Painting a picture of possibility: the transmission of symbolic violence in an urban township school

Visagie, Ashley

Painting a picture of possibility: the transmission of symbolic violence in an urban township school

Master Thesis

2019

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the narratives and non-verbal communication of students and teachers in one low socioeconomic status school, with particular reference to the messages that are conveyed about student performance and student aspirations, and student responses to these messages. The validity of these messages is evaluated in relation to the contexts, conditions and interactions within the school. To this end, the study employs conceptual resources drawn from Bourdieu and Lefebvre, especially Bourdieu’s notions of symbolic violence and misrecognition. Data is derived primarily from interviews with teachers and students and from observations within the school. The study finds that students are confronted with several messages of promise and threat at school which link ‘success’ and performance to individual effort and choices. However, such messages ignore the ways in which the contexts and conditions in which schooling takes place impact on student performance and constrain their future opportunities. Even students who have great ambitions, who adopt a positive mind-set and who work hard have to reckon with the realities and narrow possibilities that come from being in an under-resourced school in a poor community. The study suggests that managerialist and meritocratic explanations of student performance, that are currently dominant in South African policy discourse, present too narrow a view of the realities that produce underperformance and that such explanations imply that students and teachers are to blame for disadvantages that are produced by systemic inequalities.

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Education

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