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‘Approaching the sacred’: directionality in the

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‘Approaching the sacred’:

directionality in the relation between
curriculum and knowledge structure
a
Jeanne Gamble
a
Centre for Higher Education Development, University of Cape
Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Published online: 16 Nov 2012.

To cite this article: Jeanne Gamble (2014) ‘Approaching the sacred’: directionality in the relation
between curriculum and knowledge structure, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 35:1,
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 British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2014
Vol. 35, No. 1, 56–72, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2012.740802

‘Approaching the sacred’: directionality in the relation between

curriculum and knowledge structure
Jeanne Gamble*

Centre for Higher Education Development, University of Cape Town, Cape Town,
South Africa
Downloaded by [University of Cape Town Libraries] at 07:04 20 March 2014

(Received 18 January 2012; final version received 30 August 2012)

Increasing pressure on all levels of educational provision, whether aca-

demic or overtly vocational, to be to ‘relevant’ and ‘useful’ prompts
consideration of the relation between curriculum and pedagogy in terms
of the internal structure of knowledge forms. Following Durkheim’s dis-
tinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ orders of meaning and drawing
on the work of Basil Bernstein, this paper questions pedagogic presup-
positions that directionality from sensory experience to abstraction posits
the everyday life of the student as the foundation for the acquisition of
complex, systematic knowledge. Two empirical examples are discussed:
one focuses on the internal structure of craft knowledge, while the other
focuses on the internal structure of mathematics as school subject. They
converge in the finding that transmission of knowledge structure,
whether in material or symbolic form, requires the transformation of
empirical objects into theoretical objects before a connecting point can
be found between the world of everyday experience and specialised
knowledge forms. This is what constitutes a ‘relevant’ curriculum.
Keywords: Basil Bernstein; craft; curriculum; knowledge structure;
pedagogy; relevance

Introduction

The sacred thing is, par excellence, that which the profane must not and can-
not touch with impunity. To be sure, this prohibition cannot go so far as to
make all communication between the two worlds impossible, for if the pro-
fane could in no way enter into relations with the sacred, the sacred would be
of no use. This placing in relationship, in itself, is always a delicate operation
that requires precautions and a more or less complex initiation. Yet such an
operation is impossible if the profane does not lose its specific traits, and if it
does not become sacred itself in some measure and to some degree. The two
genera cannot, at the same time, both come close to one another and remain
what they were. (Durkheim 1912/1995, 38)

*Email: jeanne.gamble@uct.ac.za
Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 57

In recent years there has been increasing call from sociologists of education
‘for knowledge’ (Moore 2000), to ‘reclaim knowledge’ (Muller 2000), for
‘bringing knowledge back in’ (Young 2008) – and this at a time when
knowledge features prominently in the economic and education policies of
most countries. However, renewed global political demand for increased
access to ‘relevant’ and ‘useful’ education ensures that skills rather than
knowledge, and pedagogy rather than curriculum, remain central in educa-
tional discourse. At the intersection of political and educational arguments it
tends to be taken for granted that the everyday ‘lived’ experience of the
student is the pedagogic starting point for the achievement of a ‘relevant’
curriculum.
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This paper takes up the knowledge question and argues for a renewed
focus on knowledge, and particularly on knowledge structure as key deter-
minant of the relation between what is taught and how it is taught. This is
not a new debate. More than 50 years ago the educationalist Joseph Schwab
lamented the neglect of subject matter in educational studies and argued that
‘to know what structure underlies a given body of knowledge is to know
what problem we may face in imparting that knowledge’ (1964, 9). From a
sociological perspective and against the background of curriculum debates
on ‘relevance’, this paper draws on the work of sociological theorist, Basil
Bernstein, to explore distinctions between curriculum and pedagogy before
turning to Bernstein’s later work on knowledge structure and its relation to
transmission (1996, 1999, 2000). It is particularly Bernstein’s positioning of
craft as a specialised knowledge structure with tacit rather than explicit
transmission that is examined, because, as I will argue, it is here that we
find a connecting point with transmission of knowledge structure in its most
material form. Craft transmission is then contrasted with transmission of
knowledge structure in its most symbolic form, as exemplified by the Vygot-
sky-inspired elementary mathematics curriculum developed and implemented
by Vasili Davydov and his colleagues in selected Russian schools, and also
in some schools in the USA (as discussed by Schmittau 2004, 2005).
In drawing on the work of theorists from different disciplinary traditions,
I follow Hasan’s distinction between ‘endotropic theories … centred onto
their own object of study, isolating it from all else’ (2005, 51) and ‘exotrop-
ic theories … which allow dialogue with other theories’ (2005, 52), pro-
vided there is no essential contradiction in their modes of engagement. In
her own work, Hasan (2005) weaves together strands from the work of
Vygotsky, Halliday and Bernstein to explore the concept of semiotic media-
tion; Young (2008) draws on Durkheim and Vygotsky to explore the nature
of knowledge and its relationship to the curriculum of the future. Drawing
on Vygotsky’s original work as touchstone, Daniels (2008, 18) explicitly
links Bernstein’s (1996, 2000) specialised description of knowledge structure
to what he calls the ‘instructional approach’ of Davydov (1993), Hedegaard
(1998) and Karpov (2003).
 58 J. Gamble

