Bernstein's Sociology Research Articles

Corpus approaches to the sociology of curricula: A methodological case study of human rights learning in Japan

This article discusses how corpus linguistic methods were adapted for critical research examining the content and pedagogy of human rights learning within texts approved for classroom use under Japan's official social studies curriculum. While human rights concepts are common facets of official curricula, designed to address social injustice and foster peaceful coexistence, such learning has undergone critical re-examination as being complicit in perpetuating social injustice. Drawing upon Bernstein's sociology of the curriculum and based on a corpus of upper-secondary curricular texts, this research is a pragmatic mixing of quantitative and qualitative methods that sought to understand the curriculum's potential role within learning for human rights. By way of empirical example, the article aims to inform future critical research designs within the sociology of the curriculum. Corpus-based analytical techniques were vital in demonstrating how the structuring of textbook human rights limits student engagement with social justice issues and functions instead to inculcate pride in Japanese ethnonationality.

Perspectives in Sociology of Education: Basil Bernstein and Popular Education

This paper aims to describe some contributions of the British sociologist Basil Bernstein to Popular Education. In this sense, methodologically, it reviews Bernstein's main works and addresses some bases and perspectives of Popular Education. Thus, initially the paper develops an approach on Bernstein's thought and then focuses on Popular Education, taking into account its European and Latin American characterisation. It finds out three contributions in Bernstein's sociology that are important for Popular Education, namely, (1) the theorization about speech codes; (2) the approach on so-called communicative pedagogy; (3) the dimension related to social change.

Communicating metaknowledge to L2 learners: A fragile scaffold for participation in subject-related discourse?

In this article, I highlight how two teachers seek to scaffold second language learners' use of language and engagement with texts in Grade 1 and 6. The aim is to explore the communication of metaknowledge in classroom discourse, more specifically, the communication of knowledge about language and metacognitive reading strategies. Two teachers participated in the study, and data were gathered through observa-tions, voice recordings, and the collection of teaching materials. Bernstein's sociology of education is operationalized to reveal different aspects of framing during teaching activities in second language teaching and geography. Drawing upon systemic-functional linguistics, I show how metaknowledge was fore-grounded by the teacher in ways that sometimes de-emphasized the subject-related texts and concepts expected to be at the center of the teaching. An important empirical finding is that the foregrounding of metaknowledge such as features of the language and cognitive reading strategies in teaching can result in a pseudo-visible modality of pedagogy that provides insufficient scaffolding for dealing with subject-related texts and participating substantially in classroom discourse. Implications for teaching are discussed.

Knowledge construction in discussions of research articles in two disciplines in Spanish: The role of resources of appraisal

In his study of “forms of discourse”, Bernstein (1999) differentiates what he refers to as horizontal discourse (everyday, commonsense knowledge) and vertical discourse (uncommonsense knowledge). He further distinguishes in vertical discourse two distinct modalities: “hierarchical knowledge structures” and “horizontal knowledge structures”. The first of these corresponds to what Maton (2014) calls “scientific culture”, and the second to “humanistic culture”. Bernstein proposes that knowledge in the sciences is constructed by the integration of meanings, while in social sciences and the humanities by the segmented accumulation of different “languages”. In a tradition of dialogue between systemic functional linguistics and Bernstein's sociology of knowledge, and later with its further development in Legitimation Code Theory (Maton, 2014; Christie and Martin, 2007; Hood, 2010; Christie and Maton, 2011), this paper explores how the kind of knowledge structures underlying different disciplines is revealed in differences in specific discourse semantic features of comparable texts written in Spanish. The features explored in the texts of the corpus are options of the system of appraisal (Martin and White, 2005; Hood and Martin, 2005). This system provides resources to negotiate feelings, values and different voices in discourse. Analyses apply the tools of the discourse system of appraisal to explore the ways in which knowledge claims are negotiated in a set of eight discussion sections from research articles in two disciplines, Microbiology and Sociology. The findings reveal interesting disciplinary differences that haven't been explored before in the frame of the dialogue of the two theories mentioned above on texts in Spanish. These findings can inform programs of support for academic Spanish across disciplines.

