve the right until after theinterviews, when participants would have seen what had come out of this phase of theresearch. A question was also raised regarding what had been omitted from theautobiographical accounts (out of consideration of issues of disclosure). One responseto this was the suggestion that a second phase could enable us to revisit interviews andautobiographies and fill in the “gaps”. Another suggestion was that participants couldidentify themes – for example, educational experience, family and so on – but it waspointed out that this would mean we would not get to see “raw” data other than thosethat we were privy to within our dyads. These questions and suggestions illustrate anumber of the concerns that participants had about self-disclosure and trust, but theywere also linked to methodological issues relating to what inscriptions should be thefocus of analysis: coded segments, audio-files, transcripts, and/or thematisedcommentaries. This was a theme which continued throughout the doctoral trainingsessions that were running while this project continued; it led to debates about whetherthe audio-file or the transcript should be the main focus of analysis, and the extent towhich researchers remove themselves from the “raw” data and work with refinedsegments such as codes, often using qualitative analysis software. The practicalquestion of who analyses what (and whom) was approaching the heart of some of thedeep methodological questions in qualitative research. Again, participants in theproject were able to think through these issues whilst engaged in a concrete researchactivity, rather than to encounter these questions as abstract, theoretical scenarios.

As for following the agreed procedure, it was clear already that not only had peoplewritten very different accounts that were different lengths and had different “startingpoints”, but also that some dyads had exchanged autobiographical accounts beforeinterviewing, giving us an immediate illustration of the messy realities of research andthe tendency for people, in practice, to go their own ways and ignore agreedprocedures: a good example of learning that cannot be had from research methodstextbooks that idealise processes.

From this point on – perhaps because of the pervasive issues of trust and disclosure– the meeting became more intimate. One of us, as the PI present, gave a personalexample of how he had come to discover by chance that identity has a strong fictionalcomponent in relation to his understanding of his own life history. If at least part of ouridentity is based on delusion or ignorance, to what extent might this research processenable us to get rid of such “blank spots”? If there are always elements of delusion and

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ignorance in our self-identities, what is this work for, and how does it relate to issues oftruth and truthfulness? One participant discussed the difference between siblings anddifferential treatment of the younger or older child, raising the issue of personalities andfamily relations that are relevant to this work. What were the individualistic aspects ofit? How could these aspects be explained through the concept of habitus? With thesequestions in mind we recognise the potential in such encounters to extend and developeveryone’s theoretical understandings. Another participant spoke of her struggle overher embodied sense of personal autonomy and the concepts (discourse, structures,agency, social constructionist ideas) being discussed on the EdD programme that weretelling her she is not as free as she thinks. She went on to ask how the dyads had choseneach other. In the case of her own dyad, two nurses – neither of whom had, at the time,known that the other had been a nurse – had chosen each other; had they recognised acommon habitus? There was extensive discussion of anonymity and disclosure.Someone had noticed that a number of us have Roman Catholic backgrounds; were wedrawn to this project for its confessional potential? At this point it was suggested that weshould record subsequent meetings because these were also clearly a rich resource forthinking about our trajectories and also for methodological learning.

We draw on notes from one more meeting to give the reader a concrete indication ofwhat took place in the group meetings and to further illustrate the potential of ourapproach. At the October 2010 meeting it was agreed to put up on the secure space inthe VLE all autobiographical accounts and audio-files of interviews and to write anextension to our autobiographies and/or a reflection on the process so far. Discussionranged over many issues and the following questions were raised: Why were weprepared to get involved in the first place? What would be gained from reflecting on therange of motivations for involvement? Once one is involved in this project is s/hestuck? Despite all the agreement about withdrawal at any time, might we feel obligedto carry on because of a feeling of obligation to our partners? How important is it thatpeople withhold personal information? What is the nature of our accounts andinterviews as “true” or “truthful” records? What do we do about discussions that startup again after the recorder is switched off? What about the openness of choice in theproject; for example, length and starting point of accounts? Does this kind of thingmatter? What do we mean by “consistency” and why do we want it?

Here again we recognise the potential for developing methodological thinking. Aseemingly straightforward “right to withdraw” was experienced in reality ascounterbalanced by feelings of obligation – or possibly even a subtle pressure to “stayin”. The desire for each account to have the same starting point or to cover similarcontent areas can lead to a broader discussion of participants’ underlying assumptionsabout the need for consistency and the levels at which consistency might operate in aresearch project with several participants. The question of how to construe what isgiven or elicited in interviews is, of course, a common discussion point, but, again, theanchoring of this discussion in a concrete experience with which one is personallyinvolved powerfully alters the learning when it is already and immediatelypre-reflectively embodied as experience.