What I wish to show is that whether it is knowledge acquired mainly

through manual activity (as in the case of craft) or mainly through mental
activity (as in the case of mathematics), empirical examples drawn from two
different theoretical traditions converge in their evidence of how the internal
structure of knowledge determines not only what is taught but also how it is
taught. Such a finding is crucial to a deliberation of the place of everyday
experience in curriculum and pedagogy.

The ‘relevant’ curriculum

Calls for a ‘relevant’ curriculum, premised on a close relation between edu-
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cation and work, prevail across all levels of education. But what must the
relevant curriculum achieve? Grubb and Lazerson describe a nineteenth-cen-
tury vocational answer to this question as ‘mental power to see beyond the
task which occupies the hands for the moment to the operations that have
preceded and to those which will follow it’ (2004, 9). More contemporary
answers, related to the so-called knowledge economy, address the question
in generic skill terms. It is held that all students need to develop higher-
order conceptual reasoning and problem-solving, leading to what Wolf
(2011, 20) terms a more or less universal aspiration to higher education.
The requirement is for:

the ability to analyse complex issues, to identify the core problem and the
means of solving it, to synthesize and integrate disparate elements, to clarify
values, to make effective use of numerical and other information, to work co-
operatively and constructively with others and, above all, perhaps, to commu-
nicate clearly both orally and in writing. (Cited in Ball 1985, 232)

The strongest answer for how this is to be achieved is seemingly the one
offered by orthodoxies that emphasise directionality from sensory experience
to generalisation and abstraction or from simple to complex ideas as the
pathway to acquisition. Egan (2002, 145) points out that, although presuppo-
sitions, such as the above, are usually linked to progressivism as an educa-
tional movement, they have become so commonplace in education that they
are no longer just associated with those who would call themselves progres-
sive educators. From this perspective, the meaningful world of students’
everyday lives is posed as the foundation from whence exploration toward
complex systematic knowledge should be undertaken. It is particularly
contemporary neo-Vygotskian research into learning and cognition in
non-academic settings such as traditional crafts, everyday activities, and
low-status occupations (as discussed by Bereiter 1994), or children’s arith-
metic activities in out-of-school contexts (as discussed by Lee 2005), that
are often invoked to argue that ‘real world’ problems should be the basis
from which students should ‘construct their own knowledge’. Engeström
takes this further in his argument that emphasis on the perceived negative
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 59

effects of a separation between school learning and the rest of everyday life
has led to approaches that ‘propose to solve the problem of encapsulation of
school learning by pushing communities of practices from the outside world
into the school’ (2005, 170). Taken to its extreme, this prescription becomes
what Daniels calls an attempt ‘to place the schooled in the everyday’ (2001,
116).
Discrepancies between pedagogic prescriptions that emphasise ‘relevance
to everyday life’ and implementation thereof come into view as soon as one
has a look at what subject domain specialists have to say. Veel explains, for
instance, the difficulty of accommodating everyday experience in the
mathematics curriculum:
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Word problems are nearly always contrived by teachers to fit within the

parameters of the discipline. It is the uncommonsense, strongly classified dis-
cursive order in school mathematics which guides the selection and expression
of word problems, not everyday commonsense experience of the world. (Veel
1999, 208)

Layton makes the same point about the relation between school science and
technology by arguing that ‘the “problems” which people construct from
their experiences do not map neatly onto existing scientific disciplines and
pedagogical organisation of knowledge’ (1993, 11).
It is one thing to argue that subjugation to disciplinary knowledge has to
precede the interrogation of everyday practices (Dowling 1995), yet every
teacher knows intuitively that students need linkages with the ‘lived world’
if they are to grasp abstract, general principles and rules. How does a
teacher keep the everyday world at bay until the student has grasped the
formal knowledge object in theoretical terms? This is the conundrum that is
explored in the remainder of the paper. We turn, firstly, to three different
phases in Bernstein’s theorisation of the relation between these two
knowledge worlds.

