The assault on the professions and the restructuring of academic and professional identities: a Bernsteinian analysis

Abstract

This paper draws upon a range of ideas and concepts developed by the British sociologist Basil Bernstein to examine recent challenges and changes encountered by members of professional occupations, including those who teach and research in higher education. The paper discusses and seeks to develop Bernstein's analysis of how particular structurings of knowledge may be related to the formation of occupational identities centred in what Bernstein refers to as ‘inwardness’ and ‘inner dedication’. It then examines a range of challenges to such identities—particularly those arising from the ‘regionalisation’ of knowledge and from ‘genericim’. The paper concludes by assessing the prospects for perpetuating such identities in an era of increasing marketization and managerialism.

Notes

For most of his career, Bernstein adopted an ‘agnostic’ stance on these epistemological issues—a stance that he only partially abandoned in his late (and in this respect, still somewhat ambiguous) paper on ‘vertical and horizontal discourse’ (Bernstein, 2000, chapter 9).

As the philosopher of education Charles Bailey once pointed out, ‘what an autonomous teacher’ (and we would include here certain other kinds of professional) ‘could not do, and retain autonomy, would be to consider (their) role simply as that of agent for someone else's decision‐making, especially where such another was not a professional …’ (Bailey, 1984, p. 237).

Since the establishment of the Learning and Skills Council to manage all post‐16 pre‐university education in England, the term further education referring to provision in the colleges has been replaced by the Learning and Skills Sector, which, significantly, includes work‐based learning and provision by private training providers.

Bill Readings highlighted an analogous emptiness in the proliferation in American universities of what he called ‘de‐referentialized discourse’; that is, terms like ‘excellence’, empty of intrinsic meaning but that are (ironically) mobilized for ‘image‐building’ purposes (Readings, 1996). Beck has observed that something similar applies to the use by New Labour of terms like ‘modernise’ (1999, 2002, 2005).

See, for example, the Green Paper Schools: Building on Success (Department for Education and Employment, 2001), which sets out a vision of teaching as a ‘modernised’ profession and claims that it provides a model for others within the public sector:

The changing economy is increasingly placing new demands on professionals in every field. In the 20th century, the professional could often expect to be treated as an authority, whose judgment was rarely questioned and who was therefore rarely held to account. Despite this … particularly in the public sector, services were arranged to suit the producer rather than the user …

Teaching, by contrast is already in many ways a 21st century profession. More perhaps than any other, the teaching profession accepts accountability … and growing acceptance of accountability means that the relationship between teachers and Government can build more than ever before on trust … In this climate, in partnership with teachers, we will take forward the agenda of reform … and complete the modernization of the teaching profession. (Department for Education and Employment, 2001, paras 5.4, 5.5. and 5.6)

For a more developed discussion of efforts to restructure the teaching profession in England and Wales, especially under New Labour, see Beck (1999, 2002).