The Productivity of Stillness: Composure and the Scholarly

Habitus

Megan Watkins and Greg Noble, CCR, UWS

This is a draft of a paper published as

Watkins, M. and Noble, G. (2011) ‘The Productivity of Stillness: Composure and the Scholarly Habitus’, in David Bissell and Gillian Fuller (eds.) Stillness in a mobile world Routledge, London.

We live in an era in which ‘active learning’ has become accepted

as a fundamental goal of good teaching. From early childcare to

university education (Silberman 1996; Melbourne University 2008),

‘activity’ has been uncritically elevated to a pedagogic

principle. Over several decades a critique of traditional or more

formal approaches to education has produced an increasing

emphasis on learning that is said to be more engaged, often under

labels such as ‘discovery’ or ‘experiential’ learning, enquiry

methods or ‘learning by doing’. Considered more democratic and

‘relevant’ to young people, this desire to give students a

greater role in the educational process is admirable (Cope and

Kalantzis 1993). Positioned against a straw man of ‘passive

learning’, characterised by the dominance of teacher direction,

rote learning and individuated desk work, this active learning or

progressivist perspective on education privileges student

‘ownership’ of curriculum, group-based activities and the ‘doing’

of things. A passive learner is seen as one who is quiet, sits

still and is seemingly not critically engaged whereas the active

learner who participates in discussion with other students and

perhaps moves around the classroom to access resource material is

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displaying involvement in the learning process. Stillness,

therefore, is viewed as a problem, a ‘disease’ of ‘chalk and

talk’ (Lucas, 2001: 84-85). In its most extreme form, this

emphasis on activity has been translated into ‘educational

kinesiology’, in which constant physical movement is seen to have

a direct, beneficial effect on learning, often at the expense of

content-based curriculum (Lucas, 2001: 50). While this literature

points to a consideration of the corporeal dimensions of

education, it does so in ways that ideologically inflate

‘activity’ while casting bodily stillness as ‘passivity’.

In this chapter we don’t engage in a critique of ‘active

learning’ per se; rather, we want to examine the role of

stillness in processes of learning and its relation to bodily

discipline, pedagogy and a state of composure. We take seriously

Foucault’s (1977) insistence on the productivity of discipline in

the formation of subjects with capacities and examine the impact

of discipline on the bodies of young children in the early years

of school, arguing stillness is crucial to intellectual labour

and the formation of what we term, following Bourdieu the

scholarly habitus, as a system of dispositions appropriate to

educational endeavour (Watkins, 2005; Watkins and Noble, 2008).

We draw on research investigating these issues which was sparked

by public anxieties over the educational success of Chinese

background students; an outcome achieved despite the claims that

these students are said to exhibit a passive approach to learningi. But before we can examine the findings of this research, we

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first need to explore the notion of stillness and its

relationship to a embodied disposition for academic engagement.

Stillness, Docility and Agency

For advocates of a progressivist approach to education stillness

is problematic because it is identified with traditional

schooling and its focus on discipline – the monitorial system of

nineteenth century European societies, for example, and its role

in the development of a work ethic functional to capitalist

economies and governmental control (Hunter, 1988:34-35; Preston

and Symes, 1994: 40, 135). Stillness is seen to reflect a

constriction of active engagement in learning resulting from a

harsh disciplinary regime. Here, discipline is placed in

opposition to freedom, something to be resisted (Preston and

Symes, 1994: xiv, 42). Stillness is equated with docility, a loss

of agency (because it is a result of direction by another) while

activity is perceived as the expression of agency. Much of this

line of thinking draws on a limited reading of the work of

Foucault, who included schools in his discussion of disciplinary

regimes in modern institutions.

Foucault’s initial examination had a much more developed

understanding of discipline than is often assumed: it also refers

to the knowledge and skills which need to be mastered in order to

achieve success in particular fields. He describes the emergence

of the school in modern times as ‘a machine for learning’ and

insists on the productive and enabling nature of discipline: it

‘is no longer simply an art of distributing bodies, … but of

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composing forces in order to obtain an efficient machine’. To

Foucault (1977: 136), a ‘docile’ body is one ‘that may be

subjected, used, transformed and improved’; a body is useful

because it is skilled. To put it the other way around, for a body

to be useful, to operate as an effective mechanism, it must first

assume a position of docility to allow disciplinary processes to

shape and skill it in order that it can perform specific tasks.

This is a repetitive, routinised process of surveillance and

training, much like dressage for Foucault, but the docility it

requires, and which is characterised by stillness and the self-

control of physical movement, is central to the constitution of

bodies with real capacities.

