This research aims to understand how geography teachers recontextualise knowledge for students. In doing so, it addresses two overarching themes: recontextualisation of knowledge, and teachers’ professional practice. Bernstein’s (1990/2003, 1996/2000) pedagogic device provides the theoretical model where the concept of recontextualisation is used to conceptualise the movement of knowledge into school subjects for pedagogic communication. The existing body of research on recontextualisation suggests the value of incorporating other approaches, such as subject didactics, to examine the movement of knowledge from disciplines (or regions) to school subjects (Deng, 2020, 2021; Gericke et al., 2018; Hordern, 2021). However, since these approaches originate from different contexts and traditions of curriculum, they have been judiciously drawn upon in this research.

The notion of ‘powerful knowledge’ (Young, 2008) and the heuristic of the ‘three scenarios for the future’ of education (Young & Muller, 2010) offer different approaches to view knowledge within school subjects. As part of a Future 3 curriculum scenario, teachers need capacity to sustain knowledge of the parent discipline to their school subject. However, within Bernstein’s (1990/2003, 1996/2000) pedagogic device, teachers are principally positioned within the field of reproduction. Existing accounts of recontextualisation lack clarity about the actions teachers take to recontextualise knowledge for students and the extent to which teachers can and do draw upon the disciplinary resource.

This research explores how teachers’ recontextualise knowledge as a part of their professional practice. The term ‘professional practice’ is used to encompass teachers’ intellectual work within and beyond the classroom (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995), and capture the interconnected nature of educational practices (Schatzki, 2003, 2005; Kemmis et al., 2014). 

The research themes are brought together in this research to develop an understanding of teacher’s curriculum work through engagement with each teacher’s “doing” of curriculum work (Schwab, 1970, p. 31). Through adopting a case study approach, this research provides capacity to render visible each case teacher’s curricular decision-making as it is contextualised within the site of their professional practice. 

In the context of a research study that examines the recontextualisation of knowledge, this papers foreground geography teachers’ professional practice, and the professional expertise and knowledge teachers draw upon as they recontextualise knowledge. This is examined through the research question of: what forms of intellectual work are involved in how geography teachers recontextualise knowledge? This paper addresses the ways in which knowledge-for-recontextualisation can be conceived as form of “powerful professional knowledge” (Furlong & Whitty (2017, p. 49) to support teachers’ intellectual work as they recontextualise knowledge for their students. This brings a curricular perspective to how teachers’ education and professional learning influences the intellectual work teachers do.  

The overarching aim of the underpinning research was to take a view of recontextualisation that starts from the teacher and foregrounds insights about the nature of the journey that teachers, as knowledge workers, take to recontextualising knowledge for students. To meet this aim, the research questions were designed to start from teachers’ professional practice but take account of the epistemic communities (discipline, teacher, and students) involved in the recontextualisation of the knowledge: 1. How do geography teachers recontextualise knowledge? 2. What ways do geography teachers work with context as they recontextualise knowledge? 3. What forms of intellectual work are involved in how geography teachers recontextualise knowledge? The research design was developed with due consideration for British Educational Research Association (BERA)’s (2018) ethical guidelines and ethical approval was gained from University College London (UCL). The project, an interpretive case study, collected data through a series of lesson observations and interviews, to examine how three geography teachers in England recontextualised knowledge for a specific curricular sequence and class of students. With each teacher, the first interview was used to understand what was being taught within the lesson sequence and who was being taught. The lesson observations provided a basis to explore how knowledge was recontextualised by teachers within a lesson sequence and offered a window into teachers’ classroom practice in action where the subject, teacher and students are present. Discussions within the interviews enabled the teacher to be able to talk though their lesson sequence, so that some of the unobservable parts of their curricular thinking and professional decision making were rendered visible. Video and audio recordings were used to enable teachers to focus their reflections on specific aspects of their classroom practice and reflect on their teaching from a different perspective. The data was analysed thematically, and a hybrid approach combined working deductively (theory-driven) and inductively (data-driven). The analysis was undertaken through use of an analytical framework, which was informed by Bernstein’s (1990/2003, 1996/2000) pedagogic device and Kemmis et al.’s (2014) theory of practice architectures.

Cross-case analysis identified the approaches taken as the teachers recontextualised knowledge, practices, and texts from the field of production to (i) support decision-making for curricula design and teaching, and (ii) use as a resource or as a practice with students in the classroom. Building on this, the paper addresses how case teachers make sense of the practice of recontextualisation, illuminating the intellectual task of geography teaching and setting out three ways that the intellectual work of the case teachers is rendered visible as they: (i) engage with a ‘reservoir’ for practice (ii) work with boundaries, and (iii) reflect on and question practice. This paper argues that the case teachers’ intellectual work can be enabled and constrained by the ‘reservoir’ that the teachers have access to; however, they also draw upon this ‘reservoir’ for practice with an understanding of the ways in which they can use their own professional judgement to account for the specificity of their context (Bernstein, 1999). The teachers’ work with boundaries connected to their curricula context and the particularities of geography as discipline and school subject. This illuminates the ways in which teachers develop a ‘repertoire’ and can draw upon a ‘reservoir’ to recontextualise knowledge with intellectual integrity (Bernstein, 1999). As the case teachers’ recontextualising occurs over time and space, teachers’ enactment of recontextualisation is constantly refined in connection to the pedagogical site. This research also indicates the possibilities for developing teachers’ knowledge of the foundation disciplines (Hordern, 2023), in order to broaden and deepen teachers’ ‘reservoir’ of knowledge-for-recontextualisation.

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