Qualifications, quality, and habitus: using Bourdieu to investigate inequality in policies for early childhood educators

Abstract

Early childhood educators with higher qualifications are more likely to demonstrate quality in their practice; but few studies have explored the underlying factors that contribute to this relationship. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory, this article proposes that the relationship arises from social, as well as educational, inequality. Educators with higher qualifications are more likely to have the cultural, social, and economic capital necessary to develop a habitus (unthinking disposition to act in certain ways) consistent with the dominant understanding of quality practice. The doxa (shared understanding) of quality in the early childhood sector is itself shaped by two institutions through which these forms of capital are transmitted: schools, and middle-class families. Policy efforts to raise educators’ qualifications are insufficient to address these deeper inequalities. All educators require opportunities to critically reflect on how their habitus shapes their practice, and to shape the doxa of the early childhood field.

Keywords:

• Early childhood teachers
• child caregivers
• cultural capital
• personnel policy
• educational quality
• qualifications

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under Grant DP150104534, 2015–2017.