LCT is a toolkit. It provides a means of analysing socio-cultural practices, whether in education or beyond, along a number of dimensions. These provide the organising principles underlying practices and their contexts. LCT currently comprises five principal dimensions: Autonomy, Density, Specialisation, Temporality and Semantics. Most papers below address two dimensions: Specialisation, which emerged first and has become widely used, and Semantics, the most recent development and one which has been quickly adopted in both sociology and linguistics. A book elaborating the principal ideas of Specialisation and Semantics will be published shortly as: Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education. Further below papers also explore Autonomy and the overarching Legitimation Device.
Papers using these concepts in substantive research can be found on the Practice pages.
These papers echo the development of Bernstein's approach from educational knowledge codes to pedagogic device to knowledge structures. They add a second dimension to his framework to conceptualise specialisation codes (classification and framing of not only knowledge but also knowers), the epistemic device and knower structures. These have been elaborated in the 4-K model.
Key concepts elaborated here include:
- epistemic and social relations
- the epistemic device (aka epistemic-pedagogic device)
- knowledge-knower structures
- gazes (including the cultivated gaze)
- insights
- the 4-K model
The concepts of semantic gravity and semantic density are being rapidly taken up in empirical research, as they systematically analyse key dimensions that recur throughout Bernstein’s ideas and in work using his approach. They also provide a means of moving beyond his dichotomous model of knowledge structures.
Key concepts elaborated here include:
- semantic gravity
- semantic density
- the semantic wave
- the semantic device (aka the ESP device)
- cosmologies, including axiological cosmologies
- axiological condensation, epistemological condensation
- constellations and clustering
Bourdieu described 'autonomy' as the key principle underlying both fields and positions within fields. Bernstein described a series of binary ideal typical forms of knowledge structure ('singulars' / 'regions') and pedagogic identity that are underpinned by the principle of autonomy. This paper starts from Bourdieu's notion of fields (the central aspect of his framework) and articulates a conceptual development of his ideas that embrace more phenomena.
Key concepts include:
- positional autonomy
- relational autonomy
- fractured autonomy
Most studies using LCT have only drawn on Specialisation and Semantics. This thesis outlines four of the five dimensions of LCT: Autonomy, Density, Specialisation and Temporality, which together comprise the Legitimation Device. (Semantics is a more recent development). This framework is developed through and used in a major empirical study of the changes in post-war British higher education that enabled the emergence of British cultural studies. The Legitimation Device provides the most complete analysis of social and symbolic structuring thus far.
Key concepts include:
- Autonomy
- Density
- Specialisation
- Temporality