The project was organised theoretically around the question of how we mightunderstand the doctoral journey in terms of changes to the habitus, and experientiallyaround a participative approach. The snippets of vignettes presented above illustratethe generic methodological learning that was made possible through the practice of


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collaboration and the distribution of researcher roles. The next part of this paperexplores the methodological learning that has been enabled through the testing ofextant theoretical constructs. Whilst these two strands – the experientially driven andthe theoretically driven strands – are not separate (the one feeding upon the other asessential aspects of the same context), it is convenient to tease them apart for the sakeof clarity in discussion. The next section therefore shifts our focus onto thedevelopment of the theoretical constructs informing the project.

Theoretic-methodological considerationsIn The Logic of Practice (1990), the habitus is characterised as “a virtue made ofnecessity” (p. 54); an “infinite yet strictly limited generative capacity” (p. 54);“embodied history, internalised as second nature and so forgotten as history” (p. 56)and as a “durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations” (p. 57).This dialectical view of structured and structuring agency – in which past experienceis the basis of current action – suggested an approach through which we could exploreindividual and collective histories, linking these to wider social trends and influencesas well as more intimate spheres of influence such as family.

The habitus, inter-subjectively shared, becomes the basis of a common-sense worldwhere practices are harmonised through the objective conditions of existence which giverise to common dispositions. Individual habitus is seen as a “structural variant . . .expressing the singularity of its position within the class and its trajectory” (Bourdieu,1990, p. 60). Bourdieu sees early experiences as having particular importance in theformation of the habitus, which then becomes a source of resistance to new informationthat might challenge already-accumulated knowledge structures. The concept of habitusallows for a qualified degree of agency that accepts the open-endedness of action butrecognises the constraints upon agency that come from structural determinants in theshape of different forms of capital that position agents within the field. Thus “agentsshape their aspirations according to concrete indices of the accessible and the inaccessible,of what is and is not ‘for us’, a division as fundamental and as fundamentally recognisedas that between the sacred and the profane” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 64).

This explanation of the dynamic between structure and agency is compelling, but itposes many difficulties for operationalising the construct of habitus in educationalresearch. Here we briefly review some other attempts to put the concept of habitus towork in social science research. We do this in order to provide a little more backgroundon the way in which habitus is used in this study, and to give some indication of theways in which doctoral students can be brought to methodology through the work ofothers. Reay (2004) discusses other educational researchers’ attempts to operationaliseBourdieu’s concept of habitus. In discussing Bourdieu’s assertion that the strength ofthe concept of habitus lies in its “empirical relevance”, she suggests that there is an“indeterminacy about the concept that fits well with the complex messiness of the realworld” (p. 438). Part of her argument concerns the way in which Bourdieu viewed hisown theorisations; that is, in terms of wanting people to use them, as he had done, tolook at empirical situations, yet their being not so well defined that researchers areconstantly trying to bend them in order to use them. So in trying to operationalisehabitus we are, according to Bourdieu’s own interpretation, attempting to use theconceptualisations as he suggests they might be used; that is, to “drive” empiricalwork.

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Grenfell (1996) makes a similar point when he cites Bourdieu’s exhortation to “getour hands dirty” (p. 302). In relation to this practical emphasis, Reay suggests that“paradoxically the conceptual looseness of habitus also constitutes a potentialstrength. It makes possible adaptation rather than the more constrictingstraightforward adoption of the concept in empirical work.” (Reay, 1995, cited inReay, 2004, p.441). Thus it is in the “nature” of Bourdieu’s style of writing about theory(based as it is on empirical work, with his own empirical work at the centre) to allowthe researcher space to build on his or her ideas, rather than foreclosing possibilities bytoo rigid a theoretical structure. Concepts such as habitus can be used to build newtheoretical openings, based on (and arising from) the researcher’s new empirical data.From the pedagogical angle, working with a conceptual tool such as habitus allows usto explore the relations between theoretical constructs and empirical work, but, again,our main focus is not on the abstract discussion of “operationalising” constructs but onhow operationalisation can be experienced in practice, by doing the research within thetheoretical framing of the constructs.

Rapoport and Lomsky-Feder (2002) have used life history research in conjunctionwith a Bourdieuian analysis. Although their use of Bourdieu’s work (which is differentfrom our use of it) is central to their analysis, it does not seem to have been the “driver” ofthe methodological approach to their study. In this regard it is similar to Reay’s (2004) –and others’ – use of habitus. Rapoport and Lomsky-Feder use the notion of habitus as a“powerful tool” for the analysis of their informants’ (Russian Jewish university students)concepts of the intelligentsia, but – unlike in our study – this is not the starting point ofthe methodological approach. Our study begins from a methodological consideration; ourintention was to allow an exploration (and analysis) of habitus to frame the centralresearch questions and which indicates potential research methods. Thus, while there aresimilarities between our study and that of Rapoport and Lomsky-Feder (both involve lifehistory work and use habitus as a central axis of analysis) our study is distinct in itsoperationalisation of the term as a central focus.

