Legitimation Code Theory

This case study explicates the knowledge-knower structures that are valued in the assessment of Graphic Design (GD) practical work in a multi-campus Private Higher Education (PHE) context. Assessment, which provides the measure for student success and progression, plays a significant role in Higher Education (HE). It is acknowledged that, in addition to increased pressure on educators to deliver high pass and throughput rates, there is often scrutiny of their assessment practice to ensure that it is fair, reliable, valid and transparent. The aspects of reliability and validity are particularly significant in for-profit private higher education institutions, where a strong focus on efficiency may result in added scrutiny of assessment practices. Although the assessment of GD practical work exemplifies these pressures and objectives, its characteristics and practices set it apart from many of the more standard forms of assessment found in HE. Not only is GD practical work predominantl...

Multimedia such as animations are increasingly common in science teaching. Existing research overwhelmingly focuses on developing principles for designing multimedia that support cognitive processing of information. This chapter meets an urgent need to foreground teaching and knowledge in order to develop pedagogic principles for teaching multimedia that support learning science. To do so, the chapter extends existing limited uses of the notion of ‘affordance’ to examine how the knowledge practices expressed by multimedia relate to those central to specific classroom tasks.These epistemic affordances are revealed through an innovative form of autonomy analysis that shows how the diverse elements of complex multimedia objects relate to the contents and purposes of specific classroom tasks. In-depth analyses of two contrasting examples of science teaching with animations show the pedagogic work required to integrate such multimedia and how LCT offers a way of getting to grips with these complex objects in real-world contexts.

Mathematics is a key aspect of science but how mathematics can be successfully integrated in science teaching remains a vexing issue. That students often struggle with mathematics in science lessons, even when they have little problem with those ideas in mathematics lessons, has been a long-running concern for educators. One reason this the issue remains unsolved is that existing approaches cannot systematically distinguish ‘mathematics’ knowledge from ‘science’ knowledge. This chapter introduces cutting-edge tools from the LCT dimension of Autonomy that enable knowledge practices to be distinguished without lapsing into either essentialist definitions that neglect how these bodies of knowledge differ between contexts or relativist claims that they are nothing but endless flux. The concepts are illustrated through detailed analyses of real-world classroom practices that show a key attribute of successful integration of mathematics in science teaching to be autonomy tours that shift between different contents and purposes in particular ways. The ideas outlined here are poised to have a major impact on both research and practice in education, far beyond science teaching.

Denne artikel praesenterer fund fra et afsluttet ph.d. projekt, der som det første i Danmark anvender de analytiske redskaber semantisk taethed og semantisk tyngde fra Karl Matons Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). Begrebernes anvendelighed eksemplificeres ved at undersøge samtaler mellem laerere og elever i et dansk som andetsprogsforløb i en 5. klasses historieundervisning og det anvendte undervisningsmateriale Sat Ud. Gennem artiklen opbygges et argument for, at både undervisningsmaterialet og den observerede paedagogiske tilgang kun delvist tilgodeser elevernes faglige og sproglige udvikling, og stiller således skarpt på, om problemer med danske minoritetselever i skolen egentlig skyldes deres anderledes baggrund, som det ofte antages, eller snarere beror på den paedagogiske praksis de møder i skolens undervisning. Indledning Uddannelse ses af mange som nøglen til samfundsmaessig lighed, og i Danmark er målet, at folkeskolen skal give alle børn lige muligheder for at klare sig godt i samfundet. Imidlertid viser sociologisk-paedagogiske undersøgelser, at skolesystemet tvaertimod er en institution, der reproducerer samfundets sociale struktur. Resultatet er, at bl.a. børn med andet modersmål end dansk statistisk set klarer sig dårligere end etnisk danske børn (Egelund, Pohl, & Schindler,

This paper aims to deal with the question of researching knowledge within a learning-by-doing activity with students on an education program. It does this by making use of the semantic field of legitimation code theory to investigate student talk following an observed teaching practice lesson. The aim of the paper is to establish to what extent student talk reflects semantic gravity and semantic density with a view to establishing the extent to which cumulative learning has occurred on the program. It finds that while evidence does exist of emerging forms of cumulative learning, this is limited and characteristic of segmented learning associated with horizontal knowledge structures. It also finds that levels of semantic features varied significantly between participants. It concludes by suggesting that understanding the emergence of cumulative learning may be enhanced by further research focusing more on language in the teaching of content, an emphasis on vertical progression of content through the program, as well as assessment of teaching practice which accounts for epistemic as well as social relations.

In Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) contexts, students are expected to express disciplinary knowledge in a second/foreign language. One construct that has proven useful for the identification and realization of language functions in disciplinary knowledge is Dalton-Puffer's (2013) model of cognitive discourse functions (CDFs). Additionally, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has already been proven useful for distinguishing lexico-grammatical features that characterise different CDFs in CLIL students' productions (e.g., Nashaat-Sobhy & Llinares, 2020; Evnitskaya & Dalton-Puffer, 2020). In this article, we use SFL to analyse the oral and written realisations of the CDF Define by 6th grade students participating in a CLIL program in Madrid, Spain. A total of 83 students responded to the same prompt (on science) in writing (in the form of a blog) as well as orally (in the form of an interview). In the oral interviews the co-construction of definitions by the students with the interviewer (researcher) and another peer are explored using the notion of Legitimation Code Theory and the concept of semantic waves (Maton, 2013). The analysis of students' definitions is also related to primary CLIL teachers' evaluations using comparative judgement.
Keywords: CLIL, systemic functional linguistics, semantic waves, oral and written definitions, comparative judgement

”What should I write?” – ”You should know that for yourself”: about how focus on respectively knowledge and action in teacher-student conversations leads to obscurity in instruction

Anna-Vera Meidell Sigsgaard

Abstract (English):
Using a social semiotic approach, this article explores which meanings are in focus for teachers and students respectively in conversations around an interdisciplinary, multimedia task. Based on findings from a research project on Danish as a Second Language in the Danish public school, this article focuses on apparent discrepancies in the spoken linguistic interactions between teachers and students. In the observed unit of study, both teachers and students try hard to make themselves understood, though they often seem to be unsuccessful. Using exchange structure analysis (Martin 1990) – a way of describing spoken language from the interpersonal perspective – analysis of two different examples of teacher-student interactions shows how teachers and students apparently speak ‘different languages’. This type of misunderstanding is, in research on multicultural school problematics, often ascribed to students’ non-Danish ethnic backgrounds. The result of the analysis helps to qualify this research-area, rendering visible aspects of the ‘bilingual problematic’.

Key words: Danish as a second language, exchange structure analysis, SFL, teacher-student interaction, classroom discourse, discourse analysis

This thesis addresses several aspects of the teaching and learning of thermodynamics in the context of first year university Physics. Thermodynamics is a topic that attracts far less attention at the first year level, both in terms of instruction time but also in the literature.

The first part of the thesis focuses on the teaching aspect, and reports on a two-year experiment that involved introducing Interactive Engagement techniques in lectures to facilitate ‘Active Learning’. Two different Interactive Engagement techniques were compared, the Interactive Lecture Demonstrations and the Interactive Exercises, across four first year Physics thermodynamics ‘streams’ at The University of Sydney (approximately N=600). In the first year, 2011, there were no differences in learning outcomes between the four streams as measured by the Thermal Concepts Survey and the final first year Physics exam (each technique was trialled in two classes). In 2012 the Thermal Concepts Survey reveals a difference in the streams, with one of the streams which received the Interactive Lecture Demonstration program performing significantly better than the others. Both programs were characterised in terms of the activity of the lecturer and in terms of student engagement. Evaluation surveys and interviews were deployed to gather more information about how the programs were received by the students.

The second part of the thesis focuses on student understanding. First, student understanding is examined using existing measures, such as the quantitative analysis of the Thermal Concepts Survey and qualitative analysis of short answer responses to a series of thermodynamics questions/problems (the Interactive Exercises). Several specific findings were made, highlighting particular aspects of thermodynamics that caused difficulties for students. In order to address some of the limitations in these existing approaches, and to provide more explanatory analyses, a novel approach was pursued and developed. This approach, Legitimation Code Theory, was used to examine student understanding of thermodynamics through the focus on the organising principles of knowledge. The analysis using Legitimation Code Theory reveals that the nature of the scientific knowledge students encounter has real effects on their engagement with the subject, and this, in turn, has consequences for instructional practices.