Yet, despite these insights, it is the oppressive, surveilling

quality of discipline that characterises much of his work and

certainly applications of his notion of discipline within much

contemporary social and cultural theory. He describes the

nineteenth century school, for example, as entailing a ‘morality

of obedience’ based on the prescription of absolute silence and a

Pavlovian process of ‘signalisation’ and response (Foucault,

1977: 164-7), and puts aside a discussion of the acquisition of

skill by humans with agency to focus on the ways that the

disciplinary power an individual embodies serves as a means of

subjection. Discipline may be productive for Foucault but

generally only as a tool of governmentality. Shilling (2005: 4)

critiques this emphasis on governmentality for its passive

representation of corporeality and the seeming inability of the

body to harness disciplinary power for its own purposes. Power

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doesn’t simply constrict the body but is appropriated by it

(Butler, 1997:13) and, through the process of appropriation,

bodies themselves are energised and capacitated. This is not an

argument against the role of discipline in the functioning of

power nor an attempt to ignore the oppressive nature of forms of

power, but rather an attempt to return to our understanding of

embodied subjectivity the complex, productive role of

disciplinary practices and relations. It also entails recognising

that stillness is not simply a physical state, but an acquired

capacity. This involves not just a more productive view of

discipline, but opening up a space for articulating the pedagogical

relations of disciplinary processes, that much neglected aspect

of subjectivity.

Subject formation is, of course, a relational process. It is

largely through our interaction with others that we develop. This

is of crucial importance in childhood and especially so in the

acquisition of literacy and the knowledge and skills for

successful academic engagement. Interestingly, one meaning of

‘docile’ is to be teachable (ref OED); to allow this interaction

to take place. In a sense, this is the basis of pedagogy. The

question of pedagogy is central to the discussion of schooling,

but it is also of great relevance in terms of the cultural

pedagogies of the everyday, an integral part of the process of

how we come and continue to be. While a medium of disciplinary

power, pedagogy is not simply a process of subjection in which

students simply submit to teacher instruction, but a process of

subjectification through which we become humans with generative

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powers. Pedagogy, therefore, implies an intersubjective dialectic

of teaching and learning, but the nature of this relation is

hotly debated among educational theorists and practitioners.

Progressivist academics, for example, are keen to shift the power

differential in favour of students by minimising teacher

instruction and promoting student-centred learning and the

negotiation of curriculum. Such a move, however, is premised on a

simplistic notion of power as merely imposed and repressive,

neglecting its capacity to be embodied, reconfigured and agentic.

It bifurcates teaching and learning into notions of instruction

and education. As Gramsci (1971: 35) explained, ‘It is not

entirely true that “instruction” is something quite different

from “education”. An excessive emphasis on this distinction has

been a serious error of idealist educationalists ... For

instruction to be wholly distinct from education the pupil would

have to be pure passivity, a “mechanical receiver” of abstract

notions’. As he suggests, there is more to this – there is

‘something in the mix’, in the crucible of teaching and learning.

Instruction does not need to be seen as a type of transmission

pedagogy but it does require that we acknowledge the significance

of the teacher beyond the simple reproduction of power relations.

It also requires that we theorise what it means to be receptive

to instruction – in both mind and body. Intellectual activity, we

argue, is reliant upon bodily control, a stillness that we shall

call composure and which allows a readiness to learn. Such i The educational success of students from Asian backgrounds, which in the Australian context refers to those of Chinese or South-East Asian backgrounds, and concerns about their ‘passivity’, are also evident in other Western countries such as the UK and US.

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stillness is not just an acquired capacity, then; it is a

capacity that allows for the acquisition of other capacities

through sustained attention, focusing of energy and application.

So stillness must be learned for its broader utility, but

contemporary progressivists neglect both its role in learning and

the teacher’s role in engendering such a disposition in students.

Dewey, who was himself a progressivist educator, was mindful of

the importance of docility in learning. Rather than antithetical

to his philosophy of education, he was of the view that

particular forms of docility provided the condition of

possibility for a truly liberatory education for, ‘to be truly

docile is to be eager to learn all the lessons of active,

inquiring and expanding experience’ (Dewey, 2002: 64). The

productivity of docility, then, lies not just in the way it is

manipulated by power.

While rarely emphasising the agentic potential of discipline,

Foucault prized the utility that docility affords. In some of his

last lectures at the College de France in the early 1980s,

collected together under the title of ‘The Hermeneutics of the

Subject’, Foucault details a range of practices of the self.

