Entering the field as a sports coordinator : negotiating the micropolitics of the profession

The study reported in this chapter (Flanagan 2012) followed seven beginning HPE teachers into a variety ofurban and rural, departmental and general staffrooms in Australia (four teachers were in urban departmental staffroom settings and three in rural general school settings). We were interested in the beginning teachers' positioning experiences of the staffroom space into which they transitioned. We understood the staffroom as a physical space in which the field of education is played out, and used a narrative inquiry approach (Clandinin and Connelly 2000) to understand how beginning HPE teachers positioned themselves politically in the staffroom and how this influenced their learning and practices in their first year of teaching. Bourdieu's interconnected notions of habitus, field, practice and capital (Bourdieu 1977, 1998a, 1997 /2000) articulated well with this focus, offering a new and fresh way to understand and unpack beginning teachers' positioning experiences of the staffroom.