It will be argued that Legitimation Code Theory is a powerful framework that can provide substantial utility for the study of student understanding and to science and Physics Education Research in general.

Artykuł opublikowany w 13 numerze czasopisma "Problemy Studiów Nauczycielskich" przedstawia podręcznik dla studentów kształcących się w kierunku nauczania informatyki, wydany nakładem Wyższej Szkoły Pedagogicznej w Krakowie. W artykule uzasadniona jest celowość uwzględnienia teoretycznych podstaw informatyki w profilu wykształcenia przyszłych nauczycieli informatyki, a także przedstawiona jest zawartość (spis treści) wydanego podręcznika.

The paper begins by arguing that knowledge-blindness in educational research represents a serious obstacle to understanding knowledge-building. It then offers sociological concepts from Legitimation Code Theory - ‘semantic gravity’ and ‘semantic density’ - that systematically conceptualize one set of organizing principles underlying knowledge practices. Brought together as ‘semantic profiles’, these allow changes in the context-dependence and condensation of meaning of knowledge practices to be traced over time. These concepts are used to analyse passages of classroom practice from secondary school lessons in Biology and History. The analysis suggests that ‘semantic waves’, where knowledge is transformed between relatively decontextualized, condensed meanings and context-dependent, simplified meanings, offer a means of enabling cumulative classroom practice. How these concepts are being widely used to explore organizing principles of diverse practices in education and beyond is discussed, revealing the widespread, complex and suggestive nature of ‘semantic waves’ and their implications for cumulative knowledge-building.

This case study explicates the knowledge-knower structures that are valued in the assessment of Graphic Design (GD) practical work in a multi-campus Private Higher Education (PHE) context. Assessment, which provides the measure for student success and progression, plays a significant role in Higher Education (HE). It is acknowledged that, in addition to increased pressure on educators to deliver high pass and throughput rates, there is often scrutiny of their assessment practice to ensure that it is fair, reliable, valid and transparent. The aspects of reliability and validity are particularly significant in for-profit private higher education institutions, where a strong focus on efficiency may result in added scrutiny of assessment practices. Although the assessment of GD practical work exemplifies these pressures and objectives, its characteristics and practices set it apart from many of the more standard forms of assessment found in HE. Not only is GD practical work predominantly visual rather than text-based, but complex achievements and tacit knowledge are assessed. This form of assessment traditionally relies on panel or group marking by connoisseurs who consider what is commonly termed ‘person’, ‘process’ and ‘product’ when making value judgements. Therefore, in GD assessment knowledge, the design product, the graphic designer and what the graphic designer does may all be valued. GD assessment, where outcomes are not easily stated, relies on the tacit expertise of assessors and can often be perceived to be subjective and unreliable. It therefore sits uncomfortably with results-driven HE and institutional priorities.
In light of this context and the complex and social nature of GD assessment, a critical realist approach provided the guiding metatheory for this case study. Critical realism considers the unseen but real mechanisms that exist and interact within a context to create a phenomenon such as an assessment practice. In this case study the knowledge-structuring theories of Basil Bernstein and Karl Maton were used to uncover these mechanisms. Bernstein and Maton propose that new knowledge, the curriculum and pedagogy, which includes assessment, communicate the valued disciplinary knowledge and who controls these communications.
For this study the institutional documents and voices of assessors provided insight into the GD assessment practice; data was generated through a lecturer survey, the study guides and assessor conversations at both the formative and summative assessment stages. Given the significance of both knowledge and expertise in GD, Specialisation, one of the Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) dimensions, provided the conceptual tool whereby the generated data were analysed and categorised, and the underlying valued knowledge-knower structures, or specialisation codes, were identified.
The identified specialisation codes revealed a number of code clashes, matches and shifts, which highlighted instances of mixed or conflicting communication regarding what was valued and used in GD assessment. These clashes, matches and shifts have significant implications for curriculum design, pedagogy and assessment. As a result the findings may have relevance for students, lecturers and assessors who work in practice-based fields which require the assessment of complex achievements and rely on a specialised gaze to judge standards.
Informed by the findings of this study, I argue that there is a fundamental conflict between what is valued within the broader national South African Higher Education system and Private Higher Education institutional context, and the nature of GD assessment. The broader structures, guided by a techno-rationalist approach to assessment and the pressures of massification, success, compliance and institutional efficiencies, value explicitly-stated outcomes and criteria, propositional knowledge and a positivist ideal of one correct mark for any one assessment, while the GD assessment practice values the more social and tacit elements of procedural knowledge and a specialist knower as evidenced in a largely tacit GD gaze that assessors possess and students aim to develop. The uncovering of the knowledge-knower structures used in GD assessment has the potential to make the assessed gaze more explicit to lecturers, assessors and ultimately to students. My findings offer a deeper understanding of the assessment of knower code disciplines which require a specialist gaze for the judgement of student work, and the pressures experienced in this type of assessment in a HE context.

