Schooling and class

Abstract

In this chapter we are going to examine the relationship between knowledge production to class interest. In moving from an interest in stratification and selection recent sociology of education has turned to the process of schooling as the site of much differentiation in education. As early as the 1950's Becker found that the actual conditions in which teachers work and their perceptions about their pupils shape their educational ideologies and subsequent teaching strategies. In later work Bernstein differentiated between the invisible pedagogy of progressive education which seemed to suit the middie-class child - who, it was held already had the cultural capitals by which to understand certain unstated teaching methods - and the visible pedagogy adopted by teachers of the working-class. These teachers felt that strong classroom control of both content (classification and frame) of the curriculum and the pedagogic mode, as well as a relationship based on the authority relationship in the classroom were essential for dealing with working-class pupils. More recently, Kapferer's ethnographic research in Australian schools has found the same pattern occurring with regard to curriculum content and to the types of courses actually on offer in State and private schools. Whilst pupils in private schools benefit from a broad curriculum and an invisible pedagogy to gain a 'schoolwide' mode of knowledge, working-class pupils in State schools remain restricted to the 'classroom' mode of their schools.