Grenfell (1996) examines initial teacher education within a Bourdieuian frameworkand illustrates how research methodology may be derived from this. In seeking todevelop a methodology to explore the relationship between field and habitus, he drawson Bourdieu and Wacquant’s (1992) work and suggests a three-stage transition fromanalysis of the habitus to analysis of the field (in his case from case studies of studentsto analysis of the discursive nature of training within the field). There are similaritieshere with our approach to operationalising these concepts – though we note thatGrenfell reverses the sequence advised by Bourdieu (presented in Bourdieu andWacquant, 1992). We too have reversed this same sequence; in our case, involving ourstudents in a field-mapping phase of research would have been impractical andprobably would not have had the same sort of appeal enjoyed by the notion of habitus.

The potential relevance and usefulness of Bourdieu’s work to educational researchhas been questioned (see, for example, Tooley with Darby, 1998). By way of response,Nash (1999) argues that the value of reading Bourdieu’s work lies in its capacity tomake the reader think, and that without “concepts – the tools of thought – we will notmake much progress” (Nash, 1999, p. 185). The role of theorising and theoreticalconstructs is a key component of research training, in which the “oppositions ofobjectivism and subjectivism are transcended” (Nash, 1999, p. 185) and again thisfeature of the construct resonates well with other key issues on doctoral training


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programmes for education researchers – issues such as: subjectivity and objectivity;agency and structure; and the role of subjectivity in generating “objectivised”knowledge.

Dumais (2002) proposes, inter alia, to operationalise the concept of habitus alongsidethat of cultural capital, with gender placed within this theoretical framework. Sheproceeds to examine gender differences (which she argues are less often focussed uponin discussions of habitus), suggesting that “one’s habitus, determined by the availableopportunity structure or field, shapes the type of class-based capital that men andwomen have, resulting in gendered forms of cultural capital . . . Moreover, one’shabitus is also gendered as a result of the possibilities available to each group”(Dumais, 2002, p. 47). It remains to be seen how gender will emerge as a category in ourstudy, which includes four women and six men. We anticipate that gender relationsmay figure quite prominently in some accounts of educational experience, as well as inaccounts of current concerns in professional practice. The use of gender as anorganising construct presents challenges of reification through theory’s infiltratingand shaping our interpretations of social realities, and as such it would make apowerful starting point for a project designed to promote methodological learning.

Habitus is a compelling yet elusive concept. It provides an explanation of how weare structured, yet have agency, through the operation of dispositions to act andschemes of perception and classification. Yet Bourdieu’s explanation of the logic ofpractice relies heavily on the idea of the habitus’s being made up of pre-reflective,embodied dispositions:

. . . systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed tofunction as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organise practicesand representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing aconscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attainthem. Objectively “regulated” and “regular” without being in any way the product ofobedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of theorganising action of a conductor (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 53).

This explanation of the nature and composition of habitus raises two problems inrelation to our project and its purpose of enhancing our understanding of our owneducational trajectories. The first problem relates to the extent to which the habitus canbe recognised in oneself: whether one can research one’s own habitus or whether oneneeds others’ perspectives. Bourdieu is at pains to distance himself from rational actiontheory (e.g. Bourdieu, 2001, 1990), and while he does not dispute actors’ capacity forrational calculation, he emphasises time and again that the logic of practice is fuzzy;actors are predisposed to see certain courses of action as “obvious” and others asimpossible or simply unrecognisable. Therefore it remains unclear to what extentparticipants are able to objectivise their own and each other’s habituses, beyond thatwhich is already understood through reflection on experience, to encompass thetaken-for-granteds and misrecognitions that are the glue of social life and the enginesof practice. Bourdieu emphasises that “in order to free our thinking of the implicit, it isnot sufficient to perform the return of thought onto itself that is commonly associatedwith the idea of reflexivity” (2000, p. 9). That which is taken for granted constituteshistory (both individual and collective histories), and it is from the social history ofeducational institutions “and from the (forgotten or repressed) history of our singularrelationship to these institutions, that we can expect some real revelations about the

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objective and subjective structures (classifications, hierarchies, problematics, etc) thatalways, in spite of ourselves, orient our thought” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 9).Autobiographical and life historical approaches, it would seem, therefore offer someopportunity to gain an objectivising perspective on our habituses.

