Michael Grenfell

• Phd, MA (Distinction), BA (1st Class)
• Professor Emeritus at University of Southampton

Bourdieu once commented that what was needed was a ‘new gaze’ on the social world – a metanoia. This book describes this view and how to do it. Based on biographical detail and the socio-political contexts which surrounded him, it sets out his vision of society and culture. Grounded on the distinction between traditional and modern worlds, it show...

Recent years have seen increased interest in the work of the British surrealist painter Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988). This interest has been led by two constituencies: one feminist and the other esoteric. Both match dispositional characteristics of her work and address its significance within national and internal Surrealist movements. Rather than...

This is the short version of the Main Report 'European Profile for Teacher Education' (2004)

Past research has demonstrated the positive outcomes of Strategy-Instruction in reading tasks. However, most of it has been conducted outside of school contexts, for relatively short periods of time, and has predominantly used quantitative methods. There is little SI research extending over a school semester, embedded in regular school hours, and a...

The French social Pierre Bourdieu became known as a key sociologist of education in the 1970s, contributing seminal books and articles to the “new” sociology of education, which focuses on knowledge formation in the classroom and institutional relations. His own social background was modest, but he rose through the elite French schools to become a...

Translation of conversations between the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and Michael Grenfell

The article discuses the dimension of reflexivity within the work of the social theorist Pierre Bourdieu. It alludes to the provenance of Bourdieu’s theory of practice and the epistemology, which underpins it. Language is a key element in reflexivity, the article therefore outline’s Bourdieu approach to language and the significance it holds in the...

p>The article discuses the dimension of reflexivity within the work of the social theorist Pierre Bourdieu. It alludes to the provenance of Bourdieu's theory of practice and the epistemology, which underpins it. Language is a key element in reflexivity, the article therefore outline's Bourdieu approach to language and the significance it holds in t...

This chapter addresses reflexivity and method in employing Bourdieu’s theory of practice. It is set in an historical and conceptual context, showing how an initial epistemological vision on Bourdieu’s part was actualized in practice, and in which a range of conceptual tools were developed as a logical necessity. The resultant methodology and concep...

Discussion of Bourdieu and Bakhtin in relation to literature

Bourdieu's intellectual biography is tracked through his main research studies – Algeria, education, and culture – and his theory of practice is presented. Key concepts – habitus, field, capital – are explained. Stages in research from a Bourdieusian perspective are set out together with how to carry out field analysis. There is reference to Bourdi...

Language Learner Strategies combines principles with research and classroom practice, providing a new view of language learning to inform policy and teaching methodology. Divided into three parts, the book draws links between language learning theory in the established research literature, the authors' own empirical studies and the implications for...

This review essay evaluates Karl Maton's Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a Realist Sociology of Education as a recent examination of the sociological causes and effects of education in the tradition of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu and the British educational sociologist Basil Bernstein. Maton's book synthesizes the scholarship of Bourd...

A combination of powerful political and economic factors has led to increasing interest in learning languages such as Mandarin Chinese and those of the Indian sub-continent. A particular challenge for those from an alphabet-based background can be learning the different script. Whilst there has been considerable research into the strategies adult s...

This article seeks to develop the research agenda of multilingualism and multicompetence by bringing together three research fields and their related methodologies: bilingualism, third language acquisition and language learner strategies. After a brief introduction to each area, it describes a study to explore whether bilingual adolescent students...

This paper reports on an action research project designed to develop skills in musical performance pedagogy. The subjects were a group of undergraduate students enrolled in a degree course which included developing vocal and instrumental competence alongside training as music teachers. Despite this being a highly selective course and the level of m...

Discusses Bourdieu and sport

The article reports on a study of methodological innovation involving Occupational Therapy (OT) students in higher education. It is based on an original project which examined the experiences and outcomes of non-traditional entrants to pre-registration OT education. A feature of the original project was the application of the epistemological and m...

In this chapter, I want to consider issues concerning higher education (HE) in general and in Ireland in particular from the perspective of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu writes of developing a ‘new gaze’, or metanoia, on the world. Although a comprehensive exposition of such would be lengthy and beyond the scope of this chapt...

The article begins in a reflexive mode, situating its author in relation to language and to the work of Pierre Bourdieu. This position is then used to raise pertinent issues concerning the reception of Bourdieu’s writings in the field of Anglo-Saxon academia. The author’s interpretation of the main precepts of Bourdieu’s approach to language is set...

There has been increasing concern over the poor performance and lack of interest in modern language learning among secondary-school students. Although there is some evidence as to the under-achievement of boys in modern languages (ML), there is less information as to the degree to which other factors such as social class, and bilingual or monolingu...

Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts highlights his most important concepts and examines them in detail. Each chapter deals with an individual concept and is written to be of immediate use to the student with little or no previous knowledge of Bourdieu. This new edition of the leading text is entirely revised and updated and includes new essays on Methodo...

Empirical Study of Language Learning Strategies

It is generally accepted that linguistic knowledge is a key element in the comprehension of reading of texts in a second language (L2). Research on the 'threshold level' argues that learners need to reach to a certain level of L2 proficiency in order to be able to understand printed text. However, it is still not clear when and how learners reach t...

This study was part of a PhD research to explore the writing strategies of 121 second-year undergraduate Saudi student writers who are studying English as a foreign language and for specific purposes in one of the Saudi industrial colleges: Jubail Industrial College (JIC). The writing strategies under investigation had been classified into two cate...

This paper considers the case of Intercultural Understanding (IU) as a component part of foreign language learning and teaching in the upper stage of primary schools (roughly ages 7–11 years) in the UK. It is set within a specific context of curriculum innovation, namely recent policy changes which have introduced IU as a key part of primary modern...

The second edition of this book has afforded us the opportunity to review, revise and extend our coverage of the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Each chapter has been reconsidered by the contributing authors with a view to bringing the bibliography up to date, developing discussion and clarifying points from the first edition. However, we have also added...

Although conatus appears infrequently in Bourdieu's corpus, it is of a piece with his theorizing more generally. The concept raises to philosophical self-consciousness a taken-for-granted attitude evinced in ordinary social research. Indeed, conatus is an arcane term even to most of today's philosophers, unless they happen to specialize in the hist...

Bourdieu's method maps social space in terms of the relative positions occupied by individuals and groupings within it. Field was one particular way of expressing such positions and relations. However, Bourdieu also used a broader concept of “social space” and employed a range of representational methods to offer mappings of such space. This chapte...

In the course of the five parts and fifteen chapters of this book, a selection of Bourdieu's key concepts has been put under the microscope. In Part I, the key words were biography, theory and practice. Chapter 1 gave a sketch of Bourdieu's own life trajectory and related personal events to both the socio-historical environment which surrounded him...

Pierre Bourdieu is regarded as one of the foremost social philosophers of the twentieth century. His output included extensive studies of education, culture, art and language. He went beyond being a sociologist to being regarded in the same 'public intellectual' role as Sartre, de Beauvoir and Foucault. Issues surrounding language permeate Bourdieu...

In the course of the four parts and twelve chapters of this book, a selection of Bourdieu's key concepts has been put under the microscope. In Part I, the key words were biography, theory and practice. Chapter 1 gave a sketch of Bourdieu's own life trajectory and related personal events to both the socio-historical environment that surrounded him t...

Introduction Bourdieu's use of the term interest is a good example of the way a particular concept arose and developed over the course of his professional career. In this chapter, we see the way it almost haunts his early work. Subsequently, it emerges as a key feature in his empirical analyses. Later, it is expressed as a fully-fledged concept and...

As noted in the Introduction to this book, it is rather unusual to deal with Bourdieu's concepts as discrete entities. Nevertheless, in doing so, each chapter has enabled an in-depth consideration of each term from a theoretical and practice perspective. However, it has been stressed on various occasions how Bourdieu's theory of practice is essenti...

Introduction The aim of this chapter is to offer an outline of Bourdieu's biography. There are various issues to consider. For much of his life, Bourdieu was against biography, both in terms of his own personal life details and, in fact, biographical studies in general. In an article published in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales (Bourdieu...

This paper is located within a growing body of work that considers the techniques and substantive outcomes of applying the methodological approaches of the French social theorist, Pierre Bourdieu, to a range of educational topics (for example, see Grenfell 1996, for research on teacher education; Grenfell and Hardy, 2007 on educational aesthetics;...

The French social philosopher Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) is now recognised as one of the major thinkers of the twentieth century. In a career of over fifty years, Bourdieu studied a wide range of topics: education, culture, art, politics, economics, literature, law, and philosophy. Throughout his studies, Bourdieu developed a highly specialised se...

In this chapter we examine the various claims that have been made regarding Language Learner Strategies (LLS). We adopt a chronological perspective in order to give a sense of the unfolding debates surrounding this area of research. We track LLS research from its inception in the 1970s and early studies, through to its more developed forms in the l...

Pierre Bourdieu is now regarded as one of the foremost social philosophers of the twentieth century. Born in a small village in the French Pyrenees, his extraordinary academic trajectory took him to the leading academic training schools of Paris. Eventually, he was nominated as ‘Chair’ at the College de France; that most prestigious institution whi...

