The French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu was a key thinker about education and educational processes in the second half of the twentieth century. He made his name in seminal texts such as The Inheritors and Reproduction in which he analysed academic discourse and showed how differences in cultural capital led to different outcomes for those who passed through school and university. His concepts of Habitus and Field have since been used extensively in educational research.

This book begins by setting his intellectual development within his own biography and then discusses each of his major works on education in turn: from the early studies of students and their learning to later analyses of the French academic space and the elite training colleges. There is also critical discussion of a range of commentators’ views on this approach. The book concludes with a series of applications of Bourdieusian thinking on various educational topics: teacher education, classroom discourse, higher education and policy. No educational discussion is complete without consideration from a Bourdieusian perspective. This book shows how and why.