The second question relates to how to account for changes in the habitus.Specifically, it concerns the reason why some people take what appears an “unlikely”trajectory – when their childhood positions in the space of social relations areconsidered – while others follow a life course that is more predictable. Bourdieudiscusses the feelings of displacement and uneasiness felt by some agents where thespace of positions and the space of dispositions are not closely aligned. This “dialecticof positions and dispositions” is to be found in “positions situated in zones ofuncertainty in social space” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 157). Notwithstanding the uncertaintythat pervades doctoral students’ undertaking journeys whose conclusion remainsunknown, and which are unlikely to be repeated, our initial analysis suggests that themajority – if not all – of our participants have experienced, or continue to experience, alack of homology between positions and dispositions. They are thus well placed toexplore the formation of their own habituses. Indeed, we go further and suggest thatembarking on a new programme of learning of any sort offers an opportunity forpeople to ask themselves: How is it that I have come to this point? What is the nature ofthis new practice that I am learning? What have I brought with me that will help orhinder me in learning the new practice? With education doctoral students, achieving ahigher degree of self-understanding is necessary if they are to reach a betterunderstanding of and control over the relationship between their personal dispositions(beliefs, assumptions, values, and priorities) and their research practices.

Habitus is one of many possible theoretical tools for use in this process ofself-understanding – one which brings with it a number of distinct uses. It is useful indeveloping understandings of practice and, when linked to other key concepts such asfield and capitals, provides a means of securing a theoretical grasp on how we areengaged in both structuring, and being structured by, the education field of practice. Itis also useful in that it provides, we believe, a bridge between pyschological and socialconstructs of identity formation; as one participant implied, we may hold a greaterbelief in our own agency than we should, and the process of re-examining that agencymay help us get a better grasp of – and therefore a better potential control over – what,pre-reflectively, we might be doing in our practices. Understanding our learning andour difficulties in achieving such reflexivity in terms of homology or lack of it betweenposition and disposition links the personal/psychological with theinterpersonal/sociological; it provides us with a framing that is more powerful thanseeing the doctoral journey as the acquisition of personal skill or expertise. In ourexperience, the personal skill development and individual-psychological perspectivesare often already embedded in our students’ dispositions, and it is the sociological andsocial-theoretical perspectives that are less familiar, the latter pair being approached asabstract bodies of knowledge. Thus a sociological construct such as habitus –inspired, as Bourdieu acknowledges, at least partly by Piaget’s constructs ofassimilation and accommodation (Bourdieu, 2000) – is a good bridging point for many.We go so far as to suggest that the constructs of habitus and of position anddisposition are particularly useful as tools for getting at the processes of transition andhabituation in becoming a doctoral student; for example, in helping students gain an


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analytical perspective on their “resistances” to doctoral practices which are unsettling,such as the difficulty of problematising habitualised practices, or of dealing with rivalontological and epistemological positions that challenge taken-for-granted positions.

Empirical work – autobiographies and interviewsTo sum up so far: our project has two key aspects. First, the use of autobiographical andinterview approaches allows participants to reflect deeply on and discuss their educationaland life trajectories. This process is beneficial in helping each of us towards betterself-understanding in relation to our research work, our presuppositions and our values –an essential element of research training in itself (though one which might be overlooked inmore formal approaches to researcher development). Second, the process itself is clearly aform of practical and theoretical research training which has many benefits, not least inproviding a model of how theoretical tools may be operationalised for a specific researchproblem. The project also has another purpose: the exploration of commonalities anddifferences and the picking out of themes that appear to be shared across the narratives: anexploration of the developing researcher habitus. It is not our aim in this article to explorethese in any detail, but some reference to initial findings will help illuminate other ways inwhich the project has shown its potential as a pedagogical device.

Accordingly, we now outline some of the themes emerging from the first two phasesof the project in order to highlight the potential benefits in relation to a researcherdevelopment programme. Questions relating to self and identity, if not originallycentral to the project, have become prominent as the project has developed. Theintensely personal and individual nature of the autobiographies and interviews wasobvious as the data from the first two phases of the project were received: theparticipants had mostly practised high levels of self-disclosure. Although someparticipants organised their narratives and commented in interviews usingBourdieuian concepts, most did not. Instead, they presented themselves in terms ofnarratives with key motifs, such as: the need to strive for excellence; the need toachieve; the desire to prove their capacities to themselves and to others; the knowledgethat others would be proud of them. This raises the issue of the use of the organisingtheoretical constructs – in this case habitus – and their relation to the data beinggenerated by individuals and dyads. Where the constructs are not used, does thisinevitably place some participants in a more passive role as regards the analyticalaspects of the research? By using ordinary language, are they excluding themselvesfrom the objectivating, analytical levels of the research? Is the process of abstractionfrom ordinary commonsense understandings necessary for it to count as research? Orshould different framings – for example, those of identity – be encouraged asalternatives or replacements? Here there is scope to exploit what has actually happenedand to open up discussion on the use of theoretical constructs and the danger of suchconstructs’ being reified and supplanting the “reality” that one wants to speak about.This aspect of theorising is the subject of frequent comment by Bourdieu (e.g. Bourdieu,1990), who is acutely aware of the way in which theoretical constructs, whilstnecessary for grasping practice, simultaneously destroy it:

. . . logical models giving an account of the observed facts . . . become false and dangerous assoon as they are treated as the real principles of practices, which amounts to simultaneouslyoverestimating the logic of practices and losing sight of what constitutes their real principle(Bourdieu, 1990, p. 11).

