Negotiation of `how to' at the cross-section of cultural capital and habitus: Young children's procedural practices in a student-led literacy group

Abstract

In order to become productive members of an academic community, it is important for students to master its procedural practices. By adapting Bourdieu's concepts of cultural capital, habitus, and field, we examined procedural practices of first-graders from minority and low-socioeconomic-status backgrounds in the context of student-led literacy groups in an urban classroom. We applied a variety of qualitative methods to collect, analyze, and triangulate the data in this ethnographic study. The results showed that differences in cultural capital and habitus intersected within the group context and affected procedural practices in three ways: deciding to accept or reject procedural practices, scaffolding other students' use of classroom-based procedural practices, and co-constructing procedural practices. The findings indicate that grasping procedural practice knowledge and norms influences students' ability to effectively participate in classroom literacy activities, and building students' cultural capital concerning procedural practices enhances their ability to engage in these practices.