Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association New Researchers/Student Conference, University of Warwick, 6 September

2006

Institutional habitus and the production of educational inequalities:

the case of two state secondary schools in the City of Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Analía Inés Meo (PhD student, University of Warwick)

This is a draft version.

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Abstract

This paper explores the role that the institutional habitus of two state secondary schools in the City of Buenos Aires (Argentina) plays in the production of educational inequalities. To do so, it presents a definition of the concept Institutional Habitus, which is a re-elaboration of the Bourdieuan concept of habitus. Reay et al (2001) argue that institutional habitus (IH) should encompass a complex amalgam of agency and structure and, following McDonough (1996), it should be interpreted as the influence of a cultural group or social class on an individual's practices as it is mediated through an institution. In the next section of this paper, I compare and contrast different dimensions of the institutional habitus of two secondary state schools in the City of Buenos Aires (Argentina). These schools were located in the same collection of buildings in a middle class neighbourhood. The “High Mountain” school was a quasi selective school and the “Low Hill” school accepted all students who wanted to enrol. The former received middle class families and the latter a more mixed population made up of working class, vulnerable families and middle class families. The comparison between the institutional habitus of these two schools will serve to illustrate how individual schools participate in the production of circuits of schooling and how the local education system reinforces educational inequalities among different socio-educational groups.The fieldwork was carried out from March to November 2004 in two secondary schools in the City of Buenos Aires (Argentina). Regarding methods, I used different techniques for collecting data: participant observation, self-completion questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, group interviews, and photo-elicitation interviews with groups of girls and boys.

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Institutional habitus and the production of educational inequalities: the case of two state secondary schools in the City of Buenos Aires

(Argentina)

Recent literature argues that local state educational systems in Argentina has

configured a variety of different segments or fragments of schools that gather

different types of social intakes, have unequal human and material resources and,

therefore, offer unequal educational experiences that advantage some and

disadvantage the many (Aguerrondo 1993; Kessler 2002; Tiramonti, et al. 2002).

Tiramonti (2001 2004), for instance, argues that schools (sometimes, groups of

schools) seem to work like independent institutional arenas divorced from the

education system. Only few empirical studies have attempted to pin down the nature

and operations of these different segments and/or circuits. The comparison of two

state secondary schools’ institutional habitus demonstrates how individual schools

assume an active role in the production and reproduction of educational inequalities.

Despite important similarities in their bureaucratic organisation and their staffing

policies, the differences between “High Mountain” and “Low Hill” are so striking that

they seem to operate as, following Tiramonti’s metaphor, independent “fragments”

where their relationships with their social intakes reshape their institutional habitus in

ways in which educational differences seem to be exacerbated rather than diminished.

This paper explores the role that the institutional habitus of two state secondary

schools in the City of Buenos Aires (Argentina) plays in the production of educational

inequalities. On the one hand, unveiling schools’ institutional habitus (IH) lets

identify how they attempt to reproduce their relative positions and institutional

capitals (whether economic, cultural, social or symbolic) within the changing local

field of secondary education. On the other hand, analysing schools’ IH shows how,

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while attempting to reproduce themselves, they contribute to the inclusion and/or

exclusion of different social groups of students. This paper shows i) how the school

“High Mountain”, in a wider context of growing levels of social exclusion and

impoverishment of sectors of the middle classes, had actively sought for the

recruitment and inclusion of students from particular sections of the middle classes

and ii) how the school “Low Mountain” reshaped some organisational practices in

order to deal with an educationally vulnerable population without challenging its

middle class institutional habitus and, therefore, falling to address the impact that

students’ social, economic and cultural capitals had on their educational participation.

This paper, firstly, briefly introduces the research, its methodology and data collection

techniques. The next section presents a definition of the concept Institutional Habitus,

which is a re-elaboration of the Bourdieuan concept of habitus. The last part focuses

on different recent institutional strategies that, I would argue, reflected the

institutional habitus of two state secondary schools in the City of Buenos Aires

(Argentina). This analysis identifies how schools actively engaged in the reproduction

of their positions within the field and how they reshaped some of their organisational

practices in order to address changing populations and threats to their survival.