Crucial to our argument here, he makes a distinction between the

Greek notion of ‘askesis’ and contemporary understandings of

ascesis. In contrast to the latter, which is framed by the

Christian goal of self-renunciation, the focus of askesis is

self-improvement, equipping the body with the discipline to

learn. Central to this process is the ability to listen, which

has generally been seen as a more passive form of educational

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activity amongst progressivist educators, compared to talking,

the supposedly ‘active’ mode (Wells, 1986). Foucault, however,

draws on Greek Stoics such as Plutarch and Epictetus to outline

its importance for the cultivation of the self. Listening is

viewed as the basis for learning. In the words of Epictetus, ‘It

is the means of the spoken word and instruction that we should

advance to perfection. It is necessary to listen then, to listen

to the logos and receive this paradosis which is the teaching,

the transmitted spoken word’ (Epictetus in Foucault, 2005: 338).

It is through listening that the art of speaking is learned.

Listening then is an active rather than a passive process, ‘an

empeiria’ or acquired skill that requires ‘tribe’ or diligent

practice’ (Foucault, 2005: 339). Yet Foucault (2005: 343)

explains that in listening it is not only silence that is

important but an active demeanour and to achieve this, the body

must be as immobile as possible. Stillness, then, is a

precondition for intellectual activity.

Such stillness, then, is a specific, productive form we call

composure. We do not wish to suggest that stillness in and of

itself is intrinsically productive, but nor is movement. Clearly,

both the still and the active student could be on task, or off

it. Activity through talk is no guarantee a student is actively

engaged nor does sitting still and being quiet signal lack of

engagement. Composure, then is not cataleptic, but a readiness

that is amenable to both action itself and to learning. Although

given little emphasis within the western tradition of

progressivist education, the value of stillness and bodily

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composure is understood in other forms of learning such as in

sport, dance and mastering a musical instrument where the need

for bodily control and self-discipline, combined with practice

for skill development, is essential. The role of composure is

something readily acknowledged in sports psychology, where

stillness is necessary to both the training and execution of

physical activity (Gordin, 1998). This composure is itself a form

of acquired capacitation. Mauss (1979: 86), for example,

acknowledges the importance of composure for mountaineering

which, although seeming a bizarre skill, allowed him to sleep

upright on narrow ledges. He also generalised its importance to

education overall prizing composure for its ability to inhibit

disorderly movements and allow for the requisite coordination to

achieve particular goals. Such stillness, then, can both

encourage an active mind and an active, well-coordinated body. It

is a kind of potentiality that may conceal or promote purposeful

activity but in both cases it is crucial for scholarly endeavour.

Cultures of Schooling and the Problem of Passivity

Rethinking forms of educational stillness is particularly

important in the contemporary, multicultural context, because

there has been some concern that many Chinese (or ‘Asian’)

students are said to exhibit a passive approach to learning –

despite the educational success of this group, there is a view

that they don’t match the Western ideal of the active learner.

Grimshaw argues that passivity is one of several characteristics

commonly perceived as defining the ‘Chinese learner’, along with

a relative lack of learner autonomy, a lack of critical thinking

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and reticence in class. Despite problems with the essentialist

nature of the category itself, ‘the Chinese learner’ is typically

represented as ‘a reduced Other’, supposedly lacking skills of

critical engagement, co-operative learning and contributing to

discussion; abilities associated with the Western progressivist

tradition of education (Grimshaw, 2007).

As we have already seen above, in the dominant progressivist

paradigm of learning, ‘passivity’ and ‘activity’ are simply

dichotomised. Yet in the contemporary ethnic imaginary, this

dochotomy is also racialised. The ‘passivity’ many Chinese

students are said to display may actually constitute active

engagement in another form, namely quiet attention and

concentration; the composure the Stoics prized. Li (2004)

explains there are different kinds of silence and rather than

viewing speech and silence as opposites it is better to see them

as forming a continuum, relevant and productive at different

stages of the learning process. Li is also of the view that

criticism of Chinese students’ tendency to be quiet reflects a

lack of cross-cultural understanding in that well-meaning

teachers who encourage talk are not recognising what different

kinds of silence actually denote. Such a comment, however, seems

to simply essentialise the stillness and quiet many Chinese

students display. Indeed, as Cheng (2000) argues, whatever

patterns exist in the ethnic distribution of such capacities may

be less to so with broad cultural differences than with specific,

situated factors such as language skills.

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The point is not, however, whether Chinese students are passive –

some may be and some may not be – it is more about identifying

the practices that can promote academic engagement. Being still

and working quietly – often configured as passivity – may

actually be representative of an active mind and a demeanour we

term the scholarly habitus. Certainly, despite the perception of

Chinese students as passive learners, they are also viewed as

self-disciplined and effective workers. Students from Chinese and

other ‘Asian’ backgrounds are even perceived as having a cultural

proneness towards educational achievement, with greater (natural)

abilities in maths and science (Duffy, 2001:28). Such perceptions

have fuelled public anxiety about ‘Asian success’ within

Australian education systems. On a regular basis myths are

recycled in the media with claims such as ‘a Chinese revolution

is sweeping our schools’ (Doherty, 2005: 1).

