The school plays a key role in the production of literacy as cultural capital (Luke, 1995b). Imposing middle class values and many textual practices contribute to the conservation of class structure by restricting some students' participation. Luke (1995b) adds that the value of a student's cultural capital also depends on the availability of economic and social capital. Eitle and Eitle (2002) developed a framework for systematically examining family cultural capital. They include such items as cultural trips to art, science or history museums, extra-curricular art, music or dance classes, and household educational resources of daily newspaper, magazine subscription or regular purchase, encyclopedia, atlas, dictionary, computer, more than 50 books, and a pocket calculator. Children from advantaged backgrounds are more likely to have greater cultural capital and financial resources than the lower class. As well, they possess a habitus or disposition towards school success, which will afford them greater opportunities to access academic discourse. Habitus will be discussed further in the next section.

Habitus.

Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) define habitus as the "product of internalization of the principles of a cultural arbitrary capable of perpetuating itself after pedagogic authority has ceased and thereby of perpetuating in practices the principles of the internalized arbitrary" (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 31). That is, habitus is a culturally specific way of acting, seeing, and thinking. Habitus is a product of history and ensures that past experiences are retained in the form of schemes or the disposition held by the individual (Bourdieu, 1990).

The dominant habitus, which is passed on in a form of cultural capital, acts as a filter in a hierarchical society (Harker, 1990). Habitus is not explicit, but operates on a deeper level to shape or structure surface attitudes and beliefs, thereby ensuring social reproduction. For Bourdieu, the habitus is the basis of learning (Luke, 1995b), while Willms (1997b) talks about habitus as holding, for example, a disposition toward linguistic and social competencies.