ABSTRACT In this paper, we aim to outline what foundations can offer in terms of understanding ed... more ABSTRACT In this paper, we aim to outline what foundations can offer in terms of understanding education and educational practice, and thus for providing a basis for teachers’ professional knowledge. We look critically at the struggle foundation disciplines often experience with coherence and integration in terms of both their relation to each other and to broader (e.g. philosophical or sociological) thought. We begin to rethink foundations more as a (strong, disciplinary and professionally orientated) region rather than a singular or a set of singulars (to use Bernstein’s terms), although one that is rather different from other regions. In doing so, we suggest that Bernstein’s work, in providing a rich lens to understand curricula and pedagogic practice while holding social and political issues and implications close, is a useful exemplar of the type of educational knowledge which should be at the core of the foundations. A revitalized region of educational foundations can offer the ‘powerful professional knowledge’ that will enable teachers to make knowledgeable professional judgements in educational practice.
This special issue of the Curriculum Journal brings together a number of scholars who have contri... more This special issue of the Curriculum Journal brings together a number of scholars who have contributed to the development of a perspective that has come to be known as social realism (c.f. Barrett & Rata, 2014; Barrett, Hoadley, & Morgan, 2017; Maton & Moore, 2010). Social realism developed initially out of a concern shared among a group of sociologists of education about the general neglect of knowledge in educational research. They attributed this neglect to a widespread and longstanding impulse to reduce knowledge to social relations of power and the often incommensurate standpoints of different groups of knowers. As a result, the organizing principles of knowledge, its production and change constituted a significant ‘blind spot’ for the field (Moore & Muller, 1999; Young, 2000; Moore & Maton, 2001). Following on from Basil Bernstein’s efforts to theorize knowledge and knowledge-producing fields, social realism endeavoured to bring these matters to the front and centre of the sociology of education. From the early 2000s there were a number of significant publications focused on the structuring of knowledge, including ‘Bringing Knowledge Back In’ (Young, 2007a), ‘For Knowledge’ (Moore, 2000), Reclaiming Knowledge (Muller 2000), and ‘Founding the Sociology of Knowledge’ (Moore & Maton, 2001). Conversations and on-going work amongst these scholars and others led to the First International Social Realism Symposium held at Homerton College in Cambridge in 2008. It brought together a broad grouping of researchers engaging in work around knowledge and education. Second (2013) and Third (2015) International Social Realism Symposia were held at Cambridge and have continued on as the Cambridge Symposia on Knowledge in Education, the new title intended to be more inclusive and to reflect a broadening focus on matters of curriculum, pedagogy and policy by researchers across a variety of backgrounds. A number of the articles in this Special Edition came out of the Fourth Cambridge Symposium on Knowledge in Education held in 2017 (the Fifth will be held in July 2019). Theoretically, the body of work that has developed in the previous 20 odd years by scholars in this loose grouping has sought to connect Bernstein to philosophies including critical realism (Moore, 2013; Wheelahan, 2010) and critical rationalism (Maton, 2014). It has also engaged with the foundational work of theorists such as Durkheim, Cassirir, Popper and Vygotsky, to name but a few. More recently the work has begun to generate its own conceptual language, most prominently perhaps in the coining of the distinction between ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘knowledge of the powerful’ (Young, 2007b). This distinction, and particularly the idea of powerful knowledge, saw social realist ideas enter the arenas of policy making (Beck, 2013) and of pedagogy (Young & Lambert, 2014). ‘Powerful knowledge’ is specialised knowledge attained through formal education, and it is powerful because of its ‘generality, coherence and explanatory power, and above all, its capacity to extend horizons’ (Muller & Young, this issue). ‘Knowledge of the powerful’ is focused on the use or origins, and the interests of those originators or users of this powerful knowledge (Muller & Young, this issue). The distinction captures the impetus behind the social realist intention: understanding the constitution of more powerful forms of
This book starts from the premise that one of the most fundamental inequalities in education is t... more This book starts from the premise that one of the most fundamental inequalities in education is that of access to the most powerful knowledge. However, the nature of that powerful knowledge, its place in the curriculum, and the role of schools and teachers in promoting its acquisition have, for some time, been sidelined in education policy developments and debates. These, depending on the national context, have tended instead to emphasise performance standards, accountability, competencies, and skills aimed at producing ‘lifelong learners’ for the twenty-first century global economy.
