This study aims to examine how professors in higher education at a public university perceive the different agents of the educational field and how the tensions and difficulties are managed at the beginning of the profession based on the notion of field from Bourdieu. Our data were based on semi-structured interviews and were analyzed by content analysis. Our results reveal difficulties related to the management of the classroom and similarities between teachers with and without previous experience with regard to insecure didactic value given to support (or not) of coworkers and the number of activities performed. It is furthermore a relationship of domination of experienced teachers on novices in university work. These power relations clearly reflect the differentiation of cultural and symbolic capital and who enters a new field, revealing the more general structures of a field from the perspective of Bourdieu.
Higher education; University professors; Content analysis; Cultural capital; Professional development