The Importance Of Social Relations In Education

Question 1

“The mediation of social relations – the dynamics of power, position, social location in the social interaction of learning – is of profound significance in education. Nowhere is the importance of social relations in learning more evident than in the dynamics of social class in schooling.” (Panofsky, 2003, p1).

Background

The current view of student achievement is that the quality of teaching that students receive determines whether or not they do well at school (Mills & Gale, 2010, p29). This statement, derived from the dominant view of society, is very inaccurate. Although this is the popular belief, it is however not as clear cut. If Bourdieu’s work in relation to habitus and the field theory is taken into account, one cannot

Panofsky agrees with Vygotsky, that there is a link between personality and class (2003, p2). “The school could play a key role in the production of the young; and students’ social being has implications for her or his life” (Panofsky, 2003, p3). In her discussion, Panofsky (2003) refers to ethnographic studies that have been done of social class difference in the lived experience of learners. There needs to be looked at issues of social relations, such as conflict and power within the dynamics of learning at an institution. Panofsky reiterates Vygotsky’s observation that “Children grow into the life of those around them and those life spaces are multiple and varied” (2003, p3). As the expansion of the environment happens, so too develops the youth’s activities and the mutual interest with a specific socioeconomic group/class. From this it is clear that how learners grow up (and in what social class), from a young age, plays a big part in how they experience life especially life at school and education as a

This part of Bourdieu’s work is very well suited to the socialcultural theory. Panofsky (2003, p5) makes use of Bourdieu’s insights to derive that his work pertaining to social classification, is very relevant to the dynamics of social class in schooling. Panofsky then also says that “social space is a kind of field, distributing and differentiating individuals by economic capital and social capital”. Symbolic violence is a concept that Bourdieu brought to the fore saying that those who have power, and those on positions of power, will exert their will unto those who don’t have power. By using this it is clear to see that the teachers to whom the ethnographic researchers refer to, are wielding the power they have as a teacher to form a norm within their classrooms through the use of symbolic violence. Placing those learners into groups according to their social classes and treating them differently because of it is a form of symbolic violence that the learners have to deal with on a daily basis. When teachers make use of these methods to differentiate learners on a social background basis, be it subconsciously, “they then produce the sorting mechanism in schooling” (Panofsky, 2003, p6). The teachers then, the ones with the power, are being symbolically violent towards the learners in their