Basil Bernstein's Theory as Research Methodology in Curriculum Studies and Educational Policy Studies

In this paper we attempt to show how Basil Bernstein's theory enables us to describe and explain pedagogical practice from the point of view of transmission and acquisition of knowledge, and how, simultaneously, it is possible to connect those practices to global processes of knowledge distribution and appropriation among social groups. Bernstein's Model of Pedagogic Discourse maintains that the principles that make up the specialised communication practice are the distinctive characteristic of schools' central activity, the relationships of transmissions and acquisitions. In the model, several rules are used in order to explain that relationship: discursive rules and hierarchical rules. Discursive rules are basic rules that, by regulating social relations and the transmission, acquisition and assessment of scientific knowledge, state the control that the transmitters and acquirers may have over the transmission and acquisition process. Such rules can be characterised and differentiated in different modalities of pedagogical practice. In order to describe the element involved in the model (agencies, relations and practices), we must be able to analyse in terms of power and control (classification and framing) those recontextualisations generated from the distinctive realization of discourse (privileged text) at different levels (macro and micro). Therefore, in order to explain and describe the pedagogical practice of the Social Guarantee Schemes', we describe the relevant elements of the pedagogical code (structural dimension; interactional dimension; classification; framing and discretion) and present the research tools we build up from theory and that constitute our external language of description, operating as a conceptual tool for the analysis of empirical references found in fieldwork.