My research: aims, methodology and methodsMy study examined the relationships between students’ social classes and their

schooling experiences; analysed their educational practical senses and assessed if the

latter contributed or hampered students’ participation. To explore these aspects I

carried out an ethnographic study in two state secondary schools in the City of Buenos

Aires (Argentina). Fieldwork was carried out from late March to early November

2004. I applied different data collection techniques: participant observation, self-

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completion questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, group interviews, and photo-

elicitation interviews.

The schools shared a collection of buildings that were located in a middle class

neighbourhood. “High Mountain” offered nursery, primary, secondary and tertiary

education. At secondary level, the school was quasi-selective. “Low Hill” only

offered secondary school and its access was open. The schools occupied the same

block and shared some wings of one building, some offices, halls, corridors, stairs,

toilets and classrooms. Each school also had exclusive access to certain spaces such as

their administrative secretary’s office, chemistry and computer laboratories, and

libraries. “High Mountain” had a mainly middle class intake and “Low Hill” had

students from poor and socially excluded families as well as those from middle class

background.1

At the beginning of 2004, “High Mountain” had 696 students enrolled; from which

65% were girls (High Mountain 2004). “Low Hill”, on the other hand, had 810

students and 60% were girls (Low Hill 2004). During the last 7 years, the numbers of

students enrolled in the schools has increased. This growth has been more significant

and steady in the case of “Low Hill”. From 1997-2004, the total population of “Low

Hill” has increased almost 33% and that of “High Mountain” only augmented 7%.

1 There are not statistics about socio-economic status of students and their families. The characterisation of schools’ intake was based, initially, on teachers and authorities’ observations and later on my own observations and on two surveys that I applied to a non representative sample of students of the third school year.

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What is institutional habitus?Bourdieu engages with a general notion of habitus at societal level and with a more

specific and empirical one at the level of the individual (Bourdieu 1985; Bourdieu

1992; Bourdieu and Wacquant 2002; Brubaker 1985; Reay 2004). At societal level, he

argues that, on the one hand, social classes share similar positions within the social

space based on the comparable volume and composition of their total capitals

(including its social, economic, cultural and symbolic versions) accrued over time and

across social fields. On the other hand, Bourdieu asserts that social classes typically2

share common dispositions, views, attitudes and practices across social fields such as

education, leisure, work and aesthetics (Bourdieu 1992). At individual level, habitus

should be understood as embodied generative matrix of dispositions and practices,

internalised over time and within particular social locations, that enable social agents

to participate in the social world and perform a variety of actions within fields

(Bourdieu 1985; Bourdieu 1992; Bourdieu and Wacquant 2002; Brubaker 1985).

Habitus should be understood as “creative, inventive, but within the limits of its

structures, which are the embodied sedimentation of the social structures which

produced it” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2002: 9). In this analysis, collective family and

class history and individuals’ personal trajectories configure habitus (Reay 2004). In

this sense, collective and individual habitus are intertwined but distinguishable. In

summary, individuals belong to social groups or classes with particular dispositions,

views, and practices accrued over time and rooted in their social locations but

individuals’ habitus are unique because their personal histories are not identical

(Bourdieu 1995; Reay 2004).

Different American and British educational researchers have expanded the

Bourdieuan concept of habitus and have used it to study the influence of educational 2 In the statistical sense.

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organizations and institutions such as particular universities and schools on their

students’ views, choices and experiences (Drummond 1998; McDonough 1996;

McNamara Horvat and Lising Antonio 1999; Reay 1998; Reay, et al. 2001). Although

Bourdieu pays attention to both individual and collective habitus, he does not use

different terms to refer to class, institution/organisation and individuals’ based

habitus. In this sense, I would argue that the concept of institutional habitus

contributes to fill a terminological gap within the Bourdieusian theoretical framework

that allowed me to focus on certain features and dimensions of, for instance, the

school’s life that deeply affects teachers’ and students’ dispositions, views and

practices (McNamara Horvat and Lising Antonio 1999).

Reay et al (2001) argue that any definition of institutional habitus (IH) should

encompass a complex amalgam of agency and structure and, following McDonough

(1996), it should be interpreted as the influence of a cultural group or social class on

an individual's practices as it is mediated through an institution. Reay et al (2001), on

the other hand, also argue that IH is an important variable that interplays with social

class, ‘race’ and gender differences and inequalities and influences secondary school

and further education college students’ experiences and choices of higher education

institutions.

