Binaries and beyond: a Bernsteinian perspective on change in literacy education

Abstract

In this paper, we adopt Bernstein’s notion of the pedagogic device to serve as a framework for explaining conflict and change in the field of literacy education across the past few decades, particularly in England, the USA and Australia. Following an overview of the pedagogic device and related constructs, we examine the relationship between the field of knowledge production and how this has been recontextualised into curriculum policy, firstly in the period when ‘progressivist’ pedagogy was in the ascendant, exemplified by the whole language movement, and then when a more ‘skills’ orientation took sway, with phonics as its touchstone. We argue that the pedagogic device provides a useful context for exploring how ideology operates both within fields and at the interfaces between fields. In particular, the sets of binary oppositions proposed by Bernstein can be used in crude form to describe the entrenched polarisations experienced in the field of literacy education – or they can be used in a more nuanced way to open up new possibilities for change.

Keywords:

• Bernstein
• literacy education
• the pedagogic device
• hierarchical knowledge structures
• horizontal knowledge structures