PETER HUNT, TEACHER OF HUMANITIES, SOUTH BRISTOL
If pedagogy is truly ‘leading’ (agogos/ἀγωγός) a ‘child’ (pais/παῖς), then, when evaluating our practice, it is necessary to look beyond the classroom and to consider all facets of school life – to consider how and to where we are leading our children and whether we can be more innovative and creative in doing so. As a teacher in a large comprehensive school in a deprived area of south Bristol, one of these facets that has interested me is the oft-discussed potential of ‘cultural capital’. Originating with Bourdieu’s (1984) argument that students’ success in school depends more on transferable cultural knowledge rather than on natural ability, it has been interpreted and applied by other sociologists, such as Davies and Rizk (2018), to argue that cultural capital could be taught by teachers and thereby increase students’ social mobility. Given the subjectivity of defining which knowledge enables social
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