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Bourdieu and position-making in a changing field: Enactment of the national curriculum in Australia
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Bourdieu and position-making in a changing field: Enactment of the national curriculum in Australia

Reshma Parveen Musofer and Bob Lingard
Curriculum journal, Vol.32(3), pp.384-401
09/2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/curj.88

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Abstract

Australian Curriculum Bourdieu enactment field habitus hysteresis position-making position-taking
This paper draws on Bourdieu's theorising (particu-larly habitus and field) to think about position-makingof teachers in respect of the early enactment of theAustralian Curriculum. Position-making, a concept de-veloped from the analysis proffered, can be contrastedwith the more common practice of position-taking en-demic in a relatively stable field. Position-making isan ongoing phenomenon in a changing field whenthe habitus is out of place, here the field of the newAustralian Curriculum, creating the effect of whatBourdieu sees as hysteresis. This paper explores thepositioning and re-positioning of agents (teachersand school leaders) due to an external change (theAustralian curriculum) in the schooling field. Data forthis study were collected from a middle- class statehigh school in Brisbane Australia, which was an earlyadopter of the new Australian Curriculum. The initialenactment phase of curriculum change was an un-settling one that (re)positioned agents— hence, theconcept of position-making, which is a contributionto Bourdieu's theoretical resources and which com-plements the idea of policy enactment as opposedto policy implementation. Both allow some agency in mediation of mandated changes in the specific con-texts of schools and teacher/leader habitus.

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