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An alternative approach to this exploitation of what has already happened is tosupplement the theory of habitus with theories of self and identity to support, revise orextend the Bourdieuian framing of the research. Here, then, is another potential benefitof the open-ended participatory approach; the data generated having a direct influenceon further developments in the project, in this case in terms of theorising in the light ofthe intensely personal and individualised nature of participants’ narratives. Theapproach of starting with one theoretical framework and then, in the light of emergingdata, extending or modifying it, is another benefit of this collaborative, emergentapproach; participants can thus experience at first hand the ambiguous and uncertainways in which research might progress in reality – something that is hard to graspconcretely when one is in an institutional environment that promotes the production ofidealised research designs for the purposes of getting through reviews and upgrades.This is not to suggest that participants did not dwell on experiences that are open to aBourdieuian analysis; certainly, links are made to structuring conditions (especiallysocial class) and structural changes in a field (for example, the moving of nurseeducation into HE in the late 1990s) that are seen as significantly determining featuresof changes in the habitus. These structural influences are presented as contexts orsignificant events, often as prevailing influences to be fought against, or asopportunities to be taken; as such, they form a background to the narratives andcoherence to their “plots”. They are not, however, presented by these participantsthrough the Bourdieuian analytical lens.

Above all, our participants’ narratives in both the autobiographical sketches and theinterviews are more immediately recognisable as narratives about identity. As suchthey display a coherence that one would expect in narrative forms, with stories ofstruggle, resilience and self-actualisation, and with motifs and themes that are tracedback to childhood or other important phases of formative experience. All theautobiographical pieces apart from one (which is written more as notes undersubheadings or themes) show such narrative forms, most often with a chronological,life-story structure and with considerable emphasis on early experiences. And ofcourse it is not difficult to approach such narratives from a Bourdieuian perspective.

In his extensive discussion of the habitus in The Logic of Practice, Bourdieu (1990,pp. 60-61) reflects on the importance of formative experiences:

Early experiences have particular weight because the habitus tends to ensure its ownconstancy and its defence against change through the selection it makes within newinformation by rejecting information capable of calling into question its accumulatedinformation, if exposed to it accidentally or by force, and especially by avoiding exposure tosuch information.

In this passage, Bourdieu stresses the agent’s built-in resistance to change, understoodas “a non-conscious, unwilled avoidance” (Bourdieu, 1990, pp. 60-61). Marcus andNurius (1986, p. 964) claim that in psychology virtually all empirical studies showingthe resistance of self-concept to change dwell on individuals’ resistance to/rejection ofchallenging feedback: “These studies have not explored what actually happens to theindividual’s self-relevant thoughts, feelings and actions in the course of thisresistance”, and they (Marcus and Nurius) aim to do this through the application of“possible selves”. They interpret “possible selves” as being derived fromrepresentations of the self in the past and including representations of the self in thefuture: “These possible selves are individualised or personalised, but they are also


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distinctly social” (Marcus and Nurius, 1986, p. 954). This construct provides a usefulbridge between psychological and sociological construals of identity: “the pool ofpossible selves derives from the categories made salient by the individual’s particularsocio-cultural and historical context and from the models, images and symbolsprovided by the media and by the individual’s immediate social experiences” (Marcusand Nurius, 1986, p. 954). Possible selves thus reveal the “inventive and constructivenature of the self but they also reflect the extent to which the self is socially determinedand constrained” (Marcus and Nurius, 1986, p. 955). The self-concept is viewed as asystem of affective-cognitive structures or schemas about the self that lends structureand coherence to the individual’s experiences. These self-schemas are constructed fromthe individual’s past experiences and they reflect enduring personal concerns: “inparticular domains, these well-elaborated structures of the self shape the perceiver’sexpectations . . . they determine which stimuli are selected for attention . . . ” (Marcusand Nurius, 1986, p. 957). Defining the working self-concept as “a continually active,shifting array of self-knowledge”, Marcus and Nurius (1986, p. 962) also suggest thatagency could be understood “in terms of the individual’s ability to develop andmaintain distinct possible selves”.

