Notes on: Singh,
P (2002) ‘Pedagogising Knowledge: Bernsteins’
theory of the pedagogic device’. British
Journal of Sociology of Education, 23(4):
571-82
Dave Harris
The device is 'the ensemble of roles or procedures
via for which knowledge is converted into
classroom talk, curricula and online
communication'(571). This provides some
explicit criteria and rules to describe the
structuring of knowledge and uncover the roles of
power and control. This study offers some
empirical examples.
Bernstein has been critiqued for Euro(etc)centrism
and for offering little applicability.
However, personally, he always insisted on making
explicit models and theories to produce data.
He warned against personal voice or authentic
experience. He always supported
disadvantaged students and opposed the
reproduction of social inequality.
The new sociology of education began the focus on
educational knowledge is problematic, although it
has been criticised for splitting knowers and
knowing rather than focusing on macro and micro
structures [weird, and associated with
Maton. It is really about an excessive the
focus on class?]. Lots of studies were
produced on how disadvantaged groups were opposed
to official school knowledge, but there was not
enough analysis of how schools knowledge came to
be privileged, especially 'an absence of explicit
rules/criteria'[well, Young did talk about
knowledge that was formal, literate and
abstract]. Bernstein took up this challenge
at different levels, 'official, pedagogic and
local' to maintain his interest in the
transmission or relay of the symbolic modalities
of practice and their effects on consciousness.
The pedagogic device leads to research that's
particularly important in the current era of
knowledge or informational societies, which also
produces increased inequalities [the knowledge
economy seems to be taken rather uncritically, as
a matter of 'increased knowledge intensity'at the
production end, and 'electronic interconnectivity
on a global basis'at the other (572)]. Both
schools and alternative learning communities play
a crucial part. The devices for pedagogic
socialization are limited, however and remain
uniform across a number of nation states.
Bernstein set out to explain this stability, and
also offered a model for change
The device is the ensemble of rules or
procedures. And this provides potential
knowledge and limits potential meaning. It
generates privileged school knowledge through
'three interrelated rules: distributive,
recontextualizing, and evaluative' (573), in
that order of importance, reflecting both power
[and entailment?]. Distributive rules
clearly distribute different forms of knowledge
among different social groups as a form of power;
this knowledge is then recontextualized to produce
specific pedagogic discourse, in the form of
delocating, relocating or refocusing it [could be
re and deterritorialization]. This is also a
process of conversion into pedagogic
discourse. Specific practice is then
evaluated in terms of what counts as valid
instructional content and social conduct.
These principles may be contested in an overall
pedagogic field, as in Bourdieu - 'the social
space of conflict and competition, an arena',
where various agents struggle to monopolise and
establish hierarchies and conversion rates.
The structure of the field is also the subject of
struggle [not overall though? The illusio
keeps it intact?]. Bernstein's resources are
similar to Bourdieu's capital, and the labour that
produces it can be economic, informational or
social. Such capital is accumulated and
realized through 'pedagogic socialization' [with a
reference to Bourdieu
and Passeron 1990]. Informational capital
can be embodied, in dispositions,
institutionalised in the form of educational
qualifications, and objectified in forms like
books or computers.
The three fields of the pedagogic device,
production, recontextualization and reproduction
are also hierarchically related in that
order. There is a division of labour in that
the production of new knowledge takes place in HE
and private research organizations,
recontextualization takes part in department of
education and training, in curriculum authorities
or specialist journals, reproduction takes place
in school institutions. [Not a very critical
analysis here, based on the formal claims of
universities as opposed to schools. Whole thing
looks very formalist]. Strong boundaries
separate these fields, providing specialist
identities. The analysis can be understood
in terms of macro 'mezzo' and micro levels as well
[with some empirical studies cited, including one
on online environments]
Meaning is structured in a similar way 'in all
societies', for Bernstein, with abstract meaning
being related to the material world and the
immaterial world, assuming a relation between
meanings and a material base [with a strange bit
about how this is a necessarily indirect
relation, to avoid determinism] .In other words we
have classic terms 'common/mundane (horizontal
discourses) and esoteric/sacred (vertical
discourses)'and two types of knowledge. The
former comes out of bodily encounters with the
world, featuring 'flux and… particulars',
driven by practical and direct wisdom [common
sense]; the latter features conceptual relations
and symbolic orders, collective representations
arising from the community itself, and can take
the form of specific disciplinary knowledge [there
is a lot of work done here by Muller and
Taylor]. Relations and abstract knowledge
are arbitrary, related by community canons,
free from natural logic [Muller and Taylor are
citing Durkheim explicitly here]. It is not
the content of each knowledge that matters, but
rather the boundaries between them [the old stuff
about classification and framing].
Esoteric knowledge has recently grown in both
volume and complexity, as in the knowledge
industries. Specialist knowledge must
therefore be 'decoded or translated (pedagogised)'
if it is to be accessible (575). The cost of
acquiring such specialist knowledge have
increased, and universal education no longer
accesses it, hence 'private tutoring, out of
school education, virtual learning
communities, and extracurricular
activities'. As the volume of specialized
knowledge has increased, so it has been grasped by
fewer people. Public trust in institutions
and expert knowledge has declined, as a 'loss of
legitimacy or certainty': nevertheless, there is
still a demand for knowledge growth [from whom
exactly?]. This only leads to more
indeterminacy as 'possibilities for self
determination' increase. [Can't distinguish
between types of knopweldge that are pedagogised?