Together with this hype around ‘Asian success’, there are also

concerns about the poor achievement of students of other

ethnicities. Those from Pacific Islander backgrounds for example,

such as Samoan, Tongan and Cook Islander students, are perceived

as being culturally prone to underachievement. In comparison to

the myths related to Asian students’ success, media coverage of

Pacific Islander students emphasises their sporting prowess

(Masters, 2009:1), involvement in crime and low school retention

rates (Hildebrand, 2003). Given this huge disparity in the

perception and to some extent the actuality of the performance of

Chinese and Pacific Islander students, we were keen to

investigate the relationship between ethnicity and achievement.

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While a huge amount of literature exists on this topic (see

Watkins and Noble, 2008), some of which relates to the groups we

are interested in, there is a tendency in this work towards an

essentialising of students’ ethnicity with broad claims on the

basis of assumptions about the neurological, psychological or

cultural basis of differing performance. Against this

pathologising of cultural background we sought to examine the

ways achievement is embodied as orientations to learning through

different home and school practices. And so, rather than a

student’s ethnicity, it was the practices in which they engaged

that related to academic endeavour that was our focus. While the

report into this study details the relationship between

dispositions to learning and the home and school practices of the

different students we investigated (Watkins and Noble, 2008), in

this chapter we focus specifically on the capacities for self-

discipline and stillness that can foster achievement that emerged

from the data.

Methodologies for ‘Capturing’ Stillness

The research informing this chapter drew on data derived from a

range of sources: a survey of parents of Year 3 students in 10

state primary schools in Sydney, Australia; interviews with

students, their parents, teachers, principals and community

representatives; classroom observations in six of these schools,

together with analysis of students’ work samples, test results

and curriculum resource material. Of the 35 students who were

interviewed, 11 were of Chinese background, 11 of Pacific

Islander background and 13 were Anglo students. For purposes of

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comparability, and given their ethnicity is far less ‘marked’

which we felt could prove interesting in an analysis of ethnicity

and educational achievement, students of Anglo background were

also included in the study. The rationale for a focus on Year 3

students, aged 8/9 years, related to a number of factors. It is a

year in which at the time of the study data was collected on

educational performance through statewide literacy and numeracy

tests. Also, in their following year, students could elect to sit

for examinations for classes for gifted students known as

Opportunity Classes, and responses to questions related to these

tests could provide useful insights into students’ and their

parents’ educational aspirations. Finally, in terms of the notion

of the development of a scholarly habitus which was a focus of the

study, dispositions to learning are evident by this stage of a

student’s school life but they are not as engrained as is

generally the case by the end of primary school, prior to their

entry to high school. Given these factors it was felt that Year 3

was an optimal time at which to investigate a child’s

dispositions to learning and the ways in which both home and

school had contributed to their formation.

The schools the students attended were selected according to the

following categories: schools with high percentages of Chinese

students (Group 1), schools with high percentages of Pacific

Islander students (Group 2 ) and schools with a reasonable

representation of each of these two groups (Group 3). As the

schools with high percentages of Chinese students tend to be of a

higher socio-economic status (SES) than those with large 13

populations of Pacific Islander students, the rationale behind

selecting schools for inclusion in Group 3 was to try and

minimise this imbalance. A number of Anglo students were selected

from across the three groups of schools. For this chapter we draw

on observational data related to five students from three of the

schools involved in the study: Chestervale Public School (PS,) a

Group 1 school; Aston PS, a Group 2 school and Broughton Heights

PS, a Group 3 school. While the survey, interviews and document

analyses yielded interesting insights into the relationship

between cultural practices and academic performance, it was the

observational data that captured the significance of embodied

capacities such as stillness for scholarly labour. Not only were

each of the targeted students observed, but so too were other

students from each of the target groups and the overall classroom

interaction revealing a range of differing capacities for

academic engagement lodged in the bodies of individual students

performing specific tasks. Against the tendency to equate

stillness with inaction, we argue that a 'productive stillness'

underlines capacities for sustained attention and self-direction.

This bodily discipline entails a state of composure, a 'staying'

of movement which entails a readiness for action necessary for

academic tasks. While it was clear that not all stillness is

‘productive’, observation revealed there are forms of stillness

which are conducive to academic engagement and the formation of

the scholarly habitus. It is this that we examine here in the

following vignettes of classroom practice.

The Bodily Capacity for Scholarly Labour

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Firstly, let us contrast two classrooms in Broughton Heights PS,

a large school in a low-to-mid SES area in Sydney’s inner south-

west with large numbers of Chinese and Arabic-speaking students,

and smaller groups of Anglo, Pacific Islander and African

students. One class is an enrichment class, in which high ability

students are placed and where there is a strong focus on academic

work. The other class has many of the least able students. The

enrichment class comprises students of mostly Chinese background,

with a smaller number of Vietnamese, Indian and Anglo background.