Academic discourse is the gateway not only to educational success but to worlds of imagination, discovery and accumulated wisdom. Understanding the nature of academic discourse and developing ways of helping everyone access, shape and change this knowledge is critical to supporting social justice. Yet education research often ignores the forms taken by knowledge and the language through which they are expressed. This volume comprises cutting-edge work that is bringing together sociological and linguistic approaches to access academic discourse. Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is a long-established and widely known approach to understanding language. Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) is a younger and rapidly growing approach to exploring and shaping knowledge practices. Now evermore research and practice are using these approaches together. This volume presents new advances from this inter-disciplinary dialogue, focusing on state-ofthe-art work in SFL provoked by its productive dialogue with LCT. It showcases work by the leading lights of both approaches, including the foremost scholar of SFL and the creator of LCT. Chapters introduce key ideas from LCT, new conceptual developments in SFL, studies using both approaches, and guidelines for shaping curriculum and pedagogy to support access to academic discourse in classrooms. The book is essential reading for all appliable and educational linguists, as well as scholars and practitioners of education and sociology.

Harmony with nature, pristine countryside, organic farming, a vegan diet, renewable energy, sustainable development. This imagery tends to be associated with ‘green liberal’ environmentalist movements and more broadly, left-wing political ideologies. However, concern for the environment and warnings about the imminent climate crisis are gaining traction within far-right and white supremacist movements. This article focuses on the revival of white supremacist environmentalism based on a qualitative text analysis of an English-language manifesto published by the violent extremist neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement. Drawing on the concept of axiological cosmologies from Legitimation Code Theory and the Appraisal framework from Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper shows how an ecofascist ideology is built up through clusters of meanings that reinforce neo-Nazi grievances such as ‘global Zionism’, ‘mass immigration’ and multiculturalism. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of what the promotion of eco-fascist ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis could mean for climate justice from a human rights perspective and preventing violent extremism from an educational perspective.

This thesis considers the recontextualisation of African music in formal South African curricula. The research is situated in South Africa, where post-apartheid education policy promotes the inclusion of indigenous knowledge in the curriculum. The research is motivated by a problem of
disjuncture in the national upper secondary curriculum’s ‘Indigenous African Music’ stream. While African music is the focus, the theory of music component is drawn from Western art music and
seems to have little relevance to African indigenous music practices. Identifying a fundamental clash of the practical and the theoretical in this curriculum, the thesis sets out to explore what knowledge
types are included in this and one tertiary curriculum, how these are articulated, and their potential for integration, coherence and knowledge-building. African music’s place in formal curricula is
relatively recent, and the literature attests that a clash between ‘Western’ and ‘African’ content is a common problem. Yet while this literature critiques Western hegemony and argues for the
significance of African knowledge, little scholarly enquiry takes up the question of knowledge integration. Current trends in the philosophy of music education critique text-oriented curricula based on canonical works and promote individual experience and procedural knowledge, resulting in a binary that overlooks the fact that music exists on multiple levels at the same time.
Concepts drawn from Basil Bernstein and Karl Maton highlight what counts as curriculum and make visible the ordering principles of curricula. They allow differentiation between knowledge types,
practical knowledge based on performance skill, theoretical content, or axiological meanings focusing on musical significance. When these theories are brought to bear on African music curricula, the conflicts can be understood in terms of knowledge types, their differing structures and their capacity for knowledge-building. This qualitative research explores these issues in two case studies through text-based analysis and empirical research. Data was collected through document
analysis, observation and interviews. Bernstein and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) provided theoretical and analytical lenses for data coding, organisation and analysis.
The study provides much needed theorising about the recontextualisation of African music. It proposes a model, developed from the theoretical implications of the research, to theorise about different knowledge types and their relationships with each other. In the curricularisation of different music practices, the model illustrates the complexity of musical knowledge, demonstrating how different knowledge domains contextualise each other. It shows the dialectic relationship between musical knowing and musical knowledge, and the importance of negotiating boundaries between knowledge types.