Bernstein on the distinction between curriculum and pedagogy

Everyday knowledge in pedagogy
In his early seminal paper ‘On the Classification and Framing of Educational
Knowledge’, sociological theorist Basil Bernstein distinguishes between
three message systems through which formal educational knowledge is rea-
lised: curriculum, which defines what counts as valid knowledge; pedagogy,
which defines what counts as a valid transmission of knowledge; and, evalu-
ation, which defines what counts as a valid realisation of this knowledge
(1975, 85). He introduces the construct of ‘classification’ to refer to the
basic structure of the message system curriculum and ‘frame’ to refer to
the basic structure of the message system pedagogy. Classification refers to
the degree to which the boundaries between contents of various subjects in
 60 J. Gamble

the curriculum are clear-cut or blurred, while framing refers to the degree of
control that teachers and students possess over the selection, organisation,
pacing and timing of the knowledge transmitted and received in the
pedagogical relationship (1975, 88–89).1 The form that any educational
transmission takes and also the form of its evaluation is thus described in
terms of the relation between strong or weak classification (C+/–) and strong
or weak framing (F+/–).
For Bernstein the school curriculum transmits what he calls ‘uncommon-
sense knowledge’ that is ‘freed from the particular, the local, through the
various languages of the sciences or forms of reflexiveness of the arts which
make possible either the creation or discovery of new realities’ (1975, 99).
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He acknowledges that this immediately raises the question of the relation-

ship between the uncommonsense knowledge of the school and the com-
monsense, experiential, everyday knowledge of both teacher and student.
This relationship is depicted as an external framing (Fe) relationship; in
other words, as a feature of pedagogy (Bernstein 1975, 89; 1990, 37; 1996,
29; 2000, 99–100). With reference to classroom practice, Bernstein argues
that, depending on whether external framing is strong (Fe+) or weak (Fe-),
‘the external value of framing can strip you of your identity and biography
outside that context or it can include it’ (1996, 29).

Everyday knowledge in curriculum

Later theorisation of the pedagogic device (Bernstein 1990, 1996, 2000)
contains the possibility that, through curriculum recontextualisation, every-
day knowledge may be included in the curriculum itself. The formulation of
pedagogic discourse as an instructional discourse embedded in a dominant
regulative discourse originated in empirical analysis of classroom pedagogy
(Pedro 1981),2 but in the pedagogic device Bernstein transposes this formu-
lation to the level of recontextualising rules to make explicit the ideological
positioning inherent in curriculum. Ideological contestation over selection of
content when disciplinary knowledge becomes a school subject (curriculum)
and theories of instruction (pedagogy) is what is at stake.
Recontextualisation accommodates the inclusion of content topics that
relate strongly to students’ everyday experience.3 As in his earlier work on
framing, Bernstein again cautions that the inclusion of everyday experiential
knowledge as the content of school subjects may well be a strategy to facili-
tate curricular access and promote ‘relevance’ without necessarily leading to
more effective acquisition of specialised formal knowledge (2000, 169).

Knowledge differentiation in Bernstein’s later work

Bernstein later revisits the distinction between commonsense and uncom-
monsense knowledge and theorises it at a higher level of abstraction, as a
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 61

distinction between two forms of discourse from which meanings derive

(1996, 1999, 2000). The theoretical antecedent for this is found in
Durkheim’s distinction between worlds ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ (1912/1995).
In the educational field, Bernstein recalls the distinction between school(ed)
knowledge and everyday commonsense knowledge to argue that contrasts
between these are often ideologically positioned, with one form seen as
potentially destroying the other, or as a means whereby a dominant group
excludes or silences the voice of a dominated group (2000, 156). Critical of
such stereotypical oppositional depictions, he develops an explanatory lan-
guage that strengthens the differentiation between these two knowledge
forms. In this language, commonsense knowledge becomes horizontal dis-
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course, while uncommonsense knowledge is termed vertical discourse. A

