The genesis of the teacher habitus—a longitudinal study with Swiss primary teacher students

Abstract

The teacher habitus concept offers a theoretical figure for the classification and interpretation of professionalization processes—especially from a vocational-biographical perspective. Milieu of origin and school biography are important for the genesis of the teacher’s habitus, since images of school life are already created in them, which are relevant for later professional action in the form of implicit orientations and explicit ideas. In the article, interview data from a longitudinal survey (3t) of primary teacher-students (N = 24), which were analyzed using the documentary method, are related to this concept. It turns out that the school biography is used as an argument for the choice of study, and frames the experience in the first internship. In the further course of the study, the professional requirements are increasingly classified against the background of one’s own skills and their concepts of the teaching profession. It can be seen, that students deal with requirements and arising crises and address their practice teacher in a very diverse way. Types of students and their habitus were identified at each time of the survey. For t2 (end of 2nd year) these were distinguished as: delimitation, extension, development, exploration and probation. On the basis of two contrastive case analyzes of the types “extension” and “development” it is shown how important one’s own school experience is and how differently the genesis of a teacher’s habitus takes place. The results illustrate the relevance of a (school) biographical reflection that should be given space to enable future teachers to access their implicit, action-guiding orientations and to make their own student habitus accessible to reflection.