A similar linkage between psychological and sociological constructs is apparent inBourdieu’s work (e.g. Pascalian Meditations), where the direct influence of Piagetianthinking on Bourdieu’s notion of habitus is evident. Here Bourdieu seems to allow forindividual variations, though he does not explain the source of individual differences inthe rigidity or flexibility of habitus, and he appears to rule out the possibility of suddenchanges of habitus – of the kind of “epiphanies” that educationalists are always drawnto as immanent possibilities in learning:

Dispositions are subject to a kind of permanent revision, but one which is never radical,because it works on the basis of the premises established in the previous state. They arecharacterised by a combination of constancy and variation which varies according to theindividual and his degree of flexibility or rigidity. If (to borrow Piaget’s distinction relating tointelligence), accommodation has the upper hand, then one finds rigid, self-enclosed,over-integrated habitus (as in old people); if adaptation predominates, habitus dissolves intothe opportunism of mens momentanea, incapable of encountering the world and of having anintegrated sense of self (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 161).

The notion of an “over-integrated” habitus has particular resonance for our study,insofar as our wider research interest is to explore and explain why some educationalpractitioners decide to pursue doctorates – a course of action which cannot yet be seenas the norm for educationalists – which, arguably, implies a habitus disposed towardsadaptation. If the “established order” of teacher formation in England is one in whichhigher level intellectualised study of education has been subject to being underminedon the basis of its being impractical, irrelevant – and, indeed, by many, as the source ofsome of our problems in education (Bottery and Wright, 2000; McCulloch et al., 2000;McCulloch, 2001; Stevenson et al., 2007) – this partially explains why undertakingdoctoral study in education is rarely seen as a “smart move” for educationalpractitioners. If an untheorised pragmatism is at the core of teachers’ (in England, atleast) values regarding their own pedagogical knowledge base (e.g. Moon, 1998;Korthagen et al., 2001), we may understand this in Bourdieuian terms as doxicsubmission:

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The social world is riddled with calls to order that function as such only for those who arepredisposed to heeding them as they awaken deeply buried corporeal dispositions, outside thechannels of consciousness and calculation. It is this doxic submission of the dominated to thestructures of a social order of which their mental structures are the product . . . (Bourdieu,2001, pp. 54-55).

Yet most of those involved in our project have identified our/themselves as coming frompoor or working class backgrounds, where doxic submission may be characterised bylow aspirations or limited expectations of further or higher education – or at least limitedcultural capital and “know- how” in relation to the nature and degree of parental supportand advice at key points. Given our current roles and positions in the education field,these backgrounds suggest that the habitus of these participants is not over-integratedbut is more pliable and open to revision. Yet this does not explain how anotherparticipant – one from a more privileged social background – should not feel at ease inthe middle class milieu of her childhood, and should still feel so strong a sense of lowintegration of habitus or identity, despite repeated academic success at master’s anddoctoral level. For her, explanations were sought in a complex mix of structuralinfluences (e.g. the decision to leave full-time work while her children were young, andthe subsequent lack of success in regaining full-time work) and early experiences, inwhich an under-integrated habitus/self-concept formed.

For several of us, then, a question of the balance between contingency/serendipityand capacity to deal with those contingencies arises. A clear example of this is theextent to which we were equipped with the “right” capacities – cultural capital forexample – to exploit the opportunities that were “offered” to us. For two of us, passingthe 11 þ examination[2] and consequently being directed to the grammar schoolcombines serendipity and deployment of cultural capital; passing the examination mayhave paralleled a lottery “win”, but the new trajectory enabled by this selection forsecondary school brings new possibilities. For these two, subsequent failure to get intoCambridge University at the interview stage were seen as a function of lack ofappropriate cultural capital. Here, it is as though chance had opened up a course ofevents (i.e. a grammar school education) that led to an area of the educational field(university, but most notably an Oxbridge college) that was mostly closed to peoplefrom working class backgrounds. But the accumulated capital was insufficient toachieve Oxbridge entry, and these participants’ trajectories would have to take othertwists and turns. In contrast, as one might expect, untheorised accounts typically placethe narrator in an active, deliberative frame. Yet other accounts, though stillrecognisably from the independent viewpoint, present participants as less proactive.Here we have an example of the ways in which a theoretical frame can be used to try toexplain trajectories in ways that are not focused on a commonsense idea of anintegrated self, following a clear narrative and with an emphasis on agency.

Methodological learningThe collaborative nature of our project offers opportunities for participants to learnmuch about methodology through practice. That such learning has, indeed, occurred isevidenced at meetings, where much discussion has focused on ethical issues such asdisclosure, confidentiality and trust. As “third parties” in this early analysis, we havebeen struck by the way in which questions posed by interviewers can reveal moreabout the interviewer’s than about the interviewee’s construal of a situation. This


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feature of the interviews suggests another iteration, where we explore the extent towhich we can learn about ourselves from the questions we ask others in this process.The blurring of distinctions between researchers and researched – or, rather, theestablishment of these as dual roles for all – is another source of methodologicallearning (indeed, in one interview it is unclear at times which of the two participants isleading the interview). Of course, the fact that we are all EdD students and tutors is anadvantage in that we can all see good instrumental reasons for participating, but themodel developed does, we suggest, have potential for other subjects, where the“learning about” and “the doing” of the method can be brought together powerfully.Here the means of bringing those two elements together is compelling: exploration ofthe potential of theoretical constructs in a project that is intrinsically interestingbecause of the promise of greater self-knowledge.

