Bourdieu and Position-Making in a Changing Field: Enactment of the National Curriculum in Australia

This paper draws on Bourdieu's theorising (particularly habitus and field) to think about position-making of teachers in respect of the early enactment of the Australian Curriculum. Position-making, a concept developed from the analysis proffered, can be contrasted with the more common practice of position-taking endemic in a relatively stable field. Position-making is an ongoing phenomenon in a changing field when the habitus is out of place, here the field of the new Australian Curriculum, creating the effect of what Bourdieu sees as hysteresis. This paper explores the positioning and re-positioning of agents (teachers and school leaders) due to an external change (the Australian curriculum) in the schooling field. Data for this study were collected from a middle-class state high school in Brisbane Australia, which was an early adopter of the new Australian Curriculum. The initial enactment phase of curriculum change was an unsettling one that (re)positioned agents--hence, the concept of position-making, which is a contribution to Bourdieu's theoretical resources and which complements the idea of policy enactment as opposed to policy implementation. Both allow some agency in mediation of mandated changes in the specific contexts of schools and teacher/leader habitus.