Organisations are deeply influenced by class relations without being totally defined

by them. In this sense, they are part of social fields, immersed in the general field of

power but they do have some degree of relative autonomy (Bourdieu 1993; Bourdieu

and Wacquant 2002; Brubaker 1985). Organisations such as individual secondary

schools should be seen as both social sub-fields where the game of schooling is

played out in specific ways and as ‘individual players’ within the social field of

secondary education (Everett 2002). Firstly, schools as social sub fields are arenas

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where the game of secondary schooling is played out by their authorities, teachers,

pastoral assistants and students (Everett 2002). As social fields, schools also produce

and instil their own collective habitus in its members (Blaxter and Hughes 2003; Moi

1991). The habitus of schools should be understood as the “‘silent curriculum’

through which norms and values are not explicitly learnt but are inculcated through

the everyday of interaction” (Blaxter and Hughes 2003: 6). Social fields and social

sub-fields (such as organisations) instil values and ways of appropriate thinking and

behaving in their participants (Bourdieu 1993; Bourdieu and Wacquant 2002; Moi

1991). Secondly, schools are also players within the field of secondary education and

mobilize their social, economic, cultural and symbolic capitals in order to accumulate

institutional prestige and resources. However, schools are located in a hierarchical

social space of relative positions based on the volume and composition of their

(institutional) capitals. In other words, schools could be seen both as games with

stakes, players, and power relations and as players within the wider field of secondary

education. Both perspectives let us recognise certain features and attenuate others.

The emphasis on one or the other perspective will depend on the object of analysis. In

my research, I paid more attention to the schools as social sub-fields and to the ‘silent

curriculum’ that they impose on their participants.

My elaboration of the concept of IH illuminates both the habitus that particular

organisations instil in their members (with more or less success across groups and

individuals) and the habitus that these organisations deploy within the field of

secondary education. IH allows us to pin down key features of the organisational life

that influence teachers and students’ experiences and also locate the organisations

within a wider social space of hierarchical relative positions. In this way, IH is more

than the “the culture of the educational institution; it refers to relational issues and

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priorities, which are deeply embedded, and sub-consciously informing practice”

(Thomas 2002: 153). These priorities and issues are dialectically produced by the

organisation as sub field –with its games, stakes and power relations- and the wider

social field where it is inscribed.

IH has a collective history and has been configured over time (McNamara Horvat and

Lising Antonio 1999; Reay 1998; Reay, et al. 2001). Its collective nature made it less

flexible and fluid than individual habitus (Reay, et al. 2001). However, rather than

being driven by any common interest, IH is the ongoing result of power relations

among different players within an organisation and in permanent relation with the

outside world (Bourdieu 1993; Bourdieu and Eagleton 1992; Bourdieu and Wacquant

2002; Everett 2002; Reay, et al. 2001). The concept of IH helps us to recognise the

dominant discourses and practices of particular organisations that represent a form of

symbolic violence “in which school habitus asserts and maintains its dominance over

the individuals who do not 'instinctually' fit in this environment" (McNamara Horvat

and Lising Antonio 1999: 320). The school habitus is “objectified in bodies in the

form of durable dispositions that recognize and comply with the specific demands of a

given institutional area of activity” (Bourdieu 1990a: 57).

In the next section, I turn my attention to some indicators of the institutional habitus

of “High Mountain” and “Low Hill” during the last 15 years.

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Institutional habitus in movement: the cases of “High Mountain” and “Low Hill”

This section analyses different aspects that reflect the IH of the “High Mountain” and

“Low Hill”. Firstly, I focus my attention on recent institutional strategies that “High

Mountain” and the Liceo “Low Hill” deployed in an effort to reproduce their position

within the changing field of secondary schooling. I argue that, during the last 15

years, the schools’ reshaping of significant aspects of their wider organisational

practices reflected both their middle class IH and their differential institutional

capitals.

The past and present of the “High Mountain” and “Low Hill” have been intertwined.

They not only share different areas of two major buildings but also are the result of an

historical institutional differentiation and reconfiguration of the secondary education

field (Filmus 1999; Tenti Fanfani 2003; Tiramonti 2004). The schools were of two

different types: “High Mountain” was a Normal school and “Low Hill” a Liceo.