This paper addresses the relationship between bilingual students and their use of language learning strategies (LLS) across their first (L1), second (L2) and third languages (L3). There is a long research tradition in studying bilingual learners from a range of perspectives: social-psychological, sociological, ethnographic, etc. Similarly, there is...

This paper explores the relationship between Bourdieu, Linguistics and Ethnography. It begins by considering the extent to which Bourdieu can be understood as a ‘linguist’ and ‘ethnographer’ through his own empirical studies of Algeria and contemporary France. It argues that Bourdieu’s own preoccupations with language were central to these studies...

The French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu is now recognized as a major contemporary critique of culture and the Visual Arts. His work was developed over a fifty year career which took in major studies of education, museums, photography, painting, the media and taste. This book sets out to do what no other has so far achieved. It exclusively addres...

Pierre Bourdieu became known to British educationalists during the 1970s when he formed part of the new wave of ‘sociologists of education’. Since this time, his publications expanded to cover a range of other topics and fields: economic, management, art and aesthetics, philosophy, politics, history, geography, etc. However, it can be argued that i...

One in eight of children growing up in Britain comes from an ethnic minority background. The educational achievement of these children is a key concern (see Gillborn and Gipps, 1996; DfES 2003). Bilingual learning is one of the avenues through which progress can be made. Many ethnic minority families are bilingual and children have the potential to...

The dimensions of time of an artistic field are at the centre of both this paper and Bourdieu’s theorising about cultural avant-gardes and their role in the ever changing ‘fashions’ of cultural production. In ‘The Rules of Art’, Bourdieu writes about the temporality of the field of artistic production; how an avant-garde comes into being; how it ma...

The dimensions of time of an artistic field are at the centre of both this paper and Bourdieu’s theorising about cultural avant-gardes and their role in the ever changing ‘fashions’ of cultural production. In ‘The Rules of Art’, Bourdieu writes about the temporality of the field of artistic production; how an avant-garde comes into being; how it ma...

This paper sets out to consider the life of Pierre Bourdieu as one of resistance to its times. This resistance was dispositional, theoretical and practical. The first related to his own background and reaction to his social trajectory. The second was his academic response to and the position he took up vis-à-vis the theoretical sphere which surroun...

The paper reports on the outcome of two EU funded research projects on Language teacher Education. The projects analysed examples of innovation and best practice across Europe. One of the outcomes of the projects was the drafting of a European Profile for Language Teacher education. The paper gives the background to the project and their main findi...

The paper discusses the work of the French Social Theorist Pierre Bourdieu who died in 2002. It gives a background to the work of Bourdieu and argues for its pressing relevance for philosophers of Education. Reference is made to both structuralism and phenomenology which shaped Bourdieu’s theories and his work in education. It sets out the main ten...

Résumé Cet exposé se présente en trois parties: Tout d'abord, il s'intéresse aux références à Bourdieu et à quelles fins celles-ci ont été faites dans l'étude des beaux-arts en Grande-Bretagne au cours des dernières décennies. Dans la deuxième partie, l'interprétation de l'oeuvre de Bourdieu est exprimée en fonction de la position relative des mais...

This paper addresses language learner strategy research. It arises from two sources: firstly, an individual background in research and writing about Language Learning Strategy research in the context of Modern Foreign Language Learning and Teaching in the UK over the past decades; secondly, a newly constituted British based interest group dedicated...

Bourdieu's social theory offers a way of understanding some of the most important features of the field of educational research, while also providing educational researchers with a rich conceptual apparatus for their practice. This article addresses both of these methodological themes and the connections between them. We begin by outlining some key...

Bourdieu begins his 1964 publication Les Héritiers with a quotation from Margaret Mead’s Continuities in Cultural Education. In it she describes the practice amongst North American Indians of using visions as a social rite de passage. Young men who had not yet received visions would listen to others’ accounts of what constituted a true vision and t...

Research output on EU project on Language Teacher Education

1. Introduction - Part I: Theory - 2. Training Teachers: In Theory - In Practice - 3. Teacher Education: Conflicting Metaphors - Part II: Practice - 4. Case Stories, Beginnings, First Steps, School Experience, Outcomes, Conclusions, Epilogue - Part III: Policy and Process - 5. Place, Time, People - 6. Developing Professional Competence - 7. Managin...

This book presents the European language teacher of tomorrow. It deals with recent trends and future developments in the training of second language teachers in Europe. Based on an EU-commissioned study of thiry-two countries, the book sets out the current provision of language teacher training across age phases. Both pre-service and in-service tea...

On using Bourdieu in educational research