further distinction is made between the structure of knowledge in vertical
discourse as either hierarchical (as in the natural sciences) or horizontal (as
in the social sciences and humanities).
Central to this reasoning is a distinction between meanings generated
through everyday experience and specialised meanings only available to
those who have mastered the principles that organise such symbolic
meaning.
In all forms of vertical discourse there is always a principle for the order-
ing of meaning, which Bernstein calls a principle of recontextualisation
(1996, 172; 2000, 160), to show that specialised formal knowledge always
requires a sequencing and coherence not given by the time–space context in
which the knowledge operates.

A Bernsteinian interpretation of craft knowledge and its pedagogy

Knowledge distinctions at the level of craft
Craft is not a homogeneous concept. The literature on craft activity in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries distinguishes, for instance, between
rural, provincial and urban craft practices. In rural homes, objects were
made without thought of resale and patterns such as the precise form of a
chair or the shape of a basket were kept intact as they were handed down
from generation to generation. Although provincial craft workers were influ-
enced intermittently by urban fashions, they were basically content to repeat
utilitarian designs, with form moulded not by aesthetic but rather by prag-
matic preference for what seemed to work best. Once an efficient design
was found through a process of trial and error, neither craft worker nor cus-
tomers saw any reason to change it. Urban craft workers, on the other hand,
were in touch with ever-changing fashions in design that required elabora-
tion of style and material. Here familiarity of both form and function made
way for the translation of general principles of form into new particulars of
shape and materials (Lucie-Smith 1979, 1981). In Bernstein’s language a
 62 J. Gamble

clear distinction between craft as ‘horizontal discourse’ and craft as ‘vertical

discourse’ can be discerned.

Craft as knowledge structure

Referring to the latter version, Bernstein classifies craft knowledge as a
‘tacit horizontal knowledge structure’ (1996, 181, note 5; original emphasis).
This is the knowledge structure that is viewed as closest to horizontal
discourse and therefore, by implication, closest to the boundary between
horizontal and vertical discourse. Given that one cannot acquire a craft other
than by ‘doing’, this positioning is contrary to what one would expect
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(Martin 2007) as, by definition, the positioning of craft in vertical discourse

accords to it a knowledge structure and thereby the capacity of realising
context-independent meanings.
In my own work (Gamble 2004a, 2004b) I followed-up on the implica-
tion of craft as knowledge structure and its relation to craft pedagogy in an
empirical study of craft knowledge in cabinet-making. The study showed
that the principle of recontextualisation refers to a formal, general, taxo-
nomic principle of form, in terms of the relation between ‘parts’ and
‘whole’. This relation is visualised rather than explicitly transmitted or
acquired. A theoretical relation is thus recognised and instantiated in perfor-
mance, although neither apprentice nor master-trainer is able to describe the
relational principle in a general, disembodied form. A closer scrutiny of
how craft performance is evaluated shows how this works.
The following extracts are drawn from the above-mentioned empirical
study of an apprenticing pedagogy in the cabinet-making ‘trade school’, a
specialised pedagogic context insulated from the work practices of mass-pro-
duction furniture factories. This specialised context privileges a particular
relation between work organisation, tools and materials characteristic of
craft.

Extract 1
[The two apprentices are referred to as AA and AB. The set piece involves
the construction of a half-round table: JG.]

Apprentice AA assembles his final piece and it is not square. One leg is out.
He is upset and the apprentices working next to him move to his bench to
have a look. Then one of these apprentices, AB, goes back to his own work
bench, looks at his assembled piece (not completely glued yet) and measures
here and there. I ask him where he is now and he explains that the middle
part is the most important. That’s where the drawer goes in, so the side parts
must square up exactly. Suddenly he says: I’ve just had an idea. I mustn’t put
the back part on yet because then I’m going to struggle to get the side parts
in. I must first make this middle part stable.’ So he takes off the back and
clamps the middle section (which has been glued).
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 63

The master-trainer (MT1) notices what he’s done and praises him (the first
time I’ve heard him do this). (Gamble 2004a, 145–146)

In the instant of ‘having an idea’, Apprentice AB recognises the significance

of the relational principle between parts and wholes, which has been mod-
elled consistently by the master-trainer but never explained. It is this ability
to see the part–whole relation that attracts praise from the master-trainer. In
Extract 2 we see what happens when such recognition is absent.