There is one Arabic-speaking student but no Pacific Islander

students. The second class is more diverse, and has many Pacific

Islander students, with fewer Chinese, Arabic and Anglo students.

The first time we saw the enrichment class was after recess.

Students shuffled into their classroom and sat down at their

desks with minimum fuss. Many of them pulled out books and read

them while waiting for their teacher, Heather, to enter. If they

talked, it was quietly, and often about what they were reading.

They sat still: the posture of most students was upright, even

when they were working. Some students occasionally rocked back,

stretching arms and legs. Overall, however, these students had

mastered the arts of stillness. Sonia, of Chinese background, is

a case in point – she was always work-focused, sitting still and

getting on with it. Even during unstructured discussion she

remained task-orientated displaying a substantial investment in

her work.

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In the second class the students bustled in, taking a while to

settle. Kids stood around chatting, playing, shoving each other

until the teacher, Betty, shouted at them, which she did a lot.

The noise of the students never abated, even as the teacher was

giving instructions, and it frequently reached high levels. There

was constant movement as students came in late, and teachers and

students wandered in and out. Kids visited other kids; one

student rolled on the floor. When they were directed to sit at

the front, several squatted, some sat away from the area, several

simply stood. When they were at their desks, many slouched

forward or leant back; a large number of the students rocked on

their chairs during the sessions, some constantly. The directions

of the teacher to put ‘feet on floor’ and ‘hands on heads’, or

putting her fingers to her lips to gesture for them to be quiet,

shouting or by counting back from 5 had little effect. This class

was a very active group, but little work got done. They did not

have sustained capacities of stillness appropriate for academic

activities.

In the enrichment class, the teacher didn’t have to check noise

or movement very often – the students had internalised these

behaviours as capacities that directed their work. Occasionally,

they policed each other if they were disrupted. There was

occasional talk, but it tended to be in whispers. If the task

required it, there was plenty of discussion; and some of the

students didn’t hesitate in challenging the teacher when she made

a mistake. These students’ stillness and quiet was by-and-large a

productive and appropriate state of composure, a readiness for

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activity. When required, this class was capable of concentration

and application; or, alternatively, critical discussion. We call

it composure partly because it links to the existing terminology

in sporting psychology, but also because it links to Foucault’s

(162-3) insight that modern forms of discipline rest on a

‘composition of forces’ which not only produce an efficient

organisation but individuals constituted by specific forces with

a disposition towards acting skilfully.

Betty’s class, in contrast, was in a state of decomposure, with

unproductive movement and noise. They were rarely still, posture was

poor, and many students spent little time attending to work or the

teacher. They were rarely ready for work when the teacher called

them to it. Rather they saw a change in activity as a chance for

movement and chatter. This was not the caged resentment that Willis

(1977) described in his analysis of resistance to school amongst

working class boys, a resentment which damned them to educational

failure. Even though it did not seem to be a conscious

insubordination, a similar form of ‘self-damnation’ was evident.

Sonny, a Tongan boy in this class, in contrast to Sonia,

struggled to stay on-task for more than a few minutes, and

clearly had little investment in his work. He generally didn’t

care where he was at with the task, and expected the teacher to

constantly direct him. Sonny was a very large child – the teacher

commented that his physical presence in the class was an ongoing

problem as he was unaware of other children, constantly bowling

them over. The teacher struggled to manage Sonny’s body. He

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talked frequently and loudly, and leant back on his chair despite

being placed in a way that pinned him against a cupboard. His

location in the class was telling. He was sitting at a table with

students who followed tasks, separated from the usual

troublemakers. This is significant for another reason of which

Sonny was not fully conscious. At one stage in the lesson he sat

bolt upright and pointing at each of his tablemates, yelled,

‘Miss, why am I sitting with all Chinese?’ Betty apparently hoped

that being with the quieter Chinese students Sonny would not only

be out of harm’s way, he might absorb the skills of application

they possessed!

This uneven distribution of capacities was also seen in the way

different classes undertook a maths assessment task on fractions.

While other classes treated it as a general lesson, in the

enrichment class it was completed in test conditions, which the

teacher later commented the kids loved. The teacher explained the

task and the conditions – that there should be no copying, to

work in silence, concentrate on the questions, the amount of time

they’d get and what to do when they finished (further maths

work). She initiated an enthusiastic class discussion of the

topic (fractions), reminded them of work they had completed in

this area and got them to go through basic aspects of fractions.

