46 long term Bourdieu, 1986. In other words, social capital is acquired as a result of
exchange, for example, services, concern, or gifts. However, those exchanges “tend to be characterized by unspecific obligations, uncertain time horizons, and the possible
violation of reciprocity expectations” Portes, 2000, p. 45. As with other forms of capital, the acquisition and maintenance of social capital needs time and ‘‘presupposes
an unceasing effort of sociability’’ Bourdieu, 1986, p. 250. As argued by Hodgkinson 2008, social capital is important, but so are
economic and cultural capital. I will view teachers’ capital in all its forms economic, social, and cultural capitals in my study, as these shape teachers’ pedagogic
dispositions. These capitals reflect the distinctive values, beliefs and ideas that form the basis of social action within a teacher’s experience, and result in teacher practice within
the field. For Bourdieu, the conversion of any form of capital whether economic, cultural, or social is through negotiation and dealings within the field, a social space
which will be further described below.
2.6.2 Field as a social space
The notion of field is the spatial metaphor for the context in which the habitus performs. Involvement in a field shapes the habitus that, in turn, shapes the actions that
reproduce the field. For Bourdieu 1990, p. 87, fields are social sites in which actors,
imbued with particular social dispositions developed over time, engage with one another in a process of contest over the forms of capital.
More specifically, field is structured systems of social positions on which actors compete for access to and control
over specific resource. The social world as a whole forms a field Bourdieu, 1990, p. 87. However, the social world also consists of many different fields, such as the
education, politics, or scientific field, which all have “historically constituted areas of activity with their specific institutions and their own laws of functioning” Bourdieu,
1990, p. 87. For Bourdieu 1990, any social field can be analogically read as a game in
which the players or actors use their capitals as tokens. Within a field, one deploys
one’s capital as one uses tokens in a game. The game has tacit rather than explicit rules, and players can try to change those rules through strategies aimed at discrediting the
form of capital, upon which the force of their opponents rests and to valorize the species of capital they preferentially possess.
Education, for example, is characterized by
47 competition for prestigious titles, grades, and positions, and the structure of that field
consists in a distribution of the capitals they afford. Bourdieu 1983 further claims that the individuals who engage in a field have a
number of essential interests in common, i.e. interests linked to the very existence of the field. There is agreement about the object of dispute: all share belief in the value of
what is in dispute. To get in to the field, one has to share the recognition of the game value and the knowledge of the principles of the functioning game. Similarly, Martin
2003 notes, “for something to be understood as a field requires that its agents are
interpersonally related or orientated towards each other or that they share the same goal” p. 29.
Different fields give different values to the forms of capital with varying requirements for success within them. In addition, Crossley 2002b, p. 180 remarks:
Specific fields will often have their own forms of social control, their own structures of opportunity and their specific types of resource, and thus the
possibility of movement formation, development and success within them may be quite specific to them […] a campaign which is eminently newsworthy in
the media field may be quite hopeless from a political or legal point of view, and vice versa.
This indicates that each field has its own constraints and logics. In my study, the private university as the study’s setting is an example of field. It can be described as a
small community of individuals and professional groups with hierarchies based on specific areas of knowledge and historical background. This private university has
different faculties, departments, facilities, student and teacher expectation, curriculum, academic standards, administrative support, available resources, or students’ outcomes
that will be an arena for teachers’ action involving their habitus and capitals. For Bourdieu 1993, field functions as a possible space linked to chances of access,
aspirations and expectations, which are perceived and appreciated by the habitus. In this view, the field and habitus must be understood together. Therefore, to explore teachers’
pedagogic habitus, I will also include the discussion of the field or the teaching contexts of the teachers in a separate chapter. In addition, Bourdieu 1990, p. 99 claims that to
analyze a field, it is necessary to consider power e.g., is the field in a dominant or subordinate position in relation to others and to map out the structure of the relations
among “agents or institutions” in that field. As mentioned before, the aim of my study is
48 to explore teachers’ pedagogic habitus and the extent to which those pedagogic habitus
are capable of change following teachers’ engagement in teacher self-evaluation as a mediational activity. Therefore, I next discuss the reproduction and transformation of
habitus.
2.6.3 Reproduction and transformation of habitus