Extract 2
[Over a period of time] the stage 4 apprentices worked individually on tables
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which they had to design and make. Each design was different – some square,
some round and some triangular. Part of the task was to use more than one
type of wood in an aesthetic combination. One of the apprentices (AH) made
a particularly fancy table where he combined light and dark wood in both the
legs and the top. The positioning of the legs was unusual because they curved
outwards at an angle (like a giraffe bending down to drink water). Although I
got a clear sense that MT1 disapproved of the design he said nothing.

… This morning, AH reported in sick, but at first I did not think this unusual.
After tea there was a period of inactivity while we all moved around and
looked at the tables. Suddenly MT1 grabbed AH’s table and smashed it to
pieces on the ground. There was a moment of shock as we registered what
had happened. His only words were: ‘This offends me. How can he make a
table like that?’ (Gamble 2004a, 146)

The dramatic action taken and the derisory reference to ‘a table like that’
express transgression of the part–whole evaluative criterion in no uncertain
terms. What this apprentice had done wrong was that he had failed to recog-
nise the abstract object ‘table’ as general type or class, determinative of the
shape properties of the concrete object ‘table’ that he had created. Had he
recognised the ‘type’ behind the ‘token’ he would have visualised the part–
whole relation correctly and, while he could still have given free play to his
artistic creativity in the design of the table, he would have met the relational
conventions of his trade in terms of ‘form following function’. What is
more, this apprentice most probably knew that he had transgressed a cardi-
nal rule, hence his absence on that particular day.

Craft pedagogy
In Bernstein’s terms the pedagogy that produces a capacity to grasp the
internal structure of craft knowledge has strong external classification and
framing dimensions that preserve specialisation of context.
Very weak initial framing (Fi- -) over selection, sequencing and pacing
allows apprentices to work at their own pace and to make their own deci-
sions about task realisation. However, just before the end of their training
 64 J. Gamble

and before apprentices take their final trade test, framing over selection,
sequencing and pacing is strengthened and made explicit (Fi+). Evaluation
criteria of accuracy and precision are very strongly framed in all stages of
the apprenticeship curriculum (Fi++).
A marked aspect of the overall craft pedagogy is that a taxonomic part–
whole principle is the central thread that connects the different stages of the
apprenticeship. No procedure or technique is ever practised in isolation. The
part–whole relationship is always in the foreground in the sense that every
new procedure is practiced through the construction of a whole item and
without direct instructions from the master-trainer.
While Bernstein was adamant that modelling of a principle without ver-
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bal explication ultimately produces a restricted orientation to meaning, he

also argued that ‘the ultimate display is a part of the discourse of an elabo-
rated code modality’ (1996, 191). Craft thus barely hops over the border
between horizontal and vertical discourse, with no further capacity to climb
up the ladder of symbolic meaning.

Craft as interrupter
It may be argued that craft leads us into a cul de sac, so to speak, yet not
entirely so. Even though craft knowledge is not able to generate any signifi-
cant conceptual advance in terms of its development as a knowledge struc-
ture and, hence, in terms of its verticality (Muller 2007), its transmission
practices establish a principle of directionality that transmits a relational or
connective work logic rather than a sequential or step-by-step procedural
logic. Transmission is realised not through gradual transition from known
everyday ‘home factory’ work contexts to specialised craft work, but
through apprentices working out in their heads the principle of relation
embodied in whatever item they are making. From that moment the material
item also becomes a theoretical object. It is this relational logic that
constitutes ‘higher order reasoning’ in manual work.
However, this conclusion is restrictive in terms of its curricular potential,
unless there is evidence that the same directionality holds for the
transmission–acquisition of symbolic knowledge forms. For this we turn to
an example of school mathematics.

