Chapter 4 In dialogue with, Gee, Bourdieu, Lave and Wenger and Bernstein
4.4 Bernstein‘s pedagogic device
knowledge and the subject (the one making claims to knowledge).To show how these relations operate, Sayer (2000 p. 42) states that
the relation between knowledge and its referents is not at all like that of mirroring an object or reproducing or representing a copy of it. If we don‘t understand something, then it is no help whatsoever to have a mirror image or exact copy of it, for we will be none the wiser. On the contrary, what we need is something different, namely a discourse. The relationship in question is one of unlikes, not likes. (If the object is itself a discourse, then, similarly, an exact replica of that discourse would add nothing that we didn‘t already know: again, what we need instead is a different discourse.
Thus, the relationship between knowledge and the knower is arbitrary and depends on experience as well as discourses available to the subject. It also follows that claims to truth when considered from the point of view of the social relation are subjective and truth is defined by ‗who‘ rather than ‗what‘ such that ―actors with different subjective characteristics are unable to make claims about this knowledge‖
(Maton, 2010 p. 157). On the contrary, the epistemic relation is about ―intelligibility, rather than replicability‖ (Sayer, 2000 p. 42). As such, knowledge claims should not necessarily mirror the world, but should interpret it in ―such a way that the expectations and practices it informs are intelligible and reliable‖ (ibid).
The issues discussed above are at the core of the pedagogic device which Bernstein has used to describe how discourses of knowledge are translated into curriculum issues (Luckett, 2010; 2009). Bernstein‘s pedagogic device consists of three fields;
the fields of production, re-contextualisation and re-production. These fields are social spaces which are characterised by conflict and perhaps competition as this discussion will show. The field of production, as the name entails, is concerned with the production of new knowledge. This is basically the practice of HEIs as well as research based institutions like the Human Science Research Council in South Africa. It is in this field that vertical discourse is most dominant. This raises a number of interesting dynamics. First, the vertical (specialist) discourse is encoded in highly complex symbolic forms (Singh, 2002). In order for this discourse to be accessible, it must be translated into a form that is accessible to those marginal to the specialist domain. The process of translating specialist knowledge is what Bernstein (1999) refers to as pedagogising knowledge. Whilst it would make sense that those who produce the knowledge should engage in the process of pedagogising this knowledge, Bernstein (2000; 1999) argues that these agents more often than not do
not have the time or the resources to do so, leaving the role of pedagogising knowledge to the fields of recontextualisation. The fields of recontextualisation are characterised by agents such as curriculum authorities and state departments.
Hence, the field of recontextualisation is the official arm of education which is closely linked to national and political agendas. Bernstein (1990 p. 184) reckons the
―pedagogic discourse is a recontextualising principle which selectively appropriates, relocates, reinforces and relates other discourses to constitute its own order and orderings‖. Unfortunately, research indicates (see Ensor, 2004; Luckett, 2009), that it is in this field that a lot of tinkering with the curriculum takes place. This is because pedagogic discourse, when recontextualised, ―takes on a different form [as a result of the] ‗discursive gap‘ that always occurs when knowledge is relocated from the field of production to the field of reproduction‖ (Luckett, 2010 p. 14). This creates room for ideologies about what is legitimate knowledge to creep into the curriculum. The third field in Bernstein‘s pedagogic device is the field of reproduction. As the name suggests, this field aims to bring together the knowledge validated by the field of production with the pedagogised (official) curriculum, translated by the re- contextualising field. Furthermore, in this field, teachers and students convert this knowledge in the recontextualising field of the classroom. In this field, pedagogic codes can be made visible or mystified and students are faced with insurmountable task of cracking these codes. When these codes are mystified, it makes it easier for those students who possess horizontal discourses (Bernstein, 1999) or primary Discourses (Gee, 1996) that are related to the privileged codes in the field of reproduction to gain epistemological access, while at the same time disadvantaging those with discourses that are less appropriate. It is important to explore how teachers/academics attempt to construct and convey knowledge in the field of reproduction as well as the nature of the relations that exist between students, knowledge and academics.
A number of implications arise from this understanding of the pedagogic device. For instance, what knowledge is validated and how that knowledge is validated by the field of production, how is that knowledge understood and translated by the field of recontextualisation, and how is that knowledge transformed into pedagogic forms by the field of reproduction. Boughey sums it up when she says: ―The result of the pedagogic device is conflict and struggle as different social groups attempt to control
the way educational knowledge is constructed (Boughey, 2009 p. 11). It is the purpose of this study, to bring to the fore the inner workings of the pedagogic device in the context of the Technical Communication for Engineers course.