The `invisible' pedagogy is the name given by Bernstein to that which may be practised in pre-schools and infants' schools. An examination of the `invisible' pedagogy and its supposed origins in a `new' middle class, which Bernstein uses to explain its nature, is made using original research in infants' schools. This suggests that the concept has doubtful theoretical utility, and these doubts are extended to the related concepts of classification, frame and educational knowledge codes. The reasons for this concern the holistic nature of the concepts, the structuralist nature of the theory they form, the neglect of social meanings, and its non-empirical basis.
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References
1.
and a different revision is anthologized in J. Karabel and A. H. Halsey (eds.), Power and Ideology in Education, Oxford U.P. , 1977. The references in this article are to the 2nd edition revised version unless stated.
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W. Brandis and B. B. Bernstein , Selection and Control, Teachers' Ratings of Children in the Infant School, Routledge and Kegan Paul , 1974, but, like most of the other references, it is not mentioned or discussed in the paper itself. As the sub-title suggests, the book does not deal directly with classroom activities.
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The research is fully reported in R. A. King , All Things Bright and Beautiful? A Sociological Study of Infants' Classrooms, Wiley , 1978.
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R. A. Pring , `Bernstein's classification and framing of knowledge' , Scottish Educational Studies, 7 , 1975.
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A similar point is made by R. Gibson , `Bernstein's classification and framing: a critique' , Higher Education Review, 9, 1977.
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It could be argued that the invisible pedagogy was not to be found in the thirty-eight classrooms of the particular schools I studied. However, much shorter periods of observations in sixty-two classrooms of the other fifteen infants' schools and departments in the (former) local authority indicated that the three schools were fairly typical.
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This proposition only appears in the original version of the article. Its deletion from the revised versions may be significant in view of the comments which follow.
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Op. cit, (1).
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P. Bourdieu and J. C. Passeron , Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, Sage , 1977. Bourdieu`s `new' middle class differs from Bernstein's, forming the core of the movement to eliminate the traditional humanities curriculum.
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M. W. Apple and P. Wexler , `Cultural capital and educational transmissions: an essay on Basil Bernstein' , Educational Theory, 28 , 1978.
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An extended version appears in Class Codes and Control, vol. 3, op. cit., (1), where a confusing footnote refers to the earlier version as `a shortened version'.
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For example, the statement that for the `new' middle class `play is work and work is play' is a distorted echo of research on work and non-work, as in S. Parker , `Work and non-work in three occupations' , Sociological Review, 13 , 1965.
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But they are a nice fit with the following definition, `a set of categories produced as a result of logical deduction of a number of possibilities from a number of dimensions of analysis', J. Ford , Paradigms and Fairy Tales, Routledge and Kegan Paul , 1975.
