Creating sticky cultures: a pedagogical strategy

The pedagogic strategies of successful teachers are an important focus for educational research. Successful instructors in martial arts and combat sports earn loyalty and commitment from their students, creating an attractive culture. The paper presents ethnographic data on pedagogical strategies in two educational sites, to demonstrate the empirical and theoretical relevance of the work of Gary Alan Fine. We conducted fieldwork on two groups in the United Kingdom: one learning Historical European martial arts (HEMA) and the other the African-Brazilian dance-fight-game capoeira. These two martial arts change the embodiment of their practitioners, teach tacit and explicit skills, provide a social group, develop safe usage of novel objects, and enable learners to acquire a form of ‘ringcraft’ for contests. Students also learn about the history of their discipline, because among the pedagogic strategies used by the lead instructors are narratives about heroic figures whose beliefs and customs practitioners should emulate.