Although there is a dearth of literature about the nature and features of the different

types of secondary schools in Argentina and the City of Buenos Aires, informants

within the local education system, the Escuela Normal Superior “High Mountain” and

the Liceo “Low Hill” pointed to the historical and contemporary social differences

between the Escuelas Normales and the Liceos since their inception. The Normal

“High Mountain”, created in 1874, was initially embedded with cultural values

associated with the dominant classes and with the construction of a social order where

everybody (in particular the immigrants) needed to be ‘civilised’ and, therefore,

assimilated to the dominant culture. The Normales mainly attracted young women

from middle class, former dominant sectors and low class who wanted to follow a

professional career otherwise non-existent. In the case of the Liceo “Low Hill”, its

creation in 1956 accompanied the expansion of the secondary education in the City

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and mainly gathered girls from low socio economic families. In this sense, it could be

seen as part of a wider socio-educational policy and discourse that aimed at including

the “respectable poor” such as daughters of domestic workers and concierges (Castel

1999; Dubet 2000; Dubet and Martuccelli 2000; Dubet and Martuccelli 1998).

Throughout their history, both the Normal and the Liceo’s institutional habitus have

gone through dramatic transformations tied to socio-cultural and political changes and

redefinitions of the secondary education field. Different educational policy changes

challenged and effectively altered the Normal and Liceo’s historical identities as

female schools with their particular educational aspirations; hierarchical models of

teaching and managing schools; and traditional gender regimes (Argentina -Ministerio

de Educación y Justicia 1989; Morgade 1998; Sarlo 1998). For instance, the

transformation of secondary education into mixed education (middle 1980s)3; the

implementation of a common curriculum in the first three school years (1989); and

the legitimacy of students’ unions (1985) were triggered by wider democratic and

socially inclusive tides in society in general and in education in particular. All these

curricular, procedural and administrative changes have made “High Mountain” and

“Low Hill” more like the majority4 of the secondary schools in the City such us the

Comerciales (commercial schools) and Técnicas (technical schools) in terms of the

target population and curriculum offered in the first three years.5 Other processes such

as the decentralisation of the national schools changed the bureaucratic status of the

Normales and Liceos which became dependant on the local government (Macri 2001).

3 Only few elite schools could maintain its single sex status after this.4 In the state sector, the two Colegios Nacionales of the City (dependent on the University of Buenos Aires) together with two Normal schools have always been the elitist state schools, where access has been regulated by compulsory entrance examinations.5 Of course, differences remained between these types of schools in terms of what kind of specialisation offered in the last two year of schools and in terms of their historical prestige and recognition in the City.

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Throughout history, the Normal and Liceo competed for resources and intakes within

a heterogeneous educational field. However, the Liceo and Normal were in different

relative positions to negotiate these processes. The Liceo did not have economic

capital (it did not own any property with the exception of the equipments of their

exclusive areas such as a small and outdated library and laboratories); did not belong

to a strong network of institutions; and was not recognised as a prestigious institution.

The Normal did have economic capital (its nineteenth century two floor buildings

located in a middle class neighbourhood; its library; auditorium, etc.); social capital

(mainly made up by belonging to an informal tight network of twelve Escuelas

Normales), and symbolic power (its individual historic prestige). All these resources

contributed to the higher degree of manoeuvre of “High Mountain”. The Normales as

a group effectively negotiated key aspects of different processes such as, after the

decentralisation, the preservation of their academic unit6 and regulation by a special

governmental unit.

However, despite these differential material, social and symbolic resources of the

Liceo and Normal, both schools shared a common dramatic fate during the end of the

1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. Longstanding lack of national funding to

maintain the historic building of the schools created appalling working conditions for

teachers and students:

The historic building was in dreadful conditions, broken walls; there were holes between classrooms; some lights fell over a group of students; we didn’t have windows; we didn’t have anything (…) I can’t really describe you all that we went through. We had electrified walls! (…) We (teachers) didn’t have toilets. We had to go to bars nearby.(…)

(Interview with María, female History teacher of the Liceo, 15/6/04)

6 This meant that Normales could preserve their control over their elementary, primary and secondary levels despite attempts to fragment them

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These schools had different ways to deal with this situation that significantly affected

enrolment numbers, staff morale, teaching and learning. In the following section, I

analyse how the Normal and the Liceo dealt with this threat to their survival and how,

in these movements, their middle class IH clearly emerged as threatened.