Technical, ideological, emancipatory etc?]
Between these two areas of knowledge is
recontextualization, divided into an official
recontextualizing field, and a pedagogic
one. The first one involves all the
specialized departments of the state, LEA and
their inspectors [old stuff by now], the latter
university departments of education, specialized
educational media and publishing, and sometimes
nonspecialist fields which can influence the state
[the growth of the Web?]. The pedagogic
field is also classified internally according to
the levels and the education system, and their
relative autonomy from the state. Various
agents attempt to develop rules or procedures to
construct pedagogic texts and practices, in
pedagogic discourses, 'the grammar or syntax for
generating different pedagogic
texts/practices'(576): such discourses select
refocus and relate to other discourses, in order
to embed them, combined with 'a discourse of
competence' and a 'discourse of social
order'. An instructional discourse attends
to the syntax, while a regulated discourse refers
to the rules of internal ordering of
competences. Overall, we get a moral
regulation, related to the moral order of the
classroom [and a rather ambiguous way in fact, the
classroom is both prior to and a condition of
instructional discourses]
The modern school is both bureaucratic and
pastoral, to channel these different elements of
pedagogic discourse. Schools played a part
early on in a modern programme of pacification and
discipline in a nonviolent and pragmatic way,
incorporating Christian pastoralism, and these
different registers still affect the discourses of
schooling.
Overall, principles and rules involve the
selection and organization of a number of texts
including subject knowledge, teaching knowledge,
self and content knowledge in an attempt to
regulate 'specific pedagogic identities, such as
teacher and student of [the
discipline]'(577). However 'conflict and
contestation is rife', [why? Just anomie?]
especially if the pedagogic field is insulated
from the official one, providing some autonomy for
agents and the boundaries are also the object of
struggles for power. We see this in the
production of difference pedagogic models.
For Bernstein, these are also struggles 'between
different fractions of the middle class', and
appear in debates about critical approaches to
pedagogy, or visible and invisible pedagogies,
focused on theories of instruction and
communicative competence. Weasily, Bernstein
also seems to argue that changes in the theory of
instruction can have an effect on the whole
pedagogic discourse and practice [I don't know if
he is just summarizing some of the issues in the
struggle, or arguing that there is a genuine
element of change in the new technologies].
Such texts and discourses are reappropriated by
teachers and converted into actual classroom
knowledge after interaction with students.
This is an activity of translation from what is
being recontextualized by pedagogic agents
[confusingly described as a further
recontextualization, this time in response to
students and other teachers or families, and
designed to make discourses more effective].
[Again there are weasels about causals, maybe
suggesting a need for empirical study of actual
variations].
Teachers develop common classroom knowledge
following interactions and students, as a second
translation in the context of schools and
classrooms teachers aim to make their pedagogy is
affective, so they are often have to draw upon
discourses from families communities and peer
groups as well.
Knowledge is constructed, disseminated and
acquired in a social division of labour, with
horizontal and vertical dimensions. The
horizontal dimension refers to specialism within a
common set, school subjects in a given course, or
people sharing a common status, while the vertical
dimension refers to hierarchies of categories
within sets and between sets. Power is
required to affect hierarchies. Teachers
usually appear in a higher position than students,
although groups of students might become peer
tutors. Categories of agents and categories
of discourse interact with institutional contexts
for teaching, such as laboratories or small
groups.
Power relations appear in the principles of
classification as boundaries between categories of
agents discourses and contexts, and also affect
the categories of [legitimate] agents, including
boundaries between and hierarchies of '"different
categories of groups, gender, class, race...
punctuations in social space"', or social order
(578). However, power relations are never
static and are constantly Kant tested and
negotiated. They also appear as relations of
symbolic control, in the principles and
classifications themselves, and the rules for
exercising control within education institutions
and with the others. Interactional practices
refer to 'legitimate relations of classroom
communication'[the forms of teaching] according to
two communication principles: interactional,
organization sequences criteria and pace including
posture and dress; locational, physical location,
suitable objects and spaces.
Interactional practices also require 'recognition
rules' (579) about how meanings might be linked
together. They operate as 'inferences' for
students, derive from observing everyday
interaction and testing boundaries. Students
might recognize the rules but not be able to
actually construct or realize pedagogic texts,
except as options within parameters—realization
rules depend on framing.
Classification and framing principles are required
to legitimize particular voices and messages,
where a voice refers to syntax to generate
meanings, and message indicates the range of
'possible meanings that may be realized'.
Multiple discourses can produce contradictions or
tensions, however [classic functionalist account
of conflict]. A number of empirical studies,
[see below] are listed applying to studies of
gender and social class, and 'content and form of
classroom talk'.
Overall, the work has led to detailed and
substantive empirical studies. The model
does seem able to deal with new developments in
knowledge. Bernstein has described modern
developments 'as a "totally pedagogized society"'
(580) to describe it with the medieval period
where religion pedagogized. Lifelong
learning and learning innovation are
characteristic. Education becomes the main
way to develop technologies and rules 'for
managing whole populations'.
References
Morais Et Al (1999) BJSE 21
Chouliariki L (1996) 'Regulative practices in a
"progressive" classroom: "good habits" as a
"disciplinary technology". Language and
Education 10: 103-18 [see also Iedema, same
volume, 82-102]
Christie, F (2001) 'Pedagogic discourse in the
post compulsory and years: pedagogic subject
positioning'. Linguistics and Education
11:313-31
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