It has been suggested that the context of the study – the EdD programme – musthave an influence on this project. All of the participants have come to theirdoctorates/doctoral study through non-traditional routes. They are all experiencededucational practitioners and most have substantial work experience outsideeducation. We assume that it is not only the trajectory towards doctoral study thatis important, but also what happens when one is there on the doctoral programme. Theprogramme is cohort-based with three dyads drawn from the same cohort and onefrom the previous year’s cohort. The sense of travelling together – at least for the twoyears of the “taught” phase of the programme – must enhance the feelings andexpectations of group support and the trust that is necessary for such a project. Theprogramme experience must surely also count: two participants remarked that it wasthe opening up of a theoretical landscape to explore in the taught phase of theprogramme that was a source of inspiration for them.

Concluding remarksAlthough we started from a position of exploring the operationalisation of habitus, ourjourney of “the use of theory in research” has, in fact, led to a wider use of theoreticalframeworks. This has helped to demonstrate, in practice, that to simply apply oroperationalise one area of theory is unlikely to be flexible enough for what is uncoveredduring relatively open-ended research. The model of taking a theory or theorist andlooking at everything found in research that is of relevance to the theory might be veryrestrictive on research aims and design. If researchers are methodologically confidentenough, they can allow their theorisations to arise from different points: from the dataitself outwards, as in grounded theory approaches; from a starting point - as withhabitus and Bourdieu in this study; using a more emergent approach in whichtheoretical anchor points can increase and range across discipline areas, as well asdifferent theorists within a discipline. It is these broader understandings of the role oftheory in research that we see as a great strength of the “methodological pedagogy”approach developed in the project. Without these understandings it is hard for doctoralstudents to come to the more nuanced relations of theory to research practice, and it isall too easy to make nothing more than superficial reference to substantive theory, orperhaps become completely bound to one area of theory, reifying it to the status ofobjective truth in the process.

Bearing the last point in mind as a sobering corrective, the narratives produced sofar remind us that, although the responses of the habitus are not unaccompanied by

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strategic calculation, changed courses of action, such as the decision to undergodoctoral study may appear to have become obvious or necessary, given the individual’strajectory up to the point of that decision. Considering the small number of projectparticipants, it is surprising how much commonality has been found – for example, insocial background and in school experiences. Similarities in participants’ ages and thenature of the EdD may well be factors that help explain those commonalities ofexperience. We are reminded here of Bourdieu’s (1990, p. 60) explanation of theindividual habitus as a “structural variant . . . expressing the singularity of its positionwithin the class and its trajectory”.

The project topic is concerned with understanding our own habituses. It raises thequestion of whether we are able to identify structural determinants of our individualchoices in life, given that the regularities of the social world are those that “. . . tend toappear as necessary, even natural, since they are the basis of the schemes of perceptionand appreciation through which they are apprehended” (Bourdieu, 1990, pp. 53-54).Habitus seems usually to be described by the “other”, who is seen as more able to takean objectivating stance, by virtue of the other’s “distance” from the subject of study.But in this project we have five pairs of agents – whose habituses are both the subjectand the object of the study – engaged in characterising their own and others’habituses. This arrangement, we think, helps us to practise reflexivity, defined as “theinclusion of a theory of intellectual practice as an integral component and necessarycondition of a critical theory of society” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 36). Suchreflexivity demands scrutiny of the social conditions of production of the discourse theacademic is operating within, and this is an aspect we have yet to consider carefully.Bourdieu insists that thought about the social conditions of thought can offer theprospect of a “genuine freedom with respect to those conditions” (2000, p. 118), and it ispossible that this collective attempt at objectification will help us to understand at adeeper and more personal level the importance of scrutinising our roles in research. AsBourdieu observes, “one would be falling into a form of the scholastic illusion of theomnipotence of thought if one were to believe it possible to take an absolute point ofview on one’s own point of view” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 119). On the other hand, “. . .reflective analysis of the tools of analysis is not an epistemological scruple but anindispensable pre-condition of scientific knowledge of the object” (Bourdieu, 2001,p. 87).