“High Mountain” and its strategies to re-gain its place in the field

In 1991, the “High Mountain” redefined its curricular profile as a foreign language

specialist school as a strategy of distinction within the state educational field in order

to attract, according to some teachers, better students (in socio-educational terms) that

those they were receiving at that time (who were seeing as an extraneous population

to the one that traditionally had attended) (Bourdieu 1992; Bourdieu 1993).7 Fabiana,

maths teacher, explains this process:

Fabiana: The school had a dreadful time when we didn’t have enough students and when they came from the Vacancies Relocation Centre (Centro de Reubicación de Vacantes), which implied that the educational level of the school declined because, at that time, chicos8

with learning difficulties entered (…) we had to deliver less difficult contents because they couldn’t cope. (…)AM: at that time, was any entrance examination?Fabiana: no (…) later the school became Lenguas Vivas (Foreign language specialist) (….) and then, well, we have an agreement with other Lenguas Vivas to accept those who couldn’t pass their exams (…)

(Interview with Fabiana, female Maths teacher, 12/10/04)

This distinction strategy involved the introduction of foreign language examinations

to select an important part of the Normal’s population and an informal agreement with

state elite schools to receive students who did not have high enough scores to get into

them (Bourdieu 1992; Bourdieu 1993). According to some teachers9, this re-labelling

of the school contributed to increase enrolment numbers and to regain its “traditional”

population. This change of the Normal’s recruitment policy expressed its ability to

7 In the City, there are only four out of twelve Escuelas Normales Superiores that are language specialist. These schools have the highest number of hours dedicated to teaching foreign languages within the state sector without being bilingual.8 The word chicos is widely used by adults and young people. Chicos is plural and in masculine. However, this word could refer to both boys and girls or only to a collective of boys. Chico refers to: young boy; chica refers to a young girl.9 There is not available statistical data to corroborate this statement.

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mobilise its social and cultural capitals and to renegotiate with the local government

their educational profile in order to attract middle class students and dissuade other

social groups from entering. Moreover, this new policy reflected both “High

Mountain”’s middle class IH and its definition of the change of population as a threat

to their historical institutional prestige and identity.

From 1990s onwards, the Normal had also redefined several organisational practices

reflecting its middle class IH.10 According to the Rectora and some teachers, these

reconfiguration responded to a general perception that i) Normal’s students were

having lower educational performance and higher rates of educational failure than

before; ii) many middle class families were loosing their previous historical economic

advantages and were unable to pay extra educational support for their children, and

iii) the secondary school certificate was devalued in relation to the labour market. The

Rectora illustrates the last two points:

The school has grown quite considerably during the last years and it has occupied more time and space at the afternoon. It has grown because social circumstances have changed. Students need many things that, before, they obtained outside the school (…) well, we have courses to help our students to get jobs when they finish the school, like the course for being pastoral assistant; this lets students to get a job while attending university or, well, in the case of the girls, we have the course of classroom assistants in kindergartens (…) We have a multitude of workshops and courses, including theatre and educational support in particular modules (…) if they have any problem in relation to their learning, they come to the school at the afternoon and participate in workshops where their learning is supported

(Interview with the Rectora, 02/08/03)

This reshaping of some organisational practices could also be interpreted as the

Normal’s way to embrace the local government policy of retención (retention)11 and

redefine it in terms of its mainly middle class population and its perceived particular

10 Schools do not reinvent their institutional habitus as a collective. Certain individual and collective actors promote this type of transformations.11 According to the Rectora of the Normal even before this policy was launched the school had already in place programmes that embraced the same principles (Interview with the Rectora, 2/08/03).

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social needs and demands. In Argentina, middle class families configured a

heterogeneous social group due not only its traditional diverse social composition but

also recent socio-economic transformations (Minujin 2001; Minujin and Anguita

2004; Minujin and Kessler 1999).12 These new perceived needs of middle class

families in the Normal could be interpreted as indicators 13 of what Svampa has

labelled the “loser” fractions within middle classes (Svampa 2000; Svampa 2005).

The “losers” were those occupational groups who had been impoverished by recent

processes of economic restructuring.

Among the transformations is important to mention changes in the pastoral system

and in various aspects of the formal and non-formal curriculum offered during the last

decade. Many changes had affected the whole school population while others had

been confined to particular school years. Among the former: the introduction in 1997

of a module called “methodology of study” in the formal curriculum of the first

school year that aimed at ameliorating the perceived increase of educational failure.

