The Connection of the Habitus of Pictures and Habitus Awareness of Teachers

Pictures are getting more and more important for teaching and learning. This requires the competences of teachers to select an adequate picture to fit the content. In addition, a teacher needs to anticipate the possibly multiple approaches to interpreting a picture by students. The interpretation refers to symbolism, hidden cultural meanings, atheoretical knowledge (Mannheim 1982) etc. contained in a picture, which are amalgamated to the habitus of the picture. Sociology has developed methods like the “documentary method” (Bohnsack 2010) and the “segment analysis” (Breckner 2007) to analyze and interpret the habitus of a picture.

In this presentation I will argue that the methods will have to be developed one step further to including and recognizing the influence of habitus and conjunctive space of experience (Mannheim) of interpreters – both of students and teachers. Methods driven interpretation is supposed to generate inter-subjective results but even when taught how to use the methodology rigorously, habitus and conjunctive space of experience of students and teachers affect the outcome of an interpretation. For example, in a seminar students of sociology and teacher training were taught how to analyze pictures by the methods “documentary method” and “segment analysis”. For this purpose, adverts are particularly suitable because they are generated to address specific target groups (Sinus-Milieu 2015). Depending on the conjunctive space of experience students did recognize c-list celebrities. But the interpretation of the advertisement-picture containing the c-list celebrities depended on habitus differences of the students (additionally, the interpretation of pictures by students reveal the habitus of students).

In the presentation a newly developed methodological framework for picture selection and use by teachers will be outlined. The framework aims for generating habitus awareness of teachers who have to take into account the habitus and conjunctive space of experience of homogenous and heterogeneous groups of the students.