The task was distributed and students immediately filled in their

name and the date. When they commenced their work she moved

around the room monitoring their progress. Occasionally she

directed a student to reread the instructions and towards the end

she reminded them to check their work and then gave them a five-

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minute warning. There was little movement, fiddling or talk,

unless it was a question of clarification directed to the

teacher. Most finished and moved quickly onto their maths

workbooks. There was a lively discussion afterwards as the class

went through the questions and discussed the answers and

procedure. Overall, there was a clear sense of a strong

investment in the process and the product: with many showing real

annoyance when they got things wrong, and deep pleasure when they

were correct.

While the contrast between these classes is clear, and show an

uneven distribution of particular capacities, we should be

careful not to make a simple assumption that stillness, quiet and

obedience are good, and their opposites bad. Apart from the fact

that the enrichment class showed itself capable of vociferous and

physical behaviour (as when they were completing a craft

activity), the point is really about the appropriateness and

productivity of these embodied competencies for particular tasks,

and the ability to move between these capacities when necessary.

Stillness, and its attendant capacities described above, is not a

good in and of itself. There is another kind of stillness that we

found in a class at Chestervale PS located in a middle class area

in a northern suburb of Sydney that was favoured by parents of

Chinese background. This class was by no means as unruly as

Sonny’s – classroom behaviour was generally well managed by the

teacher, and the students were fairly adept at following tasks.

Two students we observed – Walter (of Chinese background) and

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Eric (of Anglo background) – seemed at first glance to be well-

behaved students who did their work. Watching these boys for

several hours, however, we became aware of the fact that for

large chunks of the classroom time they did nothing, but were not

recognised as doing so. Walter spent 45 minutes without adding

anything to his writing – a straightforward comprehension task.

This was also run in near-test-like conditions of quiet

concentration, and Walter, apart from a few minor distractions,

seemed to be focused on the pages in front of him but actually

wrote nothing in the lesson. The teacher strolled around checking

students’ work and giving advice or praise as needed – she

managed the class quite well – but seemed not to notice when she

checked Walter’s work that he hadn’t written anything. Eric,

rather more obviously distracted, but who nevertheless seemed to

complete 1-2 questions, got by with little work by being, like

Walter, generally quiet. His distractions amounted to little more

than staring at the contents of the shelf next to him and

fidgeting. Walter and Eric were acquiring specific types of

capacities – skills in getting out of work that are also fundamentally

unproductive. Walter’s general abilities allowed him to float

through the class, but Eric’s failure to develop productive

capacities was demonstrated in his poor reading and writing

levels. We don’t wish to participate in the academic

romanticisation of such tactics as ‘resistance’, however, because

while this ‘ordinary art’ is diversionary it does not ultimately

work to ‘the advantage’ of the student (de Certeau, 1984: 29-31).

Rather, it is simply disabling.

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The example of Walter and Eric highlights two important points.

Firstly, as mentioned, stillness and quiet are not in themselves

signs of educational ‘productivity’ – such capacities always have to

be seen in context, related to specific tasks and aims. Many

teachers may encourage stillness and quiet – even reward it – simply

because it produces an orderly classroom. Secondly, we should be

wary of looking to ethnicity as an explanation of the uneven

distribution of capacities: Eric, as an Anglo student, isn’t subject

to the kind of cultural pathologising usually reserved for students

of particular ethnic backgrounds and Walter clearly did not match

the stereotype of an academically engaged Chinese student.

The grounding of dispositions in bodily capacities can be further

illustrated by considering another student in a boys-only class at

Aston PS, a composite 3/4 class with a large proportion of low SES

and especially Pacific Islander students. While Kenny, of Anglo

background, was not one of our targeted students, his example

provides further insights into the productivity of stillness in

differently capacitated bodies. In a session on handwriting and

creative writing, it was clear that Kenny had no idea about correct

grip. He simply held his pencil with a clenched fist as if he had no

familiarity with writing at all. He anguished over each letter and

not surprisingly was the last to finish the work on the board and

then made little headway with his single letters. Though difficult,

inefficient and uncomfortable, it was the style he had habituated

and it seemed without active intervention there was little prospect

of him changing. Like other boys in this classroom, his writing

demonstrated poor letter formation and uneven directionality, and

21

very limited (and incomplete) content. The writing that Kenny

produced indicated that he had not achieved the transparency of

writing technology because he had not acquired writing as an

effective bodily capacity. Moreover, while Kenny was not a

particularly unruly student, he exhibited little enthusiasm for work

– it was more a series of mechanical tasks that he was required to

do, under the gaze of the teacher. He complied, but he was not

evidently self-motivated in his learning; his manner did not evince

a disposition to learn. There are two significant points here in

relation to stillness. Firstly, Kenny demonstrates a degree of

docility in his classroom participation. He is not a disruptive

student and is readily ‘teachable’. However, the teacher has not

made effective use of this docility – it is not productive because

it hasn’t been transformed into either educationally successful

capacities or a strong disposition towards learning. In other words,

the pedagogical relation which produces productivity is absent.

