The concept of “teacher habitus” – an overview
In discussions about teaching and learning, the term ‘teacher habitus’ is often used when referring to teachers' attitudes and beliefs in the context of educational professionalism[1]. Teachers' habitus refers primarily to their attitudes, judgements and behaviours in relation to school issues, such as assessing a pupil's willingness to work or evaluating their performance. Crucially, the habitus concept does not understand these attitudes and behaviours as something explicitly rational, but rather as unconscious and pre-conscious dimensions of human action that precede conscious decisions.
In other words, the teacher's habitus has the effect, for example, in the context of evaluating a pupil's performance, that the evaluation is also influenced by what the teacher understands by performance, but this involves a much deeper dimension of consciousness than it appears at first glance. In the context of a teacher's habitus, there are different subforms of this school-related habitus concept, such as the much-discussed 'researching' or 'scientifically reflective' habitus in teacher education. Essentially, the aim is for teachers to adopt a research-based attitude in their training, which should enable them to justify their decisions with scientific evidence.[2]
The concept of habitus helps to explain teachers' actions, but it is also controversial in the professionalisation debate. This relates to three important points.
Firstly, habitus must be understood as an implicit system of knowledge. This means that all decisions and actions are based on an unconscious and preconscious dimension, namely the habitus, which is the product of one's own socialisation and the associated social opportunities for existence. This also means that although the habitus is a product of the past, it attempts to propagate itself into the future through its social practices.[3] In other words, the habitus is the way we talk, the tastes we have, the preferences we cultivate – in short, how we operate in the world.