Another example is the establishment in 1997 of two labour training courses and one

special career service module for students in the last school year. The Rectora, head

teacher and majority of teachers imagined their students as future university students

who would probably need to work while studying. These training courses were

conceived as means of getting temporary jobs (as pastoral assistants or classroom

assistants) and, in this sense, as localised strategies to improve students’ probabilities

to get more cultural capital than their peers in other schools helping them to compete

in a fragmented and expulsive labour market –especially in the case of young people-

(Dabenigno and Tissera 2002). This redefinition of the Normal’s organisational

12 The Argentinean literature identifies three groups of middle class families: the “losers”, the “winners” and those who have been able to maintain their social position during the restructuring of the economy, labour market and social structure initiated at the middle of the 1970s-early 1980s which have continued up to the present (see Svampa 2005; Svampa 2000; Kessler 2003).13 I did a survey in the third school year that confirms the prominence of this social group.

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practices shows its attempts to adjust to its new and impoverished middle class

population and reflected, like its recruitment policy, “High Mountain”’ efforts to

remain a school for certain sections of the middle classes. These changes reflected the

Normal’s middle class IH and its views about the wider educational field and the

ways in which it positively valued certain social groups and, therefore, negatively

valued others. The Normal saw itself as a middle class school for middle class

students and, hence, it deployed different types of strategies such as regulating those

who came into it; academically supporting its students in novel ways; and finally,

offering access to cultural distinction strategies to help their students to better

compete in the future in a labour market where secondary school educational

certificate had already been devalued and where high levels of unemployment were

prevalent, in particular of young people (Dabenigno and Tissera 2002; Tenti Fanfani

2003). Now, I turn my attention to “Low Hill” and its threatened middle class IH.

“ Low Hill ” and its survival strategies

In the case of the Liceo, the dreadful working conditions and low numbers of students

of the early 1990s together with the lack of relative institutional capitals contributed

to an “open doors” school’s recruitment policy. At that time, according to some

teachers and one psychologist, the majority of the school’s population did not choose

the Liceo and was transferred by the Vacancies Relocation Centre of the City (Centro

de Reubicación de Vacantes). In other words, students who did not find vacancies in

any other school were transferred to the Liceo. This situation emerged when i)

students knew they repeated the school year after March exams and were not accepted

by their own schools and, ii) when students enrolled too late and vacancies were

already taken in the best state schools.

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From middle 1990s onwards, the Liceo started to accept high proportion of students

older than the expected schooling age14, with previous educational failures, serious

behavioural problems, and history of drug and alcohol abuse. Teachers described this

new type of students as not matching the pupil that their secondary school had

historically attracted: majority of students’ from low socio-economic groups who had

the expected theoretical schooling age; had some sort of family support; and were

respectful to teachers. Teachers asserted that many of these students also failed in the

Liceo. Rosalía illustrates both this change of population and a common perspective

among teachers that these new students were the main responsible of their failure to

pass or stay at the school.

In the 1970s, well, the educational level of the students of this school has always been a bit lower than that of other schools in the area (…) at that time, we didn’t have so many students with sobre-edad15 and so many who are completely uninterested like now. Well, I don’t mind to have a student of 20 years old if they come to study, but if the student of 20 years old commits the same mistakes they committed last year and the year before (…) well, then, obviously, that chico comes here and thinks that this is a social club (…)

(Interview with Rosalía, female geography teacher, 6/11/04)

Available governmental funds contributed to reshape the transformation of the Liceo’s

organisational practices.16 During the 1990s, national and local educational policies

aimed at including new social groups and made available funds to support

institutional programmes oriented to their inclusion (CIPPEC 2004; López 2002).One

example is the creation of the Orientation Department in 1997 (which included at the

beginning one psychologist and two from 2001 onwards for a population of around

14 In the Argentinean education secondary system students should have certain ages for each school year. For instance, the expected theoretical ages for the first school year are 13 and 14. Those students who are older usually had experiences of repetition or drop out. 15 Sobre-edad means older than the theoretical age group that should attend to each school year. I will define this when I present the Argentinean education system.16 According to educational statistics, the two first school years concentrated the highest levels of repetition and drop out reference. During the 1990s and early 2000s, there had been available funds to introduce institutional projects mainly targeted at the two first school years.

