Turning a Bourdieuian lens on English teaching in primary schools: linguistic field, linguistic habitus and linguistic capital

The research project used to frame discussion in this chapter was a doctoral study of the experiences of English primary school teachers teaching pupils whose home language was not English in their previously monolingual classrooms. They taught in a region in the south of England which experienced a significant rise in the population of non-native English speakers following Eastern European member states’ accession to the EU in 2004 and 2007. The study focussed principally on the teachers’ responses to their newly arrived Polish children because Polish families were arriving in far greater numbers than those from other countries. The research aims focussed on exploring and analysing the pedagogical experiences of teachers managing the acquisition of English language for their Polish children. Critical engagement with their experiences and the ways in which they did or did not adapt their pedagogy for teaching English was channelled through Bourdieuian constructs of linguistic field, capital and habitus. The following sections explore my reasons for adopting Bourdieu’s work as a theoretical lens, the practicalities and challenges of incorporating Bourdieu’s tools for thinking in data analysis, and the subsequent impact on my research activity.

Encountering migration: English primary school teachers’ responses to Polish children

Schools in England have recently undergone a shift in their pupil demographic which in part reflects changing patterns of trans-European migration since the accession of new member states to the EU in 2004 and 2007. There is evidence that this shift is one experienced not just in inner-city schools most commonly associated with minority ethnic populations, but in a wide range of schools in rural and smaller town settings in a number of counties across the country (Vertovec, 2007). This article explores the responses of English primary school teachers to Polish children arriving since 2006 in a county in the South of England. Using Bourdieu’s logic of practice, interview data are analysed in order to examine attitudes towards Polish children and their families. Discussion centres on how teachers’ professional habitus may unconsciously govern their reception of children from Poland, and of how the teacher-friendly behaviour of Polish children and families may support a generalised construction of the Polish model learner.