Vygotsky and ‘ascent from the abstract to the concrete’

Here discovery and mastery of the abstract and universal precedes mastery of
the concrete and particular, and the concept itself as a certain method of activ-
ity serves as a means of ascending from the abstract to the concrete. (Davidov
1990, 174)

The work of Vasili Davydov and his colleagues bears crucial reference to
the Vygotskian relation between ‘spontaneous’ or everyday concepts and
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 65

‘scientific’ or theoretical concepts. Distinguishing between empirical and

theoretical generalisation, Davydov argues that the identification of the
‘primary general relationship’ in academic school subjects enables the
formation of a theoretical relationship to the world (as discussed by
Engeström 2005, 164). A system of specific tasks to be resolved by means
of such a general relationship allows students to discover the rule-governed
links between a primary relationship and its specific manifestations. In
Davydov’s own words: ‘to make such a generalisation means to discover a
principle, a necessary connection of the individual phenomena within a
certain whole, the law of formation of that whole’ (cited in Tuomi-Gröhn
and Engeström 2007, 29).
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Within this perspective, Schmittau’s (2005) discussion of an elementary

mathematics curriculum researched and developed by Davydov and his col-
leagues shows how particular emphasis is placed on mathematical structure
as the essential content of mathematics. It is argued that the logic of mathe-
matics as a discipline requires an early introduction to algebraic thinking
that is developed from an exploration of relationships between quantities.
Rather than algebra following arithmetic, as it usually does in the mathemat-
ics curriculum, Davydov’s curriculum reverses these components so that stu-
dents are exposed to the most general and abstract level of understanding
from the beginning of their formal study of mathematics; the real number
system later becoming a special case of algebraic structure, rather than being
something students associate with activities in their everyday lives. Starting
with quantity and measurement visually and tactilely, young students com-
pare the length, area, volume and weight of real objects, which fits in with
their real-life activities where they would often compare who got the biggest
cookie or the most juice in their glass. However, instead of working with
real numbers they allocate letters (e.g. T+C = C+T), so that the theoretical
generalisability of such a result to any two quantities is evident from the
beginning. Later, specific numerical designations of quantity simply become
concrete applications of a general result.
Schmittau offers various examples to show how what she calls ‘represen-
tational schematics’ orientate students to the most abstract and general level
of understanding from the beginning of their schooling, through focusing on
the theoretical characteristics of real objects with which they are familiar.
Later (by Grade Two) they generally have little need of actual objects, pre-
ferring to focus on schematic representations that express the mathematical
actions in which they are engaged. The example cited below is said to be
representative of problem-solving that occurs approximately halfway through
the first-grade curriculum:

N apples were in a bowl on the table. R people entered the room and each
took an apple. How many apples remained? Children first analyze the struc-
ture of the problem, identifying it as a part-whole structure, with N as the
 66 J. Gamble

whole and R as a part. They schematize the quantitative relations expressed in

the problem as follows:

N
=n
R?

Since they know the whole and are trying to find a part, they know the miss-
ing part must be the difference between the whole and the known part, i.e. N
– R. (Schmittau 2005, 19)

Schmittau goes on to show that later, when these students are confronted
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with numerical designations instead of symbols, they apply the same

symbolic logic. For example: ‘There were seven books on the shelf. Nine
children entered the library and each placed a book on the shelf. How
many books are now on the shelf?’ In this problem the students are able
to recognise that both numbers are now parts and that the whole must be
greater than the parts in order for this problem to have a solution.
Schmittau argues that ‘because they have a theoretical orientation to the
problem structure, they can analyze the relationships between the quanti-
ties … without any numerical designations to provide them with cues’
(2005, 19).
We see, even in these introductory examples, how everyday objects are
introduced into the classroom but are immediately transformed into theoreti-
cal objects and stripped of their context-specificity to acquire symbolic
meaning. While students start in their everyday worlds they immediately
cross the boundary into symbolic representation, with the structure of the
knowledge content as the focus of instruction.
What students have to learn is to base their reasoning on theoretical
rather than empirical generalisations. This is the crucial distinguishing fea-
ture of Davydov’s work. The rapid transition from working with concrete
objects to being brought to understand that valid mathematical generalisa-
tions can be applied to a class of objects without having to verify each
instance independently, and even being able to apply concepts to cases that
cannot be empirically verified, is constitutive of an instructional methodol-
ogy that has its source in the structure of the knowledge to be transmitted
and acquired. All decisions concerning selection of concepts to be taught,
sequencing and pacing of content follow from this starting point, rather than
being determined by a general theory of instruction that has no necessary
link with the structure of the ‘what’ to be mastered.