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600 students) that wanted to open up a space for teachers and students to deal with

mainly social and behavioural problems. It promoted, for instance, meetings with

individual students to assess their social and educational needs. The Orientation

Department created in 1998 a pastoral system by which one teacher or pastoral

assistant was designated as tutor of a form class of the first and second school years.

According to psychologists and some tutors, tutors were carefully selected by the

Orientation department and school authorities according to their willingness to deal

with the difficulties that this new population brought into the school. One of the

psychologists of the school describes the nature of the tutor’s role; the difficult

circumstances that many students had to confront and the main aim of the Orientation

Department:

Those who are tutors have to care about students. For them, it’s not the same if they live or die. They are committed to this job and, at the beginning; they did not even get a salary for it. (…) The tutor system wants to help the inclusion of these students who don’t match the ideal student that many teachers still have in mind (…) We work a lot to help these students to be at the school. Well, maths, literature, they are part of the project but, at the beginning, it’s not our priority (…) from the Orientation Department we want them to choose to live and then try to make them choose the school as a viable option in their lives

(Interview with Marga, female psychologist, 15/5/04)

Many teachers and pastoral assistants usually complained about the psychologists and

their pro-pupils approach. In their view, the psychologists always wanted to keep

problematic students in the school independently of how damaging their behaviour

was and, in this way, showed lack of empathy with teachers’ views and concerns.

This, according to teachers, was accompanied by a local policy of contención or

retención that highlighted the centrality of keeping students in school at any cost.

Rosalía illustrates this view:

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I am worried that many students, who should be disciplined on time and not in October, well, those students who in April are already identified (the school year begins in the second half of March) as problematic, well, those who come here without wanting to do anything, those who come here with bad antecedents and don’t change, well, those students are kept into the school because it’s better for the City government that they are here than in the street. (…) And the good students, well, their parents say “am I going to leave my child with this group of chicos?” and well, they take their children to another school. It’s like I always say: we always loose the good students.

(Interview with Rosalía, female geography teacher, 7/12/04)

Another illustration of the transformation of organisational practices is the

introduction in 1999 of age as the main criterion for allocating students to the first and

second school year. This criterion let distribute students according to their previous

educational trajectory. Before this, students were allocated randomly to different form

classes. Teachers argued that the reconfiguration of groups according to age was

necessary to address differences of educational trajectories, behavioural problems and

learning needs. However, this allocation of students was not accompanied by any

collective change of the school curriculum and teaching and assessment methods.

Neither the school nor the local government performed evaluations of the

effectiveness of this streaming of students, which had not previous acknowledged

antecedents in secondary schooling in Argentina.

In 1999, there was another initiative by which the size of form classes should be

determined by the age group of students (those form classes with repitients should be

smaller). Although this project was approved by the school district supervisor and

strongly supported by teachers, the Liceo was obliged by the local government to

accept all students that the latter sent to the school. Hence, form classes with older

students had similar size to those with younger students and, in several cases, the

latter also contained older students. Laura describes the rationale behind allocating

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students according age, the correspondent necessity of working with smaller groups,

and the lack of support by the local government to enforce these institutional

initiatives:

Laura: (…) We did not have a privileged group of students, (…) we decided to organise small form classes to work better (…) we had had form classes with chicos who were almost adults (…)AM: do you mean that they had sobre-edad?Laura: yes, well, there was an opposing order from the local government and well, now, we have to fill the form classes with chicos of any age. I do believe that this is a mistake. I have experience with these chicos. Only a minority of first school year students have 13 years old (which is the theoretical expected age for that school year). The majority has 16 y 17 years old. Well, their interest, their ability to discern, the psychological evolution of the chico, the dependence or independence from the family is completely different and, hence, the way you treat them is very different. In some form class, you have girls who are very developed with chicos who are very immature and well, that doesn’t work

(Interview with Laura, Accountancy teacher, 9/12/04)

In 2004, teachers frequently mentioned this forced mixed of population and class size

(whether in staff rooms, institutional whole school meetings or corridors) as the main

reasons of their failure to deal with first and second school year students and as

directly associated with their high levels of repetition rates, which (in the first three

school years) had not diminished over the last five school years.