While there exists (a) a substantial history of debate and research on the effects of religious s... more While there exists (a) a substantial history of debate and research on the effects of religious schooling on children’s educational outcomes at the macro level; (b) a considerable amount of research examining the relationship between students’ educational outcomes and their race and socioeconomic status; and (c) ample documentation of the role of religion in the lives of African Americans, there exists little research on how individual religious involvement impacts the educational outcomes of African American students. Despite the relative dearth of such studies, a growing body of research serves to point the way towards a conceptualization of how and why religious involvement might be positively related to educational outcomes for these students. This paper draws on this growing body of research, placing students’ religious involvement within a social capital framework to examine the relationship between religious involvement, social capital, and educational outcomes. Based on the quantitative analysis of data obtained from public high school students in Buffalo, New York, it concludes that this relationship might be especially significant for black students, particularly those attending public schools in high poverty, intensely segregated urban districts.
The contents of this paper were presented by the author in June 2006 at the University of Cambrid... more The contents of this paper were presented by the author in June 2006 at the University of Cambridge’s 3rd Annual Postgraduate Symposium in Education. The paper summarises and presents conclusions from a dissertation completed shortly thereafter. The paper first examines the distribution of social capital both across and within a representative sample of six public high schools in Buffalo, New York, an industrial city that has suffered massive urban decline and is characterised by high rates of social dislocation. Though SPSS analyses indicate social capital’s positive relationship to academic achievement, individual levels of social capital are shown to be mediated most prominently by socio-economic status and, the higher a student’s household income, the greater their social capital resources tend to be. While quantitative analysis suggests that some actors are constrained in their access to social capital (based especially on socio-economic status) as a result of structural forces...
This article draws primarily on qualitative data obtained in interviews with a socially activist ... more This article draws primarily on qualitative data obtained in interviews with a socially activist urban pastor as part of fieldwork undertaken for a larger project on the relationship between religious involvement and educational outcomes among urban African American students. It demonstrates processes such as developing a critical consciousness among congregants in confronting inequality and providing a context where Black students are valued and academic success is encouraged through measures such as public recognition and role modeling—by which the church generates and applies social and cultural capital that can be instrumental in promoting improved educational outcomes. It highlights, in particular, practices that have the potential to be "carried over" to other churches and, especially, educational settings.
Large, lingering, and recently widening gaps in educational achievement exist amid growing differ... more Large, lingering, and recently widening gaps in educational achievement exist amid growing differences in access to educational opportunity along lines of race and socioeconomic status among American students. Recognizing these gaps and developing strategies for eliminating them is essential. Previous research has documented a positive relationship between religious involvement and a wide range of adolescent outcomes. Most importantly, for the purposes of this article, these outcomes include educational resilience, attainment, and achievement. However, relatively little is known about the factors behind the relationship between religious involvement and educational outcomes especially for those students most often marginalized within the mainstream education system. This article seeks in particular to explore the influence of religious involvement on the educational outcomes of urban African American adolescents. It draws primarily on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Christian Smith ...
With High-Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning: The Real Crisis in Education, ... more With High-Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning: The Real Crisis in Education, David Hursh has produced a work that is highly pertinent to the current condition of education in the USA and beyondespecially in other Anglophone nations where ...
This Bernsteinian analysis conceptualizes No Child Left Behind legislation in the United States a... more This Bernsteinian analysis conceptualizes No Child Left Behind legislation in the United States as a recent and deliberate shift towards a ''performance'' model of official pedagogic discourse. The paper posits that this shift carries the capacity to fundamentally alter teachers' professional practices and identities. It examines particularly whether the policy shift has impacted the professional practices and identities of pre-service and early career teachers, whose training has been completed in the wake of No Child Left Behind, differently than it has impacted the professional practices and identities of their veteran counterparts.