Approaching the sacred: directionality

We are now in a position to get closer to Durkheim’s (1912/1995, 38) asser-
tion that it is ‘profane’ or everyday knowledge that must become ‘sacred …
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 67

in some measure and to some degree’, before two seemingly incommensura-

ble knowledge forms can find a connecting point While the intention is not
to valorise the examples presented, they provide evidence of homologous
structural relations, even though in entirely different educational settings.
Taken together, they further serve to provide evidence of active problem-
solving through forms of relational reasoning on both sides of the mental–
manual division of labour. This type of problem-solving is the essence of
‘relevance’, as defined earlier, yet this form of ‘relevant curriculum’ does not
describe learning as a set of skills or outcomes, neither does it presume the
everyday life experience of students as the foundational starting point of the
problem-solving process. The problems to be solved may or may not have a
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referent in the students’ worlds of experience but the impetus for the peda-
gogy derives from the particularity of the knowledge structure to be transmit-
ted. The aim is to develop students’ problem-solving ability in ways that
enable them to grasp the nature of theoretical generalisations, be it in
restricted form relating to only one principle of spatial order, as in craft, or in
extended form, as in mathematics.
At first glance the pedagogy does not appear markedly different from
those emanating from progressivist traditions, yet it is very different in the
sense that its ontological orientation is not premised on an assumption that
general principles can be grasped inductively from concrete examples. This
is what is recognised by sociologists of education when they call for a
return to knowledge.

From knowledge structure to curriculum and pedagogy

In recent years, knowledge structure has started to make its way into
educational curriculum debates in different theoretical traditions. In systemic-
functional linguistics, which has had an early and ongoing relationship with
Bernstein’s ideas, theoretical work has been done in different school-related
subject disciplines. For instance, in the subject English as horizontal
knowledge structure, Christie and Macken-Horarik argue that there has been
‘historically an overall drift to invisibility of content’ (2007, 157), so they set
out to develop a model of the discipline that provides English teachers with
‘access to a metalanguage through which to articulate requirements, and hence
to make it more accessible to a greater number of students’ (2007, 179). Work
has been done also on physical science as a school subject (Halliday 1993),
and later on science as a vertical knowledge structure (Martin 2007); on math-
ematical and scientific forms of knowledge (O’Hallaran 2007); and on history
as a horizontal knowledge structure (Martin 2007), to name but a few of the
more recent publications. Much of this work has been concerned to show
how, in written cultures, vertical discourse is created through language.
Bernstein (1996, 2000) uses the nomenclature of ‘hierarchy’, or what
Muller (2007) refers to as ‘verticality’, to describe the ability of a knowledge
 68 J. Gamble

structure to create general propositions and theories that integrate knowledge

at lower levels. He refers to strong or weak ‘grammar’ in terms of the ability
of a knowledge structure’s syntax to render relatively precise empirical
descriptions. Other writers refer to these attributes of knowledge structures as
a distinction between the substantive or conceptual structure of disciplinary
knowledge and its syntactical structures, or the extent to which a discipline
can verify its knowledge claims (Schwab 1964). VanSledright (2011) shows,
for instance, how substantive/syntactical structure has been introduced into
the teaching of school history to effect a shift from chronology to historiogra-
phy.
The relation between knowledge structure, curriculum and pedagogy in
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different disciplinary subject fields has crucial consequences for teacher

competence, not least because teachers may not invest the time and effort it
will take to ensure that their subject knowledge is not only adequate but
excellent, in order to be able to teach like the imaginary ‘Becker’ in
VanSledright’s (2011) account of history teaching. What we may find
instead is a continuing tendency to lay the blame for differential learning
success on the ability of individual students (as discussed by Martin 2007,
58) or, continued recourse to research such as the landmark Coleman studies
conducted in the USA in the 1960s, which found that students’ social and
family backgrounds are the decisive influence in educational performance
(Coleman et al. 1966). However, what is often omitted when such research
is cited is that the Coleman studies concluded that ‘it is for the most disad-
vantaged children that improvements in school quality will make the most
difference in achievement’ (1966, 22). Good teachers was the factor most
strongly associated with school quality, with upgrading teacher quality
predicted to be the best investment a school could make to improve the
educational attainment of all students and, most significantly, those with
high prior levels of educational under-privilege (1966, 317). Classroom stud-
ies related to Bernstein’s theoretical work are similarly showing evidence of
modes of pedagogic practice capable of interrupting the reproduction of
educational inequality (for example, Morais 2002; Rose 2004).