This talk focuses on the power of language, specially the discursive construction of a transnational eco-fascist environmentalist movement. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative methods from linguistics and sociology, this paper shows how extreme right groups link ‘old’ grievances such as ‘global Zionism’, ‘foreign invasion’ and ‘migrant/refugee/gypsy crime’ to the climate crisis. Analysis from this research demonstrates how the extreme right exploits the climate crisis by promoting eco-fascist ‘solutions’ such as ‘protecting’ scarce resources and ‘saving’ the ‘global North’ from climate-fueled migration from the ‘global South’. The talk concludes by discussing the implications of eco-fascism for (trans)national security.
This recorded lecture can be watched here: https://www.facebook.com/NUPaWC/videos/482846339580960

This article examines how dynasties applied the Five Elements theory in their respective legitimation discourses throughout the history of imperial China. Drawing on both documentary and visual sources, I reveal that the Liao, Jin, and Yuan rulers constructed different dynastic lineages that challenged the “orthodox” dynastic succession pattern formulated by Han Chinese dynasties. In particular, I will show that the Yuan tacitly invoked Metal as its dynastic element and white as its imperial color. I argue that the Yuan choice of dynastic element essentially claimed succession to the Jurchen Jin, another non-Han conquest dynasty, rather than to the Song as scholars have previously assumed. However, these constructions were later negated by the Ming dynasty, which restored a purely Han Chinese dynastic lineage that excluded the Liao, Jin, and Yuan. These ideological conflicts, which were ultimately grounded in ethnic tensions between Han and non-Han peoples, eventually led to the disappearance of the Five Element theory in the Qing political rhetoric. This article sheds new light on understanding how a dynasty engaged its cultural heritage and ethnic background in its political ideology and how it perceived its own place in the Chinese dynastic lineage.

While work-integrated learning (WIL) continues to gain prominence worldwide, the range of definitions indicates no consensus on what it actually includes. This contributes to a creative space in which to uncover its more nuanced forms and potential. Despite the range of available definitions there appears to be an emphasis on WIL at the level
of post-schooling, at the expense of considering its relationship with school curriculum policy. This mirrors the emphasis that many countries seem to place on exit level education outcomes or achievement and can be criticised along the same lines. In response to the paucity of knowledge around WIL at school level, we consider a Legitimation Code Theory perspective on ‘work-integrated learning’ in school science curriculum policy. We provide a general overview of Karl Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory, paying particular focus on the notion of semantic gravity. With the South African school physical sciences as the case in this qualitative curriculum study, the paper uncovers aspects of school science education curriculum which align it to the precepts of work-integrated learning. The paper reveals the utility of Legitimation Code Theory for uncovering epistemic shifts in school science curriculum that contribute to bridging science theory and contextualised practical knowledge. The results of the study provide insight into the epistemological contribution of work integrating learning, suggesting a complimentary relationship between formal education and work-integrated learning that goes beyond the notion of the former simply including the latter as a stepping stone towards meaningful engagement in the workplace.