However, despite all these efforts the Liceo was unable to retain its students over

school years and had higher levels of repetition than the schools of its district and the

average of the City. The inability to retain its population could be illustrated by the

pyramidal shape of its enrolment numbers from the first up to the last school year. In

the first and second school year, the Liceo had eight form classes; in the third school

year, it had six form classes; and, finally, in the fourth and fifth school year only four

form classes with a smaller average size class than previous years (Liceo 2000).

According to my estimations, only 50% of the students’ cohort 2000 reached the fifth

20

school in 2004 (Liceo 2000; 2004). Regarding its repetition rates, “Low Hill”’s level

of repetition was 50% higher that the average of all the Liceos in the City (18.5%);

three times higher than that of the Normales (6.2%); and around the double of the

average of its school district (12%) and the total of the City (12.9%) (Secretary of

Education of the City of Buenos Aires 2004).

All these organisational changes illustrate how the Liceo attempted to cope with lack

of students and, later, with more mixed population17 that challenged previous ways of

teaching and learning and implied the inclusion of social groups (older students with

previous educational failure who, in general, came from low socio-economic

background) who had been historically excluded from secondary schooling. These

transformations also evidence the middle class IH of the Liceo and teachers’

difficulties to deal with social groups who did not fit their ideal type of student with

their acceptance of teachers’ pedagogic frames and authorities. This reshape,

however, did not alter ways of teaching (at least not collectively and as a product of a

reflexive process where different school actors and local government could have

participated) and did not challenge hegemonic perspectives about educational failure

as fundamentally rooted in students’ lack of educational and social capitals and their

lack of motivation and interest. The middle class IH pervades teachers’ views about

the school population impeding, in the majority of the cases, critical analysis of their

own practices (which was enforced by the lack of local government’s pedagogic

support to deal with the new realities).

17 Many teachers stated that the school population was mixed in terms of behavioral standards and attitudes towards teachers’ authorities and pedagogic frames. Several asserted that there were few very problematic students but they were difficult enough to alter every day teaching and hamper their classmates’ learning.

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Conclusions

This paper showed how two state secondary schools actively participated in the

production of circuits of schooling in the City of Buenos Aires. During the last 15

years, the Liceo and the Normal had mobilised their differential institutional capitals

in a highly differentiated state secondary education field.

The first section briefly described the main aims and methodology of the study from

which these data had been taken. The relationship between social class and

educational inequalities in two state secondary schools, which shared the same

building, facilities and some staff, was the main focus of my research. I carried out an

ethnographic study which encompassed a collection of qualitative and quantitative

techniques.

The second section defined the concept of Institutional Habitus (IH), which is an

elaboration of the Bourdieusian definition of habitus. This section identified key

perspectives about IH and pinned down its collective, historical and dialectic nature. It

argued that IH contributes to unveil certain aspects of organisations (such as schools)

that are deeply embedded in their members’ views, dispositions and perspectives

about the organisation, its priorities, problems and solutions.

The next part focused its attention on how the Liceo and the Normal had reshaped

significant aspects of their wider organisational practices and how these reflected both

their middle class IH and their differential institutional capitals. This analysis

identified the schools’ differential historical roots; particular institutional practices

deployed by both schools to deal with a serious recruitment crisis (early 1990s) and

specific changes to their whole school organisational practices to cope with steady

changes of their respective populations. This section argued that both schools had

middle class IH but of a different kind. These schools had historically targeted

22

different populations and their historical identities had been challenged by lack of

students at the beginning of the 1990s. The Normal redefined its recruitment policy

and reshaped several organisations practices that made the school more appealing to

particular sectors of the middle class and more responsive to their recent relative

impoverishment. The Liceo, on the contrary, did not have institutional capitals to

select its population and accepted students who, in general, did not choose the school

and had previous experiences of educational failure. This involved a transformation of

the school population that implied the inclusion of social groups who had been

historically excluded from secondary level. In order to address this new population,

The Liceo reshaped several of its organisational practices without being able to

decrease its overall high repetition rates and its exclusionary force over school years.

The analysis of both schools’ strategies illustrated how two particular institutions

participated and actively sought to reproduce their positions within the educational

field; how their middle class IH permeates their views and ways of dealing with

changing times and intakes; and how they contributed to the reproduction of the

segmented state secondary education field.

23

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