Does cultural capital matter in professional settings? Educational value profiles among the personnel in kindergartens
Journal article, Peer reviewed
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Date
2019Metadata
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Abstract
This article presents a study on plausible correlations between social background and educational values in a group of 700 employees in 80 Danish kindergartens. It investigates whether the pedagogical efforts of the staff are indebted to their living milieus of upbringing. The basic premises of research are developed along Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, outlined in the concept of ‘normative acts’, which also serves as a point of departure for the research design. Employing the multiple correspondence anal-yses in continuation of the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu, the first sec-tion of the questionnaire used gathers information on the respondents’ capital as-sets. In the second section, participants are asked a number of value questions de-veloped on the basis of the framework of Mary Douglas. Subsequently, the issue is to compare the structural interrelationship between the two sections. The research results show that the respondents typically agree on pedagogical values across social background, age and position in the professional job hierar-chy. However, it also shows that there are correlations between the possession of acquired capital and values appreciated in the pedagogical work. Finally, the whole approach and findings are reconsidered concerning the research design and educa-tional research on values to come. Keywords: Pre-school, educational values, profession, social class, multiple corre-spondence analyses, Bourdieu