Capital, Power and the Struggle Over Teacher Certification

Abstract

This article employs Bourdieu’s concept of capital to understand how state officials and teacher educators in New Jersey used three different forms of capital—economic, social, and cultural—in their struggle to shape the undergraduate teacher preparation and the first state sponsored alternative route program to teacher certification. Based on analysis of state archive documents and other primary sources, I describe how state officials successfully exploited their access to cultural and economic capital to establish a legitimate and credible educational policy and to marginalize teacher educators who were forced to rely, almost entirely, on their cultural capital. I conclude that as a result of this struggle, the field of educational policy in New Jersey during the 1980s experienced a shift of power, with the state gaining more power to implement its vision of educational policy (one that relied on neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideas and that supported teachers with broader subject matter knowledge and leaner pedagogic training).