Between absences and honors: control and discipline in the process of professional socialization of female teachers

Abstract

This article analyzes the professional socialization of five female teachers of the initial grades of Elementary School, who started their career at a school in the outskirts of Curitiba. The data was collected in the first half of 2006 through observation and interviews. According to Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts, professional socialization is understood as the process through which there is an incorporation of aspects of the habitus of a professional group, based on the original habitus of the agents. The school, which was a transition school, developed strategies to avoid the excessive rate of student absence and indiscipline behaviors. The data analysis, based on Bourdieu, demonstrated that the control strategies were both for students and beginning teachers. The latter rapidly adopted the strategies and started to contribute to their improvement. The research concludes that this acceptance resulted from the association of work with personal effort and endeavor, which is present in their original habitus and is maintained in their process of professional socialization.