Socialised subjectivity: exploring the ‘double reality’ of a doctorate of education (EdD) bulletin board

Abstract

This paper approaches the theme of this special issue, the distinctive contribution of new technologies to collaborative thinking and learning, through an analysis of postings to an EdD bulletin board. Bourdieu's concept of habitus as socialised subjectivity is manifestly appropriate to the focus on professionality, the key theme of the course. A crucial element of the educationalists’ professional development is constituted by deliberation and dialogue, shaped in forms of a discourse associated with this community of practice. Analyses of data draw on Bourdieu's conception of the intrinsically double nature of the ‘reality’ accessible here; that in order to apprehend the ongoing construction of meanings within the bulletin board postings, we should also endeavour to attend to the ‘objective structures (spaces of positions)’ among the participants. The evidence suggests that greater success is demonstrated among learners and tutors in appropriating/demonstrating/developing their professional habitus in exchanges where symmetries in discourses are achieved, or, perhaps more accurately, asymmetries in either or both aspects of Bourdieu's ‘double nature’ of reality, are managed or avoided.