Symbolic and institutional violence and critical educational spaces: in the name of education

This article will explore how symbolic and institutional violence shaped students’ understandings of themselves within the educational context, and will argue that the creation of critical educational spaces can enable students and teachers to explore and transgress the internal and external influences and violence that shape the learning experience. Bourdieu’s construction of symbolic power, violence and the institution will be employed to illustrate the complex and contradictory ways in which schools and their representatives commit egregious acts against students under the guise of benevolence. The article will also illustrate how the development of a critical educational space in a magnet program entitled the ‘Becoming Teachers Program’ enabled students and teachers to transgress and combat the normative and oppressive relations of the institution as a result of and in response to school violence, and pose some considerations for how we approach teaching for peace and social justice.