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Basil Bernstein: Code Theory and Beyond
This book provides an accessible way into the ideas of Basil Bernstein. It introduces, explains and exemplifies key conceptual landmarks in the development of his theory, from his sociolinguistics in the 1960s through analyses of classrooms and the construction of curriculum in the 1970s and 1980s, to studies of intellectual fields of research through the 1990s. The book introduces how these ideas can and have been used in empirical research over the past fifty years, and how they are being built on by scholars in the twenty-first century to create a cumulative approach to understanding education, knowledge and society that is alive and growing today.
- GenresEducation
140 pages, Paperback
Published February 17, 2024
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About the author
Brian Barrett
12 booksBrian Barrett is associate professor in the Foundations and Social Advocacy Department and graduate research coordinator with SUNY Cortland's Urban Recruitment of Educators program.
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December 19, 2024
The part of this book that I will remember the most is the discussion around epistemological botany – although, I think I would have called this epistemological geology if it was me. The idea is that we are obsessed with categorising different ideas according to the theory they came out of – Marxist, Bourdieu, Foucault and so on. And that this categorisation is then used as virtually the complete criticism of the idea itself. As soon as we have labelled the species we think we have understood everything that needs to be said about it. Bernstein didn’t think this. He saw different theories as giving different perspectives upon problems that exist in the world and that their ability to impact those problems was what he was most interested in, rather than their genealogy. The problem is the thing, everything else is secondary to that. Which is part of the reason why I would have shifted this metaphor away from biology and towards geology. In geology you are confronted with extinction events between epochs. What is in one epoch isn’t available within another. And so you can draw hard and fast lines between these and ignore, more or less, the ones that you are not studying. This is the opposite of what Bernstein wanted to achieve. He wanted more pluralism in how theories could be used to address the very real problems we face in society – and whether you use Marx or Weber or Durkheim mattered less to him than the insights each brought with them to the problem itself.
This book, obviously enough, spends a lot of time discussing Bernstein’s ideas on education. I’ve reviewed the first three volumes of Class, Codes and Control here on Good Reads. They are fascinating works and really should be understood by more teachers in particular. Bernstein is often criticised for having a deficit view of education – particularly for working class kids – but this isn’t a completely fair understanding of his work. The basis of which is the language used by different sections of society and how this either aids of hinders their ability to get much out of the education system. His major distinction is between restricted and elaborated language codes. We all use restricted codes. These are shorthand version of speaking that totally depend on context and where you need to be within that context to have any hope of understanding what is being said. This is where raising an eyebrow to your partner of 20 years contains a wealth of information that is not contained within the action itself – but that draws on your knowledge of the situation and of the other person. Naturally, this ‘restricted’ code is only available to those ‘in the know’.
The elaborated code is quite different. It is basically learning how to speak like a book. Bernstein said that only middle class kids where likely to have access to this elaborated code since they were being prepared for a life where they would need to communicate with people across a wide range of social contexts – and so they needed to learn to be explicit if they were going to be able to communicate at all. They learn this in much the same way that an author learns to write a book. They cannot assume their reader knows anything about the scene they are trying to paint, and so they need to be quite explicit about the aspects of it that they need the reader to be aware of. I need to tell you there is a ghost, that the ghost is the prince’s father, that it has advice for the prince and that it needs to tell him his brother had murdered him. Nothing can be taken for granted, as in a restricted code – everything needs to be made explicit. But since working class children rarely get access to this explicit code, and schooling implies a deep familiarity with it, working class children start off well behind their middle class school mates and remain behind, since school rarely helps prepare students for this otherwise taken-for-granted knowledge.
There is also a lengthy discussion on another of Bernstein’s key ideas – that of the three message systems of education (curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation) and how different ways of organising curriculum – collection or integrated – imply different pedagogies and assessment strategies. This really is a wonderful introduction to Bernstein’s theories and written in a way that is much easier to read than Bernstein was himself. The author repeatedly says that Bernstein brought many of the misunderstandings of his theories upon himself by how he used language. I think this is probably true – even though I do think that people ought to have spent more time reading him than in reading critiques of his work. These invariably over-simplified his views and made him into what he was not. He did not think the middle class were the perfect class that needed to be emulated nor that there was nothing worthwhile in working class linguistic codes – but rather that society highly values one and denigrates the other – and so if school does not provide students from working class families with working class, restricted language codes access to elaborative codes, then ultimately school disadvantages these children.
Bernstein remains an important figure in the sociology of education. It is hard to know how you could approach the subject without knowing of his ideas. As such, this book is a very useful introduction to him and his work.
This book, obviously enough, spends a lot of time discussing Bernstein’s ideas on education. I’ve reviewed the first three volumes of Class, Codes and Control here on Good Reads. They are fascinating works and really should be understood by more teachers in particular. Bernstein is often criticised for having a deficit view of education – particularly for working class kids – but this isn’t a completely fair understanding of his work. The basis of which is the language used by different sections of society and how this either aids of hinders their ability to get much out of the education system. His major distinction is between restricted and elaborated language codes. We all use restricted codes. These are shorthand version of speaking that totally depend on context and where you need to be within that context to have any hope of understanding what is being said. This is where raising an eyebrow to your partner of 20 years contains a wealth of information that is not contained within the action itself – but that draws on your knowledge of the situation and of the other person. Naturally, this ‘restricted’ code is only available to those ‘in the know’.
The elaborated code is quite different. It is basically learning how to speak like a book. Bernstein said that only middle class kids where likely to have access to this elaborated code since they were being prepared for a life where they would need to communicate with people across a wide range of social contexts – and so they needed to learn to be explicit if they were going to be able to communicate at all. They learn this in much the same way that an author learns to write a book. They cannot assume their reader knows anything about the scene they are trying to paint, and so they need to be quite explicit about the aspects of it that they need the reader to be aware of. I need to tell you there is a ghost, that the ghost is the prince’s father, that it has advice for the prince and that it needs to tell him his brother had murdered him. Nothing can be taken for granted, as in a restricted code – everything needs to be made explicit. But since working class children rarely get access to this explicit code, and schooling implies a deep familiarity with it, working class children start off well behind their middle class school mates and remain behind, since school rarely helps prepare students for this otherwise taken-for-granted knowledge.
There is also a lengthy discussion on another of Bernstein’s key ideas – that of the three message systems of education (curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation) and how different ways of organising curriculum – collection or integrated – imply different pedagogies and assessment strategies. This really is a wonderful introduction to Bernstein’s theories and written in a way that is much easier to read than Bernstein was himself. The author repeatedly says that Bernstein brought many of the misunderstandings of his theories upon himself by how he used language. I think this is probably true – even though I do think that people ought to have spent more time reading him than in reading critiques of his work. These invariably over-simplified his views and made him into what he was not. He did not think the middle class were the perfect class that needed to be emulated nor that there was nothing worthwhile in working class linguistic codes – but rather that society highly values one and denigrates the other – and so if school does not provide students from working class families with working class, restricted language codes access to elaborative codes, then ultimately school disadvantages these children.
Bernstein remains an important figure in the sociology of education. It is hard to know how you could approach the subject without knowing of his ideas. As such, this book is a very useful introduction to him and his work.
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