Research and the Theoretical Field - Pauldowling.me

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organised as well-defined subjects, taught in specialised rooms, by specialist
teachers and so forth; the English preparatory school would generally fit this
bill. Bernstein (1977) referred to this kind of curriculum as operating on the
basis of a ‘collection code’—the student collected categories of knowledge, I
suppose. On the other hand, it was supposed that the progressive English
schools of the 1960s and 1970s often tended to avoid making sharp—if any—
distinctions between school subjects, everything was done in the same room
with the same teacher and so forth. Bernstein described this kind of curriculum
as being organised according to a single integrating principle and so operating
an ‘integrated code’.
The work on codes—speech and curriculum—really provided the groundwork
for two crucial categories that underpin all of Bernstein’s work. These
categories have been described in different ways in Bernstein’s work and I’m
going to simplify here. Essentially, they mark a distinction between between
and within. The category ‘classification’ (C) refers to the strength of insulation
between categories, such as school subjects. The collection code can
therefore be described as characterized by strong classification (C + ) and the
integrated code by weak classification (C - ). The category ‘framing’ refers to the
level of control imposed within categories. Again, Bernstein supposed that the
collection code school was also characterised by comparatively rigid
sequencing and pacing and teacher control over what may count as legitimate
knowledge—strong framing (F + ). The progressive school, he imagined would
exhibit very weak control on sequencing, pacing or what may count as
legitimate knowledge—weak framing (F - ). Thus the preparatory school
curriculum—the collection code—is characterised as C + F + and the progressive
school curriculum—the integrated code—as C - F - . Although Bernstein tended
to make more use of C than F in his later work, these two categories are
certainly key to an understanding of his theory and have been very important
in a good deal of the research that has been informed by it (see, for example,
Moore et al, 2006).
Finally, I will mention Bernstein’s work on the constitution of pedagogic
discourse (see Bernstein, 2000, for the mature version). Again, this is a theme
that developed over many years in Bernstein’s work. I will not trace its history,
but will simply sketch what Bernstein referred to as the ‘pedagogic device’.
Drawing inspiration from Noam Chomsky’s ‘language acquisition device’,
Bernstein posited the ‘pedagogic device’, which is to be understood as a social
mechanism that deploys of principles of recontextualisation, distribution and
evaluation. The recontextualisation principles of the device regulate what and
how knowledge is recruited from the site of knowledge production—for
example, in the university—and reconstituted as school knowledge as what he
described as an ‘imaginary discourse’; school physics, in other words, is
fundamentally different from physics as practiced by academic physicists, not
least because of the way in which the school curriculum, but not the professor,
sequences and paces knowledge. School knowledge, furthermore, does not
appear to all school students in the same form. Basically, students are
differentiated according to categories such as ‘ability’, which, following a good
deal of work in the sociology of education, often has a strong tendency to
correlate with social class: note, here, that the early work on speech codes
RESEARCH & THE THEORETICAL FIELD