The process of curriculum reforms: Contribution for their comprehension from the Pierre Bourdieu theory

Abstract

The main theoretical contributions of Pierre Bourdieu are located in understanding the ways in which education systems serve as institutionalized forms of social reproduction in an order determined by the socio-cultural differentiation; this process is basing in unequal distribution of cultural and symbolic capital and it derives in forms of identify and relate between members of different social groups.

Initially, the present paper will seek to identify some factors associated with learning outcomes, in addition to outlining a route that explains how exclusion and socio-cultural differentiation operate to achieve the reproduction of inequalities through some particularities of the educational offer by sector and class. Subsequently, the analysis focuses on the pedagogical action and the curriculum as cultural arbitrariness tending to favor those have had contact with the hegemonic culture in the primary forms of socialization. Finally, we present some research that, based on the conceptual or methodological approaches of Pierre Bourdieu, make a reading of the role of reforms in the educational dynamics and then we suggest some research approaches that can be made of curricular reforms from this perspective.