Disposed to Learn Schooling, Ethnicity and the Scholarly Habitus

Disposed to Learnexplores the relationship between ethnicity and dispositions towards learning, in particular the remarkable academic success of many Chinese background students and the perceptions of culturally prone failure amongst other groups.The authors challenge the tendency towards the essentializing of ethnicity within multiculturalism to argue for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between culture and academic performance. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu, they examine how home and school practices produce particular attributes that are embodied as dispositions towards learning - the scholarly habitus. The book calls for a rethinking of the goals and rationale of multicultural education, moving beyond a focus on ethnicity as a form of social inequality.

Megan Watkins is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and member of the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.Greg Noble is Associate Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney, Australia.