Secondly, and as a result, he exhibits little bodily control in his

use of the pen: his stillness is not a form of composure as

conceptualised here.

Disciplining the scholarly habitus

Our point is not just to outline some differences in abilities,

but to begin to analyse how these contribute to the dispositions,

or lack thereof, of the scholarly habitus, to think about how

these capacities relate to particular kinds of practices at home

and school which instil specific kinds of discipline, and thus

eventually to elaborate links between schooling and cultural

22

background. Neither popular pathologies of cultural difference

nor sociologies of education which reduce these complexities to

simple categorisations of ethnicity, class or gender adequately

account for the capacities and practices at stake here (Watkins

and Noble 2008). Psychological research which demonstrates the

importance of capacities for self-discipline and critical

thinking helps enumerate the attributes of a good leaner

(McInerney and van Etten, 2001), but lacks the dynamic model of

subjectivity which would help to re-conceptualise the

constitution of the scholarly habitus. Bourdieu’s (1996) work,

for example, does offer the possibility of a generative model of

the habitus (Noble and Watkins, 2003). Moreover, he refers to

dispositions that are valued in education – self-discipline, the

ability to work intensively, confidence, independence,

contemplation, abstraction and the value of excellence – in the

context of elaborating his model of the habitus. Yet he is less

interested in exploring these capacities in relation to learning

processes and teaching practice than in discussing them as forms

of social distinction, collapsing the dynamic possibilities of

his conceptualisation of corporeality into a reproductionist

schema. Educational applications of Bourdieu also focus on the

social reproduction of inequality, separate to the technical

competencies of schooling (Lareau and Weininger 2003). To

understand the uneven distribution of educational competencies,

however, they need to be examined as generative bodily capacities

that are enabling.

23

The comparative account of these vignettes of classroom practice

provide examples of different disciplinary forms demonstrating

the ways in which school structures and pedagogic practices

affect students’ engagement in learning and overall performance

at school. As indicated, the notion of discipline used here does

not simply pertain to control, operating as a negative force

inhibiting learning – though a disabling discipline of control

was apparent in the pedagogy some teachers employed and also

framed some whole school practices. Discipline, here, has a

broader meaning. As Foucault intended, it also refers to the

knowledge and skills which need to be mastered in order to

achieve success in particular fields. But, as discussed, where

Foucault orientated his analysis to construe docility only in

terms of the manipulation of power, we want to grapple with the

complexity of discipline and corporeality. Sonia’s class (the

enrichment class), for example, is not one where passivity is the

rule, and illustrates the form of disciplined, productive

stillness crucial to educational activity. As that group of

students demonstrates, this discipline takes a material form,

whereby students’ bodies are capacitated through the control and

focus they embody. This recalls Foucault’s insight that ‘a

disciplined body is the prerequisite of an efficient gesture’

(152). This discipline predisposes students towards particular

types of endeavour; a discipline that takes the form of

dispositions as in the scholarly habitus. Differing degrees of

discipline resulting from the repeated performance of certain

practices is what distinguishes the three groups of students in

this paper.

24

Writing, listening and talking in class are all forms of labour that

require bodily control as well as forms of knowledge. Sonia, for

example, evinced capacities of stillness, quiet, attention, self-

direction and self-discipline which disposed her to engaged

learning. This is a state of composure which evinces a readiness for

activity, whether it be in learning or execution. When required, she

was capable of sustained application. This is not to be mistaken for

passivity – her stillness and quiet were productive for academic

engagement. In contrast, many in Sonny’s class were far from

composed. They did not have sustained capacities of stillness and

quiet or the capacity for self-control in an educational

environment. They manifested different types of bodily capacities

which incline them, like Sonny, towards disengagement. Eric and

Walter are different cases yet again. They displayed a degree of

quiet and stillness that was unproductive, that didn’t ready them

for engaged activity. Kenny, as we have argued,embodied a

teachability that was not made use of by his teacher.

This sense of bodily control also operates at basic levels of

mastery – as we’ve seen with Kenny – as well as readiness for

intellectual activity. Indeed, low-order capacities are stepping

stones for higher order skills. It is difficult to develop

literacy, for example, without mastering the physical skills of

writing. Such skills require a certain posture and control for

perfecting letter and word formation. Such mastery, for example,

is needed for writing to become ‘transparent’: the student stops

‘thinking’ about forming the letter or word with the pen, and

25

concentrates on the content of their writing. The physical nature

of the labour of writing stops being a conscious task and becomes

a largely unconscious capacity, which lends itself to the

development of capacities in composition, analysis and

abstraction. Neither Eric nor Kenny had developed a mastery of

the pen or their own body. In the case of Eric, Deirdre, his

teacher, commented that he had ‘immature fine motor skills’,

which affected his writing. She pointed out that ‘when your

writing doesn’t come easy it is going to take longer’, which

meant Eric ‘rarely completes things’.