No doubt there are other concrete, practical, ways in which doctoral students maylearn about methodology through research experiences. Our project was able to exploitthe powerful concept of habitus as a means of encouraging reflexivity in individuals inrelation to their own life trajectories using a participative approach that allowed muchincidental learning about methodological issues along the way. Running the projectalongside their doctoral programmes meant that participants’ learning from thisproject could be adapted in their own doctoral research. Thus an informal pedagogyran alongside the more typical research training. Whether such an approach couldactually replace some of the “training” on conventional, assessed programmes (such asour EdD programme) is a difficult question; we raise it at this point but do not toattempt to answer it, given the many different forms that education doctorates take.Clearly, informed consent and voluntary participation are difficult to maintainalongside obligatory assessments. However, the project as it has developed so far has


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convinced us of the power of introducing into doctoral programmes participatoryresearch that has the following features:

. it attempts to practise the highest levels of participation and decision-makingpossible;

. participants experience researcher and respondent roles;

. decision-making about the project is shared as far as is possible withininstitutional constraints;

. project leaders should be prepared to do what participants are asked to do;

. in all of the above there is constant consideration of what is to be learnt aboutmethodology from the experience.

Notes

1. 8 of the participants are members of our EdD programme: a doctorate in education with aprofessional practice focus. This programme has a cohort phase of two years, in whichcohort members meet regularly as a group and undergo research “training”. At the end oftwo years, if they have successfully completed the four modules of the cohort phase, theytransfer to the thesis stage, on successful submission of their research proposal. From thenon they work in the same mode as “traditional” PhD students: largely independently, withone or two supervisors to support them.

2. The 11 þ examination was used very widely in England and Wales until the 1970s forselection at the age of 11 to a tripartite secondary education system of grammar, technicaland secondary modern schools (though in reality there were far fewer technical schools thangrammar and secondary modern schools, resulting in what was effectively bi-partite ratherthan a tri-partite provision). The children achieving the highest 11 þ examination markswere offered places at grammar schools; those achieving the lowest marks, secondarymodern schools. Entry to university from secondary modern schools was rare. Where theydid exist, technical schools represented a mid-way option, typically offering – as their nameimplies – a technology-focused education.

References

Bourdieu, P. (1990), The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, Polity, Cambridge.

Bourdieu, P., Accardo, A. and Ferguson, P. (1999), The Weight of the World, Stanford UniversityPress, Stanford, CA.

Bourdieu, P. (2000), Pascalian Meditations, trans. Richard Nice, Polity, Cambridge.

Bourdieu, P. (2001), Practical Reason, Polity, Cambridge.

Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, J.D. (1992), An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Polity, Cambridge.

Bottery, M. and Wright, N. (2000), Teachers and the State: Towards a Directed Profession,Routledge, London.

Dumais, S.A. (2002), “Cultural capital, gender, and school success: the role of habitus”, Sociologyof Education, Vol. 75 No. 1, pp. 44-68.

Goffman, I. (1959), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Penguin, London.

Grenfell, M. (1996), “Bourdieu and initial teacher education: a post-structuralist approach”,British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 287-303.

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Korthagen, F.A.J., Kessels, J., Koster, B., Lagerwerf, B. and Wubbels, T. (2001), Linking Practiceand Theory: The Pedagogy of Realistic Teacher Education, L. Erlbaum Associates,Mahwah, NJ.

McCulloch, G. (2001), “The reinvention of teacher professionalism”, in Phillips, R. and Furlong, J.(Eds), Education, Reform and the State: Twenty-five Years of Politics, Policy and Practice,Routledge/Falmer, London.

McCulloch, G., Helsby, G. and Knight, P. (2000), The Politics of Professionalism: Teachers and theCurriculum, Continuum, London.

Marcus, H. and Nurius, P. (1986), “Possible selves”, American Psychologist, Vol. 41 No. 9,pp. 954-69.

Moon, B. (1998), “The English exception? International perspectives on the initial education andtraining of teachers”, Occasional Paper No. 11, UCET.

Nash, R. (1999), “Bourdieu, ‘habitus’, and educational research: is it all worth the candle?”, BritishJournal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 175-87.

Rapoport, T. and Lomsky-Feder, E. (2002), “‘Intelligentsia’ as an ethnic habitus: the inculcationand restructuring of intelligentsia among Russian Jews”, British Journal of Sociology ofEducation, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 233-48.

Reay, D. (2004), “‘It’s all becoming a habitus’: beyond the habitual use of habitus in educationalresearch”, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 25 No. 4, pp. 431-44.

Stevenson, H., Carter, B. and Passy, R. (2007), “‘New Professionalism’ workforce remodelling andthe restructuring of teachers’ work”, International Journal fpr Leadership in Learning,Vol. 11 No. 15, pp. 1-11.

Tooley, J. and Darby, D. (1998), Educational Research: A Critique, OFSTED, London.

Further reading

Holman Jones, S. (2005), “Autoethnography; making the personal political”, in Denzin, N.K. andLincoln, Y.S. (Eds), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd ed., Sage, ThousandOaks, CA.

Corresponding authorPaul Garland can be contacted at: [email protected]


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