In this working research paper I draw on empirical work I have been involved in since 2016, involving over 1200 teacher mentors, to discuss a key issue that has arisen – the professional knowledge required to mentor effectively. This work includes the development of a curriculum for training school-based mentors of trainee and newly qualified teachers, Enhance your Mentoring Skills, delivered regionally across South Yorkshire (Pountney and Grasmeder, 2018), as well as nationally for mentors of mid-career teachers on the Chartered Teacher programme of the Chartered College of Teaching. I begin by discussing briefly what is known about teachers’ mentoring practices, and understandings of what constitutes professional knowledge. Next, I discuss the nature of mentor teachers’ learning for practice, and the difficulties inherent in articulating this to themselves, and to others. I illustrate this with examples, to show how the problem can be differentiated in two dimensions of meaning: the first is closeness to context (semantic gravity) and the second is the degree of conceptual complexity (semantic density). Finally, I discuss the need for a specialised language for mentoring and how this can promote the professional status of mentors, as well as building knowledge about, and for, effective mentoring practice.

Her research centres on enabling epistemological access in the sciences in a higher education context, focusing specifically on curriculum structures, pedagogic practices and student learning. Recent journal publications include 'Congruence in knowledge and knower codes: The challenge of enabling learner autonomy in a science foundation course' (Alternation, 2019) and 'Legitimation of knowers for access in science' (Journal of Education, 2018).

Multimodal analysis examines how different modes, such as space, gesture, and language, instantiate meaning together. In this paper, a Systemic Functional-Multimodal Discourse Analysis demonstrates how teachers enact their pedagogy with their students across modes through what is represented experientially, how relationships between people are construed interpersonally, and how coherent texts are realized textually. This paper is a preliminary study of classroom data from a larger project looking at the multimodal pedagogy of Japanese secondary school teachers of English through the paired lenses of SF-MDA and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and demonstrates how methods from these perspectives may be productively combined. Ways in which this teacher builds cumulative knowledge multimodally can be uncovered through the analysis of pedagogic register (Rose, 2018), exchange (Berry, 1981; Martin and Rose, 2007), and of classroom space and representing and textual action (Amundrud, 2017; Martin and Zappavigna, 2019). How both gesture and dialogic exchange between the teacher and students modulate the contextual relation of the knowledge construed in class is also explored via semantic gravity, which looks at how closely connected knowledge practices are to their context (Maton, 2014). As a preliminary study, the paper closes with limitations and future directions for this pedagogic multimodality research.

NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK!

Maton, K. (2014) Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education. London, Routledge.

‘This tour-de-force will set the agenda for the future of the sociology of education. Maton’s writing is always engaging and thought-provoking. The book offers nothing less than a new approach to the morphology of sociological knowledge itself - a "must-read".’ - Michael Grenfell, Professor of Education at Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland.

‘A truly majestic contribution that advances fundamentally the ideas of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu. It is a formidable piece of work: imaginative, thought-provoking, intellectually out-reaching, and will surely constitute essential reading across the social sciences.’ - John Evans, Professor of Sociology of Education and Physical Education, University of Loughborough, UK.

‘For decades sociology has been the missing link in discourse analyses of social context. Maton’s inspirational volume consolidates a sociology of immense theoretical insight and undaunted analytical precision to make this blind-spot obsolete. Theory is every scholar’s best friend; social theory of this order is a very best friend indeed.’ - J.R. Martin, Professor of Linguistics, University of Sydney, Australia."""

This paper presents an introduction to how systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) offer complementary insights into education, focusing on key ideas that brought the theories into dialogue over the past decade. It begins with a review of SFL work on field, which foregrounds the role of forms of knowledge in education. It then discusses how SFL scholars engaged with and understood Bernstein’s notions of ‘knowledge structures’ for modelling intellectual fields. This engagement raised a series of questions that were a basis for dialogue with LCT, which extends and integrates Bernstein’s framework. The paper introduces key concepts from two dimensions of LCT – Specialization and Semantics – enacted in papers in this special issue. It then briefly summarizes two major research projects into education that enact these concepts alongside SFL and provide a context to the papers of this special issue, before introducing how these papers illustrate the growing and fruitful transdisciplinary dialogue between SFL and LCT.