Building on the social reproduction theory of Pierre Bourdieu, this study examines the impact of ... more Building on the social reproduction theory of Pierre Bourdieu, this study examines the impact of school context and institutional agency on shaping urban students' access to social and cultural capital resources, which are selectively valued and rewarded by the education system, in two schools across two high-poverty, intensely segregated urban districts in the United States. These resources are linked in turn to students' habitus: their educational expectations and the orientations and practices they generate. Although the concept of habitus is often conceptualized as a durable product of socialization within families, we present findings to suggest conditions in schools under which it can be altered. This study elucidates key conceptual frameworks within institutional contexts that can be operationalized in shaping students' habitus and facilitating positive educational outcomes. Since the death of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in 2002, his scholarship on the relationship between schooling and social inequality has been increasingly translated, reviewed, and employed as a theoretical framework for educational research both in the United States and internationally. At this stage, it is crucial that Bourdieu's contributions not 'be kept behind glass, a museum exhibit, labeled, excavated for meanings and expounded on or ignored but nonetheless unchanging' (Maton, 2005, p. 121). This applies perhaps most particularly to structuralist and deterministic readings of some of Bourdieu's earlier works such as Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) and The Inheritors (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979), which have in some instances served to 'instill the belief that the influence of schooling [on the reproduction of social inequality] is so powerful that it is impossible to do anything about it' (van Zanten, 2005, p. 677). Rather, Bourdieu's work must continue to be developed and expanded upon, driven especially by the recognition that the social reproduction of inequality can be a 'jagged, uneven process' subject to interruption and alteration (Monkman et al, 2005, p. 5). Acknowledging that human agency and diversity within schools has, at times, circumvented broader inequalities to make dramatic differences in students' lives (Wells et al, 2005), we argue in this article that Bourdieu's theory may be valuable in explaining the role that schooling plays not only in promoting the reproduction of social inequality but also in fostering social justice and real possibilities for equitable educational opportunities and outcomes among those students most frequently marginalized within the education system. We first briefly contextualize the relationship between education and inequality before more thoroughly reviewing Bourdieu's key concepts of habitus and capital as they are operationalized within the field of the education system. As the extension and development of theory is often most effectively accomplished through the reflexive
International Studies in Sociology of Education, 2012
... Daniel Frandji, Senior Lecturer, INRP, Lyon, LAMESCNRSMMSH, Aix-en-Provence, France. ... Ac... more ... Daniel Frandji, Senior Lecturer, INRP, Lyon, LAMESCNRSMMSH, Aix-en-Provence, France. ... Acknowledgements This volume includes extended versions of papers delivered at the interna ... the mapping of the terrain of this problematique, a conceptual cartography that traced ...
This paper draws on the theory of Basil Bernstein and on more recent applications of it by Rob Mo... more This paper draws on the theory of Basil Bernstein and on more recent applications of it by Rob Moore, John Beck and Michael Young to respond to recent calls for the replacement of discipline-based university faculties and departments with ‘problem-based’ curricula and programmes of study. It considers, particularly, the potential consequences of such a shift in higher education policy for the identities of university teachers, researchers and students, and suggests that these calls for reform are premised especially on the problematic assumption that, in Bernsteinian terms, ‘regionalised’ curricular inputs can be expected to produce ‘generic’ knowledge outcomes within the university.