On Bernstein's sociology of pedagogy and how it can inform the pedagogic realisation of poor and working-class children in South African primary maths education

This article discusses how current South African primary maths curriculum pedagogical changes are characterised by a strengthened frame. This strengthened pedagogical frame results from strong sequencing and pacing and a transformed regulative discourse combining positional and expressive social features denoting mixed pedagogies. Sociological research indicates that the strong sequencing and pacing of pedagogic practices resonate with middle-class children and disadvantages poor and working-class learners. Drawing from both educational sociological studies and Bernstein's central thesis about the social-class basis of pedagogic framing, the paper shows how responsive pacing, sequencing, and mixed pedagogies that reflectively relate with the mathematical concepts to be relayed, ensure learning for children from different social classes. Based on the theoretical framework and related literature review, the paper explores second sites of learning strategies and compensatory pedagogic interventions that can disrupt middle-class social assumptions and support learning access for low-income-background learners in South African primary maths classes. Contextual tensions within the suggested approaches are also considered. Thus, this review offers sociological insights on humanising primary maths interactions that may interrupt social reproduction and ensure low-income children's pedagogic realisation.

On the making and faking of knowledge value in higher education curricula

ABSTRACT This paper uses Bernstein's sociology of knowledge and studies of professional knowledge and expertise to identify how knowledge value is constituted in higher education curricula. It is argued that different knowledge structures and forms of disciplinary community influence how curricula are determined, and lead to distinctive types of knowledge value that reflect curriculum purpose. Three models of curriculum construction are presented to distinguish between the constitution of value in the curricula of (i) pure disciplines, (ii) ‘stronger’ professional disciplines and (iii) ‘weaker’ occupational disciplines. These illustrate how processes of knowledge selection and transformation, and the dynamics of disciplinary and professional communities, can lead to the strengthening or undermining of knowledge value.

Writing for life? A case study of affordances of writing in four L1 upper secondary classrooms.

During the period of 1994–2011 all programmes in Swedish upper secondary school comprised a set of core subjects with the aim to entail equity on the policy level. However, a division between programmes still prevailed on the school level, particularly in the core subject L1 Swedish. The main purpose of this study has been to explore how the teaching of writing in two academic and two vocational programmes differs, which writing repertoires are developed and how writing is assessed. The study is part of a long-term ethnography of writing in upper secondary school (Andersson Varga, 2014). The data produced during the two-year field study contain field notes from writing lessons, lesson observations and talks with four teachers, as well as recorded and transcribed, semi-structured teacher and student interviews, instructions on writing tasks, student texts and teachers' responses to student texts. This article focusses on the preparation for the National Test, the afforded assignments, the realisations of the student texts and the assessment. The teachers in the four programmes handle the national syllabus in relation to the students, resulting in four different curricula in the classroom. Thus, issues of inequity, disparities in curricula as well as different expectations on students, depending on programme, became obvious. To understand the processes of social reproduction, we use Bernstein's sociology of education (1996, 2000) and the concept of the pedagogic device and pedagogic identity. However, we also show one example of interruption (Singh, 2013) in one of the four classrooms. Thus, the main results demonstrate how one particular teacher brings about change to a group of working class girls.

The relationship between knowledge structure and curriculum: a case study in sociology

This article aims to address a theoretical question, ‘what is the relationship between knowledge structure and curriculum structure?’, by answering an empirical, context‐specific question, ‘what drives and legitimates the curriculum in one sociology department?’, with an emphasis on surfacing the ‘recontextualising rules’ at work in this particular institutional context. These questions were explored by conducting a case study in the wake of a departmental review. The conceptual framework for the article is based on Bernstein's sociology of education and on those who have developed his work further. The findings support Bernstein's characterisation of sociology as a discipline with weak external boundaries, a horizontal segmental structure and a ‘weak grammar’, and, it is suggested, with knowledge claims that tend to be legitimated by social rather than epistemic relations. In this particular case study, the horizontal, segmental structure of the discipline was seen to be reflected in a curriculum that currently lacks coherence and cohesion.

