Sociology of Education: Pedagogies & Literacies
A webinar co-organized by the Canadian Sociological Association's Sociology of Education Research Cluster (CSA) and the Canadian Association of Sociology of Education (CASE).
February 26, 2026 @ 12:00 PM Eastern Time
Register for this webinar
Moderator: Johanne Jean-Pierre, York University
Presentation 1:
Amir Kalan, McGill University
Toward Postinstitutional Literacies & Autonomous Textual Communities
Over the past half-century, Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology—especially his concept of cultural capital—has profoundly impacted theorizations in language and literacy research. Bourdieu’s insights into the relationship between culture and social reproduction inspired a large range of reform-oriented theories that seek to pluralize our understanding of language and literacy. Concepts such as multiliteracies, multimodality, multilingualism, plurilingualism, and translanguaging emerged as attempts to expand the boundaries of what counts as literacy, emphasizing students’ diverse semiotic repertoires, funds of knowledge, and home-based literacies. These pluralized concepts have been celebrated as progressive responses to institutional monolingualism and monoculturalism, building on the reformist spirit of Bourdieu’s sociology. Yet, as I argue, their reformist orientation—rooted in Bourdieu’s own sociological agenda for the transformation of educational institutions has reached its limits. Despite their theoretical sophistication, pluralized concepts have produced little tangible change in educational structures. Worse still, recent global political trends have witnessed a regressive backlash that reasserts standardized literacies, monolingual norms, and nationalist ideologies. This situation calls for a paradigmatic shift: a move beyond the reformist horizon of Bourdieu’s sociology toward what I term Postinstitutional Zones of Autonomous Textual Production grounded in Sociologies of Subaltern Cultural Autonomy. Rather than treating schools as the sole legitimate sites of literacy, this approach centers community and subaltern spaces—shatter zones, urban peripheries, and digital collectives—as loci of intellectual production.
Presentation 2:
Dragana Prvulović, University of Ottawa
Teaching Between the Lines: Subversive Pedagogies & the Limits Of Integration In Vukovar's Divided Schools
This presentation examines the pedagogical practices of Serbian-language teachers in Vukovar’s ethnically divided schools, where the organization of education reflects and reinforces the city’s divisions. Nearly thirty years after the 1998 Peaceful Reintegration of Eastern Slavonia after the War of Croatian Independence, formal peace has failed to dissolve the city’s ethnic boundaries: Croat and Serb children attend parallel institutions and rarely interact. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, this study explores how minority teachers navigate a politicized educational landscape that institutionalizes separation while claiming to protect cultural rights.
I argue that these teachers employ subversive pedagogies—covert strategies that resist dominant state narratives and create safe spaces for students attending minority language schools. These practices include selectively omitting, rushing through, or complexifying historical content, downplaying nationalist commemorations, and foregrounding local experiences of Serb victimhood. Yet, while such tactics contest exclusionary state narratives, they also risk reproducing a parallel minority nationalism that reinforces division.
Theoretically, the paper engages with scholarship on spatial governmentality and the politics of post-conflict education, contributing to debates on how schooling is expected to mediate division and foster reconciliation. By situating divided education within broader structures of ethnic governance, this analysis reveals how teachers’ everyday acts of resistance illuminate both the limits and possibilities of educational justice in post-conflict societies. Participants will gain insight into how pedagogy operates as a subtle form of political action in contexts of entrenched ethnic division.