Bourdieu's Game of Life: Using Simulation to Facilitate Understanding of Complex Theories

Abstract

Undergraduate students often struggle with understanding the theories of Bourdieu, but they are essential for understanding how power and privilege are reproduced in society. Revealing students' complicity in this system is a powerful teaching moment, but it is often difficult to make the lesson and advanced theory accessible without triggering students' defense mechanisms. Discussions of oppression often generate reactions of resistance, paralysis, and rage. This article describes a simulation designed to thwart student passivity while also being cognizant of pushing students too far emotionally. By having students adopt an identity during play and then analyze the results of their simulation, students were able to identify with structural oppression and learn Bourdieu's principles of cultural capital and reproduction.

Teaching Social Theory as Cartography: Toward a Pedagogy of Radical Accessibility

“…The central issue is that students find theoretical texts unnecessarily complex (Griffiths 2015; Lowney 1998:69–70; McDuff 2012:167; Windsor and Carroll 2015:61). Specifically, they find them too abstract (Herring et al 2016:5; Macheski et al 2008:43; Pedersen 2010:198), irrelevant (Eglitis 2010:340–41; Griffith 2012:147; McCabe 2013:282; Windsor and Carroll 2015:61), archaic (Pelton 2013:108; Weber 2010:351), and sometimes simply stale and uninspiring (McDuff 2012:168, 172; Roberts and Roberts 2008:131). Students often anticipate theory courses will be harder and require far more work than other courses to succeed (Lowney 1998:69; Macheski et al 2008:43).…”

Understanding the case method: Teaching public administration case by case

“…As a consequence, the proper understanding of a problem is methodologically derived or deduced from a set of theoretical frames and empirical observations that are eventually applied to specific cases. Here, case material, if used at all, merely serves to illustrate and exemplify theories and concepts (see for example Griffith, 2012), thus facilitating the knowledge transfer from academe to administrative practice. What this approach prioritizes, however, is the mastery of scholarly knowledge and content.…”

Getting medieval on education

“…In some cases, this has resulted in a lowering of standards in general education liberal arts courses, often through sacrificing reading and writing requirements that are essential for student learning (Arum and Roksa 2011;Gusterson 2011;Kivinen and Nurmi 2003). Some commentators have even proclaimed that there is a 'crisis in the humanities' (Conn 2015;Harpham 2011;Lewin 2013 As a result, some programmes have embraced innovative pedagogies including digital humanities (Gold 2012;O'Donnell 2009;Scholes and Wulfman 2008;Spiro 2011) and immersion games (Barnard College 2019;Carnes 2014;Griffith 2012) to address this. However, perhaps the classical and medieval worlds have more to offer than we commonly think (Wood 2013).…”