Disciplinary knowledge, pedagogy, and assessment in non-university marine engineering education – consequences for student academic success

ABSTRACT

This paper explicates the codes that prescribe and shape the marine engineer student in times of massification and high attrition rates in Danish non-university higher education. In a case study of a Danish school of marine engineering, the Bernsteinian concept of knowledge structures and Legitimation Code Theory support analysing the official curriculum along with teacher and student interviews to determine what is considered knowledge and whose knowledge is deemed important. We find that teachers’ pedagogical decisions are embedded in the epistemological and social conventions of their individual educational backgrounds. Their struggles on content and pedagogic approach make it difficult for students to understand what is legitimate knowledge and who can claim to be a legitimate knower. To offer more students epistemic access to non-university academic study and increase student success, the epistemic and evaluative logics of the pedagogic discourses to which students are exposed must be clarified and made explicit.

KEYWORDS:

• Legitimation Code Theory
• disciplinary knowledge
• academic success
• widening participation
• non-university higher education
• academic drift

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the referees for their valuable comments which helped to improve the manuscript.

Conflicts of interest

None declared.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).