Conclusion
Taking knowledge and particularly the structure of specialised knowledge
forms as the starting premise, this paper has attempted to demonstrate, from
different theoretical perspectives, that when knowledge structure is taken as
the ‘what’ of curriculum, either intentionally or implicitly, a very specific
pedagogic ‘how’ follows that aims to enable the grasp of theoretically gen-
eralised relations. Almost antonymically, it is this curriculum and related
pedagogy that enable achievement of the criterion for ‘relevance’ in both
academic and higher-level vocational terms. Yet, instead of being ‘close to
the everyday world’, as is commonly advocated, especially for students from
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 69

low socio-economic status backgrounds (as found by Dowling 1998),

knowledge structure as starting point of curriculum and pedagogy does the
opposite. As we have seen in the two cases cited, the reason for doing so
lies in the assumption of a qualitative discontinuity between empirical and
theoretical generalisations – whether explicitly intended or conveyed through
an unarticulated modelling practice. The latter is what Bernstein recognises
when he assigns a knowledge structure to elaborated forms of craft.
The implications of offering these two examples in counterpoint so that
they can be viewed simultaneously yet independently are far reaching. Craft
itself has become more of a specialised lifestyle niche market than an inte-
gral part of modern production, but its apprenticing pedagogic mode was,
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for centuries, the main source of formal vocational training for crafts and
trades (Wolf 2002, 58) and in this sense it was the forerunner of formal
technical and vocational education. It can thus be argued that it is not the
vocationalisation of education per se that diminishes forms of academic and
vocational education in the ostensible quest for an educational experience
that is ‘useful’ and ‘relevant’, but rather the skills-based or outcomes-based
or competence-based approaches taken (Allais 2006; Moore 1987; Muller
2009; Wheelahan, 2010; Young 2006, 2008). As Muller puts it:

The knowledge society means that each occupation and its attendant knowl-
edge base will increasingly be under pressure to augment its quantum of con-
ceptual knowledge, to become at least partly mental. This is because
generalisable innovation relies on conceptual knowledge, as we saw above,
and it is this kind of innovation that the global economy prizes most at all
levels of the division of labour. (2009, 219)

What has been argued here is that it is through access to the realm of
theoretical thought that prescriptions for a ‘useful’ curriculum are realised;
not despite knowledge, but because of the determining relation that knowl-
edge structure has to pedagogy. A second argument has been that we have a
binding educational obligation to open up access to the world as an ‘object
of thought’ rather than as a ‘place of experience’ (Charlot 2009), in order to
serve the interests of all students, whether they are distributed to academic
or to vocational educational careers. Basil Bernstein may not be remembered
best for his work on the knowledge structure of craft and yet his insight in
this regard provides us with a basis for understanding how we entrench edu-
cational stratification by setting up forms of education in antithetical terms.
The relation of curriculum and pedagogy to social class and academic
achievement has long been a central theme in the sociology of education.
What a simultaneous scrutiny of the two examples discussed helps us to add
is that curriculum viewed as knowledge structure provides the capacity to
avoid a dichotomous relation between academic and vocational education,
as two separate tracks that distribute young people differentially. While not
equating one with the other, it becomes possible to explore similarities and
 70 J. Gamble

differences in the knowledge bases of discipline-based school subjects and

their ‘applied’ counterparts in the domain of vocational and technical educa-
tion that contribute to our understanding of the internal logic of what Young
(1998) has called the ‘curriculum of the future’. In this way, education is
able to answer calls for a relevant and useful curriculum while
simultaneously taking adequate account of the knowledge base of any form
of curriculum.

Notes
1. The general definition of framing is extended in his later work to refer to con-
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trol over the selection, sequencing, pacing, criteria and the social base that
makes the transmission possible (Bernstein 1996, 27; 2000, 12–13).
2. See Bernstein (1990, 211).
3. Sikoyo and Jacklin (2009) explore, for instance, the classification of primary
school science in Uganda, while Johnson (2009) analyses classification in Life
Sciences (Biology) curricula in secondary schools in South Africa.

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