This review essay evaluates Karl Maton's Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a Realist Sociology of Ed... more This review essay evaluates Karl Maton's Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a Realist Sociology of Education as a recent examination of the sociological causes and effects of education in the tradition of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu and the British educational sociologist Basil Bernstein. Maton's book synthesizes the scholarship of Bourdieu and Bernstein and complements their work with "discoveries" from the world of systemic functional linguistics to produce a new "realist sociology of education." It does so by means of Legitimation Code Theory, defined as a "toolkit" to analyze knowledge construction in cultural fields, especially education. The authors of this review essay take a polyphonic approach in assessing this ambitious synthesis, offering four perspectives on Maton's book. Brian Barrett provides a Bernsteinian perspective; Dan Schubert approaches the book from his grounding in Bourdieu; and Susan Hood contributes a view from systemic functional linguistics. Michael Grenfell weaves these three perspectives together and provides introductory and concluding reflections. They aim, through their combined expertise, to use Maton's book as an occasion to take stock of the state of the field of sociology of education generally and to reflect on the questions: What is its nature and what type of knowledge does it express? To what uses may it be set and what is its place within the larger project of educational theory? Key influences in the social critiques of education that emerged in the 1970s were the works of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu and the British educational sociologist Basil Bernstein. 1 From the 1970s through the 1990s both Bourdieu and Bernstein wrote extensively on the sociological causes and effects of education from a perspective of knowledge reproduction, and their contributions had a significant impact on educational research more generally as it became 1. For an example of Bourdieu's work during the 1970s, see
Scripted curricula appealed to teachers' belief in fairness but obscured diversity. Equity was pe... more Scripted curricula appealed to teachers' belief in fairness but obscured diversity. Equity was perceived as the same standards and content for all learners. Equity as sameness dismisses structural barriers of poverty, disability and race. Concerned about loss of teacher autonomy, knowledge and expertise. New York State offered schools scripted curricular modules to assist in meeting the Common Core State Standards. Reports of teacher concerns about rushed and rigid implementation led to qualitative in-depth interviews with general and special educators utilizing the EngageNY modules. While participants expressed appreciation for aspects of the modules, they articulated an alarming ideology that inequities (including disability and poverty) could be remedied by holding students to high standards. As scripted curricula gain popularity within and outside of the U.S. our findings suggest an urgency to interrogate simplified notions of equity and the resulting loss of teacher knowledge and expertise.
ABSTRACT In this paper, we aim to outline what foundations can offer in terms of understanding ed... more ABSTRACT In this paper, we aim to outline what foundations can offer in terms of understanding education and educational practice, and thus for providing a basis for teachers’ professional knowledge. We look critically at the struggle foundation disciplines often experience with coherence and integration in terms of both their relation to each other and to broader (e.g. philosophical or sociological) thought. We begin to rethink foundations more as a (strong, disciplinary and professionally orientated) region rather than a singular or a set of singulars (to use Bernstein’s terms), although one that is rather different from other regions. In doing so, we suggest that Bernstein’s work, in providing a rich lens to understand curricula and pedagogic practice while holding social and political issues and implications close, is a useful exemplar of the type of educational knowledge which should be at the core of the foundations. A revitalized region of educational foundations can offer the ‘powerful professional knowledge’ that will enable teachers to make knowledgeable professional judgements in educational practice.
