Session Information
27 SES 05 B, Power Relations and Student's Contributions in Teaching and Learning
Paper/Poster Session
Contribution
Background
In Home and Consumer Studies (HCS) students learn about practical cooking, theoretical food knowledge, consumer awareness and rights, and household management (The National Agency for Education, 2011). After completing compulsory school, students should be able to manage their own household, including aspects of the effect their choices have on the environment, globally and locally, and economy, globally and privately. HCS is a “young” school subject, having part of its history and traditions outside schools and universities, and sharing identities in part with the tradition of masters and apprentices of practical professions. However, it is also a school subject based in “hard” (Biglan, 1973) university subjects such as Chemistry.
How might these conflicting(?) origins of the subject become realized in syllabus and teaching and learning sequences? This paper investigates how what (epistemic relations) and who (social relations) are made legitimate in Home and Consumer Studies, using Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) (Maton, 2014).
Theory
Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) is a social realist theory, expanding the thinking of Bernstein and Bourdieu (Maton, 2014; 2013). LCT introduces the devices of specialization and semantics along with (so far) three more devices of legitimation code analysis as part of the legitimation device (Maton, 2014). For this paper, specialization and semantics were used to analyze curriculum and teaching in HCS.
Specialization involves identifying/relating what (or who) is made “special” in a context, such as a HCS classroom, through the relationship between the epistemic relations (ER), what is legitimate knowledge, and the social relations (SR), who is a legitimate knower (Maton, 2014). The concept of specialization is related to Bernstein’s theory of classification and framing (1996). Classification and framing is to do with the power and control of classroom discourse. Classification is what defines a school subject as that subject, be it by curricula, and subject tradition and culture. Framing, on the other hand, is concerned with the relationship within the subject; among, for example, teachers and pupils. Bernstein summarizes it as: “Classification refers to what, framing is concerned with how meanings are put together, the forms by which they are to be made public, and the nature of the social relationships that go with it” (Bernstein, 1996:12). Classification and framing can be stronger or weaker, depending on, for example, how much influence pupils might have on content or method. The LCT discipline, specialisation, is related to classification and framing by way of how the strengthening of the epistemic relation creates a strengthening of both classification and framing of the knowledge, i.e. a strengthening of both power and control of the contents. Likewise, the strengthening of the social relations, creates a strengthening of classification and framing, i.e. control of the subjects’ knowledge claims. These strengths, between epistemic relations and social relations, are relative, vary independently and generate four specialization codes; knowledge, knower, élite and relativist codes (Maton, 2014:31ff).
When analyzing e.g. discourse using the analytical tool of specialization, LCT focuses on the knowledge that is legitimate in for example a school context but also how knowers are made legitimate (Maton, 2013). Meidell-Seisgaard (2013) claims that specialization analyses provide illumination of legitimate practices within invisible pedagogies (ibid:20). The knowledge and knower codes that are in focus in this paper are found in the curriculum of HCS and the communication in three HCS classrooms.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
References Bernstein, B. 1996. Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. Theory, Research, Critique. London: Taylor & Francis. Biglan, A. 1973. The characteristics of subject matter in different scientific areas. Journal of Applied Psychology, Volume 57, pp.195-203. Maton, K. 2014. Knowledge and knowers. Towards a realist sociology of education. London: Routledge. Meidell Sigsgaard, A-V. 2013. Who knows what? The Teaching of Knowledge and Knowers in a Fifth Grade Danish as a Second Language Classroom. Diss. University of Aarhus. The National Agency for Education, 2011. Curriculum for the compulsory school, preschool class and the leisure-time centre 2011. Stockholm.
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