Volume 63 No.4(Special Issue ) - 2017-12-31

P. Willis’s Learning to Labor: Concepts, Method, and Research Direction

P. Willis的《學做工》:概念、方法 與研究方向

Author:
Ting-Hong Wong / 黃庭康
Keyword:
anti-school culture, school organization, historical-comparative method, contested reproduction / 反學校文化、學校組織、歷史比較方法、競逐性再生產
  • Summary
  • Chinese Summary
  • Reference
  • Scholarly references
Paul Willis’ Learning to Labor is a classic in critical education studies. By bringing agencies and culture back to the discussion in sociology of education, it developed an analytical framework that synthesized structure and action as well as objectivity and subjectivity. Willis also went beyond conventional reproduction theory. He discovered that students were by no means passive recipients of the dominant ideology, that class domination was perpetuated because working-class students resisted-but not accepted- schools’ teaching, and that anti-school culture was formed at least partly by meanings, styles and practices from spheres outside schools. This article encourages scholars to use insights from Learning to Labor to further explore the connections between school education and social reproduction. It also urges that researchers go beyond Willis by extending cultural analysis to the individual level and private domain, adopting more rigorous and theory-guided definitions of “resistance” and “anti-school culture” and employing comparative method to investigate student cultures among different social groups and in diverse social settings.
Willis的《學做工》把文化及行動者主體性重新引入批判教育研究,建立了 一個能夠兼顧結構與行動、客觀與主觀因素的分析架構,也超越了當時的再生產 理論,觀察到學生並不只是被動地接受學校的洗腦,並指出學校教育與經濟體系 的斷裂,單靠學校不足以延續不平等的階級關係。Willis以實證資料證明階級子 弟因為抗拒學校的「教學典範」— 而非服從學校的教導— 而繼承勞動階層的 位置;而「小子」們反抗有部分是因為從學校以外場域而來的風格、意義及實踐 替「反學校文化」提供了資源。筆者認為,應在Willis的基礎上繼續探討教育與 社會再生產的關係。具體的做法包括:一、把階級文化的意義擴大至涵蓋個人層 面;二、嚴謹地定義「反抗」及「反學校文化」等關鍵概念;三、利用Willis的 洞見對不同學生群體、階級及社會進行比較研究。

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