This thesis explores the interpersonal landscape of senior high school humanities subjects. It investigates the humanities’ humanity, that is, the values and attitudes which underlie different subjects and how these differ in texts written for examination purposes in modern and ancient history, society and culture and community and family studies. Both linguistic and sociological analyses of highly graded student writing are used to demonstrate differences in the ways that ‘objective evaluation’ is achieved in each subject, the types of extended writing valued in each, and corresponding opportunities for students to engage with more uncommon-sense meanings and to build cumulative knowledge. While the humanities are generally categorised as a knower code, the subjects occupy relative spaces within this categorical space, some more strongly knower oriented than others. The study contributes to the development of visible pedagogies supporting more democratic educational outcomes in a previously underexplored transitional stage between junior high school and academic contexts.

Sociologists of education rooted in social realism have for more than a decade argued that knowledge matters in education, there are different kinds of knowledge, not all forms of knowledge are equal and that these differentiations have significant implications for curriculum. While this argument has made an important contribution to both theoretical and policy debate, the implications for curriculum have not been sufficiently addressed. In other words, a theory of differentiated knowledge has not translated into an adequate theory of differentiated curriculum. Drawing on Basil Bernstein’s work on knowledge differentiation and Karl Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory, this paper offers an empirically derived emerging framework for conceptualizing differentiated higher education curricula with a particular interest in occupationally and pro- fessionally oriented curricula. The framework illuminates the principles underlying curriculum differentiation, thus enabling a richer conversation about epistemological access and progression.
Keywords: curriculum; higher education; knowledge; differentiation; Basil Bernstein; Legitimation Code Theory

Theoretically influenced by Bakhtin’s (1986) concept of dialogism – according to which any discourse is both permeated by and directed towards other discourses (i.e., backward and forward orientation) –, this thesis seeks to investigate the interweaving of voices surrounding Julian Barnes’s Booker-prize winning The Sense of an Ending (2011). In keeping with the double orientation of discourse, chapter I explores Barnes’s novel and Chapter II focuses on readers’ responses to it. Two questions drive the research: (i) What is the nature of dialogism in the novel versus in readers’ responses to the novel? (ii) What is the effect of dialogism in the novel versus in readers’ responses to the novel?

Chapter I entitled “A Text-driven, Reader-oriented Study of Dialogism” (pp. 11-47) is divided into two parts. First, it qualitatively considers the entanglement between Barnes’s novel and past discourses through a literary study of intertextuality. Then, it analyses the entanglement between Barnes’s novel and the target ‘implied reader’ through a stylistic study of the homodiegetic narrator’s – overt and covert – addresses to the reader. The study distinguishes two types of intertextual references: cultural and literary. Using insights from Ancient Philosophy and stylistic tools, the analysis reveals that cultural intertextuality works toward spatio-temporal anchoring. References to literary texts and figures – here, the 20th-century English poets Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin – work toward characterisation. Thus, intertextual patterns fix the meaning of the novel. The second part of chapter I uses a mixed-method methodology, integrating narratological, cognitive stylistic and corpus linguistic tools to investigate the ways in which the ‘para-diegetic’ and ‘diegetic’ narrators both attract readers in the story-world and entice them into empathising with the homodiegetic narrator. Research findings reveal that several stylistic features manipulate real-world readers into inhabiting the fictional world (i.e., to perform ‘ontological metalepsis’): you-narrations embedding the progressive aspect, foregrounded negation, and the prevalence of mental processes. Thus, chapter I finds that supposedly dialogic devices (i.e., cultural and literary intertextuality combined with addresses to the reader) have for effect to decrease the dialogic scope of the novel. The novel’s to-and-fro movement between past and future discourses enables the author to manipulate readers’ interpretations.