This special issue of the Curriculum Journal brings together a number of scholars who have contri... more This special issue of the Curriculum Journal brings together a number of scholars who have contributed to the development of a perspective that has come to be known as social realism (c.f. Barrett & Rata, 2014; Barrett, Hoadley, & Morgan, 2017; Maton & Moore, 2010). Social realism developed initially out of a concern shared among a group of sociologists of education about the general neglect of knowledge in educational research. They attributed this neglect to a widespread and longstanding impulse to reduce knowledge to social relations of power and the often incommensurate standpoints of different groups of knowers. As a result, the organizing principles of knowledge, its production and change constituted a significant ‘blind spot’ for the field (Moore & Muller, 1999; Young, 2000; Moore & Maton, 2001). Following on from Basil Bernstein’s efforts to theorize knowledge and knowledge-producing fields, social realism endeavoured to bring these matters to the front and centre of the sociology of education. From the early 2000s there were a number of significant publications focused on the structuring of knowledge, including ‘Bringing Knowledge Back In’ (Young, 2007a), ‘For Knowledge’ (Moore, 2000), Reclaiming Knowledge (Muller 2000), and ‘Founding the Sociology of Knowledge’ (Moore & Maton, 2001). Conversations and on-going work amongst these scholars and others led to the First International Social Realism Symposium held at Homerton College in Cambridge in 2008. It brought together a broad grouping of researchers engaging in work around knowledge and education. Second (2013) and Third (2015) International Social Realism Symposia were held at Cambridge and have continued on as the Cambridge Symposia on Knowledge in Education, the new title intended to be more inclusive and to reflect a broadening focus on matters of curriculum, pedagogy and policy by researchers across a variety of backgrounds. A number of the articles in this Special Edition came out of the Fourth Cambridge Symposium on Knowledge in Education held in 2017 (the Fifth will be held in July 2019). Theoretically, the body of work that has developed in the previous 20 odd years by scholars in this loose grouping has sought to connect Bernstein to philosophies including critical realism (Moore, 2013; Wheelahan, 2010) and critical rationalism (Maton, 2014). It has also engaged with the foundational work of theorists such as Durkheim, Cassirir, Popper and Vygotsky, to name but a few. More recently the work has begun to generate its own conceptual language, most prominently perhaps in the coining of the distinction between ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘knowledge of the powerful’ (Young, 2007b). This distinction, and particularly the idea of powerful knowledge, saw social realist ideas enter the arenas of policy making (Beck, 2013) and of pedagogy (Young & Lambert, 2014). ‘Powerful knowledge’ is specialised knowledge attained through formal education, and it is powerful because of its ‘generality, coherence and explanatory power, and above all, its capacity to extend horizons’ (Muller & Young, this issue). ‘Knowledge of the powerful’ is focused on the use or origins, and the interests of those originators or users of this powerful knowledge (Muller & Young, this issue). The distinction captures the impetus behind the social realist intention: understanding the constitution of more powerful forms of
This book starts from the premise that one of the most fundamental inequalities in education is t... more This book starts from the premise that one of the most fundamental inequalities in education is that of access to the most powerful knowledge. However, the nature of that powerful knowledge, its place in the curriculum, and the role of schools and teachers in promoting its acquisition have, for some time, been sidelined in education policy developments and debates. These, depending on the national context, have tended instead to emphasise performance standards, accountability, competencies, and skills aimed at producing ‘lifelong learners’ for the twenty-first century global economy.
While there exists (a) a substantial history of debate and research on the effects of religious s... more While there exists (a) a substantial history of debate and research on the effects of religious schooling on children’s educational outcomes at the macro level; (b) a considerable amount of research examining the relationship between students’ educational outcomes and their race and socioeconomic status; and (c) ample documentation of the role of religion in the lives of African Americans, there exists little research on how individual religious involvement impacts the educational outcomes of African American students. Despite the relative dearth of such studies, a growing body of research serves to point the way towards a conceptualization of how and why religious involvement might be positively related to educational outcomes for these students. This paper draws on this growing body of research, placing students’ religious involvement within a social capital framework to examine the relationship between religious involvement, social capital, and educational outcomes. Based on the quantitative analysis of data obtained from public high school students in Buffalo, New York, it concludes that this relationship might be especially significant for black students, particularly those attending public schools in high poverty, intensely segregated urban districts.
The contents of this paper were presented by the author in June 2006 at the University of Cambrid... more The contents of this paper were presented by the author in June 2006 at the University of Cambridge’s 3rd Annual Postgraduate Symposium in Education. The paper summarises and presents conclusions from a dissertation completed shortly thereafter. The paper first examines the distribution of social capital both across and within a representative sample of six public high schools in Buffalo, New York, an industrial city that has suffered massive urban decline and is characterised by high rates of social dislocation. Though SPSS analyses indicate social capital’s positive relationship to academic achievement, individual levels of social capital are shown to be mediated most prominently by socio-economic status and, the higher a student’s household income, the greater their social capital resources tend to be. While quantitative analysis suggests that some actors are constrained in their access to social capital (based especially on socio-economic status) as a result of structural forces...