Modernization of upper secondary school in Denmark

The Danish upper secondary school is currently undergoing a hyper complex process of modernization where new organizational forms, teacher-student roles and principles of management are introduced. The process is set-off most directly by a new reform. This article explores the implementation of that reform by focusing on how it is interpreted locally and put into practice by the headmasters of two different schools. On the basis of that analysis the article discusses the consequences that different ways of interpreting and managing the reform might have for the students — how do they understand, recognize and execute the new pedagogical discourses and constructions of students that the headmasters are launching? The theoretical and methodological approach of the article is based on Basil Bernstein's sociology of education. Empirically the article draws on qualitative interviews with the headmasters under analysis.

Feminist Engagements: Reading, Resisting, and Revisioning Male Theorists in Education and Cultural Studies (review)

Introduction Kathleen Weiler 1. John Dewey, Progressive Education and Feminist Pedagogies: Issues in Gender and Authority Frances Maher 2. Dubois and the Invisible Talented Tenth Cally Waite 3. Remembering and regnerating Gramsci Jane Kenway 4. Rereading Paulo Freire Kathleen Weiler 5. The Dreamwork of Autobiography: Felman, Freud, and Lacan Alice Pitt 6. Bernstein's Sociology of Pedagogy: Female Dialogues and Feminist Elaborations Madeleine Arnot 7. Coming to Theory: Finding Foucault and Deleuze Elizabeth St. Pierre 8. Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies: Theory letting you off the hook? Annette Henry 9. Ten Years Later, Yet Again: Critical Pedagogy and Its Complicities Patti Lather

A Remarkable Sociological Imagination

This paper reviews the scope of Basil Bernstein's sociology, indicating some of the research that his ideas have inspired, shaped or provoked. Although it takes a roughly chronological approach to the development of his ideas, the paper emphasizes how consistently he explored the making of societies and social classes, and the structuring of social interaction. The title of the paper reflects how successfully Bernstein met Wright Mills' criterion for a true sociological imagination--that it seeks to grasp the extent to which 'personal troubles' are 'public issues' arising from the changing forms of social inequalities as these are produced from generation to generation.

Understanding talk: Directions from Bernstein's sociology

(2001). Understanding talk: Directions from Bernstein's sociology. International Journal of Social Research Methodology: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 5-9.

Understanding talk: directions from Bernstein's sociology

Understanding talk: directions from Bernstein's sociology

Basil Bernstein's sociology of language applied to education: deficits, differences and bewitchment

Gurra was the town's ‘wise woman’. She had hidden powers; she could heal sicknesses and see into the future, but it was also generally known that Gurra had the evil eye and a spiked tongue, and could cast spells on people, change their course of life and ruin their happiness. There were several cases known in which Gurra had made difficulties for people with her arts ‐ or even driven them out of their minds. Tante Helen: This is of course just a lot of feeble‐minded talk. I knew the Sexton's widow and her daughter myself. The old lady was an outgoing and sincerely God‐fearing person and knew several old household remedies and was familiar with popular pharmacopeia, which after all is not merely to be sneered at. That she should be in league with the Devil and be able to bewitch people, or that among other things she took my poor uncle Andres Ruprechtsen's life through witchcraft, I consider to be quite unfounded assertions from unenlightened and childish people, but of course there were such people at the...

Social Work as Social Control Re-Examined: Beyond the Dispersal of Discipline Thesis

A common theme in recent historical and theoretical scholarship on the development of social and penal policy has been that of the `dispersal of discipline'. It has been suggested that social discipline in modern society is maintained as much by the institutions of welfare, particularly those of social work, as by those institutions explicitly concerned with punishment. This paper argues that large-scale historical and theoretical analyses of social control in social policy require a framework through which systematic observations of the concrete implications of this process can be made. It draws on the conceptual vocabulary of Basil Bernstein's sociology to suggest an appropriate perspective for developing an understanding of the social control effects of social policy, especially in the context of social work practice.

Bernstein's Sociology of the School -- A Further Testing

Bernstein's Sociology of the School -- A Further Testing

Bernstein's Sociology of the School--Some Propositions Tested

Bernstein's Sociology of the School--Some Propositions Tested