3.1 Theories of Learning and Famous Learning Theorists
3.1.1 Human Capital Theory
3.1.2.4 Capitals (1986)
The term “capital” symbolises both a power relationship and a power resource. The lived experiences (habitus) of a person gained from relative talents of diverse forms of capitals, decide their developing perspectives within a social context and their environment. During his or her daily social collective action, a person exchanges and increases capital. Bourdieu (1986) reports
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the forms of capital in four categories: economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital.
Economic capital is instantaneous and translatable into wealth, placed in the patterns of ownership. Cultural capital is transformable, under specific terms, into economic capital and may standardise in the qualifications on the system of education.
The title of nobility regulates social responsibilities that set up social class. Symbolic capital may refer to the source of wealth for a person of honour, prestige or recognition, and acts of respect that one declares within a culture, for example, a war hero. An individual may satisfy the social duties that fix with the possibility of a high standing achieved through success, gaining symbolic capital. Although all kinds of capital are different in quality, they are like one another and can become a unique form (Accardo, 2006; Wilshusen, 2012). On a marketplace for capitals, the fact of being real accepts to substitute for others and promotes as a medium of exchange for one capital (Bourdieu, 1986). A person’s financial gain and another available source of wealth, anything of material value, fortune, and revenues are related to economic capital. Ownerships place the roles of the economic capital act as legal tender (Bourdieu, 1986). This form of capital is more straightforward when converting one to another (Rudd, 2003) and sometimes it has the power to decide on the employability. My study, for example, addresses the capacity of people to gain admission to reputed universities and for this to help students gain an internship in prominent companies. Economic capital is inadequate to buying status or position to a (great or small) extent, depending on the standard or reciprocal action with other forms of capital.
Bourdieu (1986:47) identifies three forms of cultural capital: “embodied, objectified and institutionalised. The embodied state is in the shape of progressive tendencies of the mind and body, and the objectified state is in the way of cultural commodities.” For example, instruments, machines, and documents are evidence of theories or reviews of approaches. A pattern of representation assigns the institutionalised state. For instance, if qualifications are the proceedings of education, cultural capital is to assume their responsibility. A composed and well- established family and cultural transfer of cultural capital incorporate the shapes of qualifications on the progress of learning. Again, cultural capital is the principal justification for position and statuses estimated by comparison in a social field. Cultural capital “explains the unequal scholastic achievement of children originating from different social classes by relating academic success” (Bourdieu, 1986: 47). In my study, employers selected graduates for an internship, according to their academic achievements and other life experiences. My research presents reasons and arguments in which cultural habits and tendencies relayed by the family are crucial
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to success in school (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979). Bourdieu (1986) argues that culture contributes to most of the areas which extend the qualities of economic capital.
Embodied cultural capital comprises both the benefited and the inherited properties in the passive way of one's self. In the embodied state, the cultural capital forms a permanent arrangement of tendencies and makes up one’s total of attributions associated with the mind or human capital (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1985). A particular way of action means to arrive at a result of the expression. This entails time for labour and of teaching or striking on the mind by frequent educational activity or repetition. The conventional technique is of engaging one ethnical group for compatibility in opinion and action with others (Bourdieu, 1984). Gaining integrated cultural capital can become the work of the person.
An individual owns objectified cultural capital comprising tangible and visible objects, such as tools or arts, memorials, any of many gadgets that can develop musical tones or sounds and these objects are transferable to the ownership of another person in their physical state (Bourdieu &
Passeron, 1990;). These cultural commodities can carry the cultural capital of the changing economy. Although an individual owns an objectified cultural capital, for example, by owning a painting, the person can know and recognize the nature of the artistic meaning of the art. Such happens if he or she has the right backgrounds and if throughout history he has gained knowledge from the former cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986). However, relying on the cultural capital does not come with the sales agreement for the painting except if it happens at the same time and by a cause free from external control and constraint, for instance, when a seller prefers to explain the painting to the potential buyer.
Institutionalised cultural capital comprises accepting the cultural capital owned by a person by various institutions, for instance, most in the pattern of academic certification. This certification formalises the educational testimonials or qualities and recognised organisations’ approval. This idea acts in its highest role in the labour market because it allows a full arrangement of cultural capital to show in an individual qualitative and quantitative measurement. The recognition of the institutional procedures makes the natural transforming of cultural capital into economic capital.
Institutions compare the holders’ qualifications, for instance, of two individuals having received their degrees from different higher organisations (Bourdieu, 1986).
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Social capital now is of the possible available source of wealth associated with anything owned or controlled by a long-lasting network (Siisiainen, 2000). For example, the interconnected system of more or less institutionalised connectedness of intimate familiarity and credit exist (Bourdieu, 1986). Another example could be to become a member of a group supplying each of its members with the act of allowing for the blessing and approval of the owned capital. Members would receive a testimonial or a certificate which several fields of the world recognise. Social capital also symbolises an individual’s state of being in total and complete social relations. A person or group gains this available source of wealth, and this group of people interconnects through many associations by using an institutionalised network (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).
Social capital occurs comparable to a set of permanent social relations, an interconnected system of matters or people, and it is near the collective action. These states of connectedness are present almost in the working state, in material and symbolic substitutes which support in preserving them (Bourdieu, 1986). They can further prove and assume responsibility for the act of using a standard name, for example, of a family, class, school, and party. Besides, a set of institutional laws guides social capital which comprises purpose and intent at the same time to comprehend and communicates with those who experience them (Coleman, 1990). People invest in social capital and now accepts the substitution of other capitals (Coleman, 1988). Social capital may commit to an identifying name suggesting status or role and commanding work for its introduction and preservation (Bonnewitz, 2009).
Symbolic capital connects by shared characteristics, rewards, and acknowledgement, recognising capital using colleagues’ challenges in a subject (Bourdieu, 1997). Bourdieu (1980;
1986; 1998a) projects shared knowledge and the realisation of the prominent quality of capital.
So, “on a social field, economic, social and cultural capital changed into symbolic capital”
(Bourdieu, 1972:53). The work of credit for symbolic capital depends on the field, assuming the system or the quality of being of practical use to capital. Bourdieu (1997) describes symbolic capital as the resources accessible to a person by honour and serves as a value within a culture.
Foundations of public statements, events or conditions of social perspectives in a selected society distinguish between symbolic capital that determines what makes and uses capital. The power for symbolic capital to use depends on valid exercises or social interactions. In that case, symbolic capital cannot commit to a specialised institution or be objectified or incorporated into the habitus and symbolic capital lives, it develops only in two or more separate conscious minds in reflection (Siisiiinen, 2000). Figure 3.1 summarises the specific capital proposed by Bourdieu.
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Figure 3.1 The Forms of Capital (Bourdieu, 1972; Hermann, 2004).