This article draws primarily on qualitative data obtained in interviews with a socially activist ... more This article draws primarily on qualitative data obtained in interviews with a socially activist urban pastor as part of fieldwork undertaken for a larger project on the relationship between religious involvement and educational outcomes among urban African American students. It demonstrates processes such as developing a critical consciousness among congregants in confronting inequality and providing a context where Black students are valued and academic success is encouraged through measures such as public recognition and role modeling—by which the church generates and applies social and cultural capital that can be instrumental in promoting improved educational outcomes. It highlights, in particular, practices that have the potential to be "carried over" to other churches and, especially, educational settings.
Large, lingering, and recently widening gaps in educational achievement exist amid growing differ... more Large, lingering, and recently widening gaps in educational achievement exist amid growing differences in access to educational opportunity along lines of race and socioeconomic status among American students. Recognizing these gaps and developing strategies for eliminating them is essential. Previous research has documented a positive relationship between religious involvement and a wide range of adolescent outcomes. Most importantly, for the purposes of this article, these outcomes include educational resilience, attainment, and achievement. However, relatively little is known about the factors behind the relationship between religious involvement and educational outcomes especially for those students most often marginalized within the mainstream education system. This article seeks in particular to explore the influence of religious involvement on the educational outcomes of urban African American adolescents. It draws primarily on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Christian Smith ...
With High-Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning: The Real Crisis in Education, ... more With High-Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning: The Real Crisis in Education, David Hursh has produced a work that is highly pertinent to the current condition of education in the USA and beyondespecially in other Anglophone nations where ...
This Bernsteinian analysis conceptualizes No Child Left Behind legislation in the United States a... more This Bernsteinian analysis conceptualizes No Child Left Behind legislation in the United States as a recent and deliberate shift towards a ''performance'' model of official pedagogic discourse. The paper posits that this shift carries the capacity to fundamentally alter teachers' professional practices and identities. It examines particularly whether the policy shift has impacted the professional practices and identities of pre-service and early career teachers, whose training has been completed in the wake of No Child Left Behind, differently than it has impacted the professional practices and identities of their veteran counterparts.
Building on the social reproduction theory of Pierre Bourdieu, this study examines the impact of ... more Building on the social reproduction theory of Pierre Bourdieu, this study examines the impact of school context and institutional agency on shaping urban students' access to social and cultural capital resources, which are selectively valued and rewarded by the education system, in two schools across two high-poverty, intensely segregated urban districts in the United States. These resources are linked in turn to students' habitus: their educational expectations and the orientations and practices they generate. Although the concept of habitus is often conceptualized as a durable product of socialization within families, we present findings to suggest conditions in schools under which it can be altered. This study elucidates key conceptual frameworks within institutional contexts that can be operationalized in shaping students' habitus and facilitating positive educational outcomes. Since the death of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in 2002, his scholarship on the relationship between schooling and social inequality has been increasingly translated, reviewed, and employed as a theoretical framework for educational research both in the United States and internationally. At this stage, it is crucial that Bourdieu's contributions not 'be kept behind glass, a museum exhibit, labeled, excavated for meanings and expounded on or ignored but nonetheless unchanging' (Maton, 2005, p. 121). This applies perhaps most particularly to structuralist and deterministic readings of some of Bourdieu's earlier works such as Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) and The Inheritors (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979), which have in some instances served to 'instill the belief that the influence of schooling [on the reproduction of social inequality] is so powerful that it is impossible to do anything about it' (van Zanten, 2005, p. 677). Rather, Bourdieu's work must continue to be developed and expanded upon, driven especially by the recognition that the social reproduction of inequality can be a 'jagged, uneven process' subject to interruption and alteration (Monkman et al, 2005, p. 5). Acknowledging that human agency and diversity within schools has, at times, circumvented broader inequalities to make dramatic differences in students' lives (Wells et al, 2005), we argue in this article that Bourdieu's theory may be valuable in explaining the role that schooling plays not only in promoting the reproduction of social inequality but also in fostering social justice and real possibilities for equitable educational opportunities and outcomes among those students most frequently marginalized within the education system. We first briefly contextualize the relationship between education and inequality before more thoroughly reviewing Bourdieu's key concepts of habitus and capital as they are operationalized within the field of the education system. As the extension and development of theory is often most effectively accomplished through the reflexive
International Studies in Sociology of Education, 2012
... Daniel Frandji, Senior Lecturer, INRP, Lyon, LAMESCNRSMMSH, Aix-en-Provence, France. ... Ac... more ... Daniel Frandji, Senior Lecturer, INRP, Lyon, LAMESCNRSMMSH, Aix-en-Provence, France. ... Acknowledgements This volume includes extended versions of papers delivered at the interna ... the mapping of the terrain of this problematique, a conceptual cartography that traced ...
