Social class and pedagogy: a model for the investigation of pedagogic variation

Abstract

This article addresses an enduring concern in the sociology of education: how social class differences are reproduced through schooling. In particular it focuses on the functioning of pedagogy in this regard. The article presents a model that elucidates the inner logic of pedagogy in order to reveal the structuring of inequality with respect to different groups of students. Theoretical concepts are drawn from the work of Bernstein, Dowling (1998) and Pedro (1981). An analysis considering the relay of social class differences, what is relayed, and its organizational form is undertaken with respect to working class and middle class children learning literacy in a sample of South African primary schools.

Keywords:

• pedagogy
• social class
• social reproduction
• classroom studies
• early literacy

Acknowlegements

The research reported here benefited from support from the National Research Foundation under Grant Number 2053481, for the project ‘Pedagogy, identity and social justice’, and from assistance from the Spencer Foundation. The critical guidance of Paula Ensor and Joe Muller is also gratefully acknowledged. Any opinions, findings and conclusions are my own.

Notes

1. Recently overviewed and critiqued in Gerwitz and Cribb (2003) and Morrow and Torres (1994).

2. The general methodology for operationalizing the concepts of classification and framing broadly follows the work of Morais, Neves and Pires (2004) and Morais and Neves (2001).

3. However, it could be argued that, in this case, the teacher in fact substitutes the textbook for herself; or she recruits a proxy voice – the sequence and selection of the textbook – because her voice is not able to do the pedagogic work. Neither student nor teacher here appears to be controlling the knowledge, but rather the textbook is followed to the word, strongly dictating the sequence and selection. So an initial (iconic) selection in terms of the theme ‘trees’ is made, but from there the sequencing follows that of the textbook from the top of the page to the bottom.