The Cultural Production of Classroom Practice

With reference to ethnographic data, this paper indicates how working class Polynesian and middle class Pakeha (European) girls actively and rationally ‘produce’ classroom practice in a New Zealand secondary school. It is argued that empirical analyses of classrooms within a radical theoretical framework, such as the work of Jean Anyon, need to be informed by an understanding of student practice as structurally‐located cultural production. This is necessary in order to discuss actually how schooling contributes to social reproduction and how it might be engaged in social transformation.