This paper draws on the theory of Basil Bernstein and on more recent applications of it by Rob Mo... more This paper draws on the theory of Basil Bernstein and on more recent applications of it by Rob Moore, John Beck and Michael Young to respond to recent calls for the replacement of discipline-based university faculties and departments with ‘problem-based’ curricula and programmes of study. It considers, particularly, the potential consequences of such a shift in higher education policy for the identities of university teachers, researchers and students, and suggests that these calls for reform are premised especially on the problematic assumption that, in Bernsteinian terms, ‘regionalised’ curricular inputs can be expected to produce ‘generic’ knowledge outcomes within the university.
This review essay evaluates Karl Maton's Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a Realist Sociology of Ed... more This review essay evaluates Karl Maton's Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a Realist Sociology of Education as a recent examination of the sociological causes and effects of education in the tradition of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu and the British educational sociologist Basil Bernstein. Maton's book synthesizes the scholarship of Bourdieu and Bernstein and complements their work with "discoveries" from the world of systemic functional linguistics to produce a new "realist sociology of education." It does so by means of Legitimation Code Theory, defined as a "toolkit" to analyze knowledge construction in cultural fields, especially education. The authors of this review essay take a polyphonic approach in assessing this ambitious synthesis, offering four perspectives on Maton's book. Brian Barrett provides a Bernsteinian perspective; Dan Schubert approaches the book from his grounding in Bourdieu; and Susan Hood contributes a view from systemic functional linguistics. Michael Grenfell weaves these three perspectives together and provides introductory and concluding reflections. They aim, through their combined expertise, to use Maton's book as an occasion to take stock of the state of the field of sociology of education generally and to reflect on the questions: What is its nature and what type of knowledge does it express? To what uses may it be set and what is its place within the larger project of educational theory? Key influences in the social critiques of education that emerged in the 1970s were the works of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu and the British educational sociologist Basil Bernstein. 1 From the 1970s through the 1990s both Bourdieu and Bernstein wrote extensively on the sociological causes and effects of education from a perspective of knowledge reproduction, and their contributions had a significant impact on educational research more generally as it became 1. For an example of Bourdieu's work during the 1970s, see
Scripted curricula appealed to teachers' belief in fairness but obscured diversity. Equity was pe... more Scripted curricula appealed to teachers' belief in fairness but obscured diversity. Equity was perceived as the same standards and content for all learners. Equity as sameness dismisses structural barriers of poverty, disability and race. Concerned about loss of teacher autonomy, knowledge and expertise. New York State offered schools scripted curricular modules to assist in meeting the Common Core State Standards. Reports of teacher concerns about rushed and rigid implementation led to qualitative in-depth interviews with general and special educators utilizing the EngageNY modules. While participants expressed appreciation for aspects of the modules, they articulated an alarming ideology that inequities (including disability and poverty) could be remedied by holding students to high standards. As scripted curricula gain popularity within and outside of the U.S. our findings suggest an urgency to interrogate simplified notions of equity and the resulting loss of teacher knowledge and expertise.
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