The technical problems of grip and posture mean that some students

not only don’t master writing as a developed skill, but it also

impacts on their acquisition of knowledge and cognitive skills

because they never acquire a sense of efficacy, control over task

and sense of belonging at school – many of the features identified

as central to developing a disposition towards learning. The

achievement of these capacities means not only that students

internalise forms of action that allow educational work to proceed,

but that they also find in it and its outcomes a certain kind of

pleasure which forms the basis of their disposition towards this

work. The pleasure Sonia and her classmates voice is not shared by

Sonny or Kenny. In fact, one of Kenny’s classmates, Braydon, found

the postural demands of sustained academic work a source of

displeasure: he didn’t like school because ‘you have to sit up

straight … hurts my back’. The struggle that some students have in

completing tasks demonstrates little joy in schoolwork. The

composure we describe above captures the kind of readiness that

26

links specific capacities with a disposition to learning, an ability

to move into task-relevant activity quickly and which answers the

requirement of sustained attention and concentration.

Conclusion – towards a pedagogy of composure

A key benefit of articulating the capacities of composure relevant

to scholarly endeavour is that it helps wrench the concept of the

habitus away from a generic characterisation of an embodied class

history, as in the work of Bourdieu, to a recognition of the domain-

specific productivity of bodily capacities. Such capacities are a

form of ‘physical capital’ orientated to ‘situated action’; that is,

they relate to a particular task and context where they have value

and efficacy (Shilling, 2004). The competencies we’ve mentioned

above need close, observational analysis because they are productive

for larger educational skills: just as we’ve seen in thinking about

the writing skills of Kenny and Eric. Just as the sportsperson needs

to pay attention to and work upon their technique by breaking it

down into constituent components before reassembling it into fluid

movement (Noble and Watkins, 2003), so too we need to break down

educational ‘action’ into its specific components, work upon them,

before bringing them into a larger whole.1 This also means, as

educational practitioners, we need to consider not just the ‘social’

dimensions (the ways they reproduce social relations of power), but

the ‘technical’ dimension of capacities :the linking of basic

literacy, bodily control and higher cognitive tasks that Sonia has

mastered, and the others have not.

1

27

The forms of composed self-regulation we have explored here

enable concerted action. Stillness and quiet exemplify a certain

type of restraint in which physical and mental energy are focused

upon a specific task, where control of motor functions is such

that fluid movement is possible, disruptions are backgrounded and

elemental actions are automatised. This self-discipline is not

one ‘attribute’ among several, it is the condition of possibility for

all academic practice, similar to the qualities of restraint and

industry Rosenthal and Feldman (1991) showed were associated with

positive educational outcomes. It is an acquired capacity that

allows for the acquisition of other capacities. Sonia and her

classmates exhibit this control, allowing them to work

independently and with self-direction. Sonny, Eric and Kenny, in

different ways, needed an enormous amount of teacher intervention

just to stay on-task. There are, of course, a range of capacities

that are productive in other actions. The physicality

demonstrated by Sonny, for example, might be useful on a football

field, where stillness and quiet are less valuable. But our point

here is that educational achievement fundamentally requires the

dispositions of the scholarly habitus.

This approach allows us to shift away from seeing the habitus as a

mere instrument of social reproduction, based on a principle of

repetition and containment, but a dynamic and generative system of

dispositions which give us agency because they provide resources for

engagement in our social worlds (Hillier and Rooksby, 2005).

Stillness, quiet, self-control, sustained attention and

concentration, and control of writing technology, all represent

28

capacities of composure which produce efficacy in relation to

specific tasks in the classroom environment. The kinds of engagement

Sonia’s class exhibited in their wide-ranging discussions reflect an

intellectual agency that will prepare them for educational success,

the basis of which was a stillness current paradigms of learning

simply critique as a form of passivity.

As Vitalis argued thousands of years ago in relation to writing,

with intellectual endeavour, the whole body labours (cited in

Ong, 1982: 95). This form of labour entails stillness, self-

control and the bodily capacity for sustained intellectual

engagement. The conceptualisation of the scholarly habitus

outlined here, however, suggests that these aren’t given

attributes that relate to individual psychology, but stem from

the pedagogical relation and its role in the formation of

discipline. Educational practice needs to not only return to an

appreciation of the arts of stillness but to rethink the ways in

which activity in learning is understood; the ways in which an

active mind is reliant upon a capacitated body and the particular

pedagogies that, from the early years of school, can promote this

form of composure

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