Chapter II entitled “A SFL-based Analysis of Online Book Reviews” (pp. 50-89) qualitatively analyse three customers’ reviews of The Sense of an Ending posted on Amazon.co.uk. These reviews – here used as reader-response data – respectively feature a ‘high’, ‘medium’, and ‘low’ star rating. In the same vein as chapter I, this study maps out the ways in which online readers engage with past discourses (i.e., The Sense of an Ending) and future discourses (i.e., readers reading the reviews on Amazon). At an analytical level, the research uses the Engagement sub-system within attitudinal APPRAISAL (Martin and White, 2005; Martin and Rose, 2007). The Engagement framework – which is directly influenced by Bakhtin’s dialogism – deals with the inclusion and exclusion of other voices and sources of attitudes in a text. It comprises three main linguistic resources: projections, modality, and concessions. Research findings suggest that there is a correlation between the dialogic scope of the reviews and their perceived legitimacy in the online community. Combined with the use of low epistemic modality, projections increase the dialogic scope of the review by encouraging interactions among ‘peer-to-peer’ Amazon readers. In contrast, combined with the use of high epistemic modality and/or polarity and intertextual references, projections decrease the dialogic scope of the review by discouraging potentially dissenting interpretations. In the former case, the reviewer appears as a source of opinion among others. In the latter case, the reviewer is construed as a literary expert and as a source of knowledge in the online community. Thus, chapter II also finds that supposedly dialogic devices (i.e., projections) can have for effect to decrease the dialogic scope of the review.

To conclude, the intertextual references present in The Sense of an Ending target a very specific audience: Western, educated, and familiar with Britain’s literary heritage. This intertextual pattern hinders the readerly creation of plural interpretations. Moreover, addresses to the reader pretend to subvert the monoglossic tendency of the narrator’s discourse while in fact subtly reinforcing it. Readers’ reviews reveal that the reviewers’ different use of projections and modality construe different dialogic scopes: narrow and wide. Reviews with a narrow dialogic scope are linguistically closer to professional book reviews, which leads the reviewer to be construed as an ‘expert’. Reviews with a wide dialogic scope are linguistically closer to dialogic social media communication, which leads the reviewer to be construed as a ‘peer’.

How to bring together methodologies. Shows how a quantitative instrument was developed and evolved through a series of studies of school music and educational technology (the biggest ever 1-to-1 laptop programme). Focuses on how the concepts were embedded into data collection and analysis, and how methods complemented each other.

Will be out in October.

Inclusive education is embedded in South African policy with the expectation that teacher education will equip pre-service teachers to teach inclusively. As a result, courses in inclusive education are offered in most Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes and research interest in teacher education for inclusion has grown. This paper contributes to this body of knowledge by using Legitimation Code Theory to engage critically with concepts and assessment tasks from three inclusive education courses. This meant identifying where theoretical, context independent knowledge is privileged (semantic density), and where the knowledge is derived from practice or experience and designed to be implemented within specific contexts (semantic gravity). Using examples as reference points, I discuss how inclusive education comes to emphasise practical knowledge, to be enacted in particular contexts, or with particular groups of learners. An alternative is to position inclusive education as professional knowledge where theoretically informed judgments are made in response to the complexity of learner diversity. This will require strengthening the disciplinary foundation of concepts presented in ITE courses in inclusive education.

Lesson plan: Description of lesson plan/presentation Justify: Justification of choices Theory: Description of theory Theory/evidence: Using theory to provide evidence Reflect-self: Reflection by writer Reflect-other: Reflection by peers on lesson plan Changes: Changes that could be made Refute: Refutation of peer feedback

Abstract The growing demands on higher education have placed an unprecedented external pull on universities. Bernstein (Pedagogy, symbolic control and idenity: theory, research, critique, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., Lanham, 2000) refers to this
‘‘outward’’ pull of the late twentieth century as the ‘‘regionalization of knowledge’’. One of the consequences of this ‘‘facing outward’’ is contestation over curriculum and what should be privileged. Should it privilege knowing, doing or being? Should it foreground formative training in the basic sciences or applied problem-solving? Is its priority educating the mind or
preparing for a vocation? These questions can set up a series of ‘‘false choices’’ about the purpose of higher education, what it means to be educated and what our priorities should be in
curriculum reform. The aim of this paper was to move the discourse beyond these polarities by making visible the ‘‘stakes’’ in the curriculum reform debate illustrated in Muller thinkpieces.
The paper offers a conceptual framework for understanding current curriculum contestation and applies the framework in an illustrative manner to a particular higher education curriculum
reform initiative in South Africa. The framework shows how ‘‘what does it mean to be educated?’’ will vary depending on the different types and hence purposes of curriculum.