Social class, pedagogy and the specialization of voice in four South African primary schools
Doctoral Thesis
2005
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University of Cape Town
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Abstract
This thesis is concerned with the question of how social class differences are reproduced through pedagogy, and the role of the teacher in this process. The study is located in four primary schools in Cape Town, South Africa, school sites that, in terms of social class composition, were selected to show the reproduction of difference in very stark ways. Four teachers in two schools in an upper middle-class school context, and four teachers in two schools in a lower working-class school context constitute the sample. The first part of the study question is concerned with how pedagogy in the different social class schooling contexts differs. The analysis examines how pedagogy in different classrooms is structured differently, and what strategies teachers deploy in the distribution of knowledge in classrooms. Through this analysis two pedagogic modalities are defined - a vertical modality in the middle class schooling context, and a horizontal modality in the working class schooling context. In the consideration of the reproduction of social class differences, orientation to meaning is taken to be the crucial background variable associated with social class which makes a difference to children's schooling experience. Orientation to meaning refers to the transmission and acquisition of more context-independent meanings (elaborated codes) and more context-dependent meanings (restricted codes). The pedagogic modalities identified in the analysis of the transmission practices in the various classrooms have implications for the way in which students' voice is specialized, or the extent to which students' educational identity and specific skills are clearly marked and bounded. The theoretical resources for the analysis of pedagogic modalities are drawn from Bernstein (1975; 1990; 1996), especially the concepts of classification and framing, specialization of voice and orientations to meaning; and from Dowling (1998), and his conceptualizing of domains of knowledge and strategies for the distribution of different messages in relation to these domains. In order to assess whether social class differences are in fact being reproduced through the observed modalities, tasks were conducted with students. These tasks considered the pedagogy as either an interrupter or amplifier of the community code that all learners enter the classroom with, or as an amplifier of an elaborated code, which middle class children are more likely to bring with them to the school from the home. In the working class schooling context, in particular, the study shows how the pedagogy fails to act as an 'interrupter' of the community code that students bring into the classroom from the home. That is, student's voice in the working class context is found to be weakly specialized with respect to the school code, or an elaborated orientation to meaning. In the first part of the study, then, a relationship between social class, pedagogic modalities and the specialization of voice is established. The second part of the study is exploratory. It addresses the question of why social class differences are reproduced through pedagogy by focusing on the central role of teacher in the reproduction of social class differences through pedagogy. In this part of the analysis a particular explanation as to why different pedagogic forms are found in the different social class schooling contexts is explored. A tentative relation between the teachers own social class backgrounds (which varies between the different social class schooling contexts), their strategic dispositions and forms of solidarity in the schools is suggested, which may offer some insight into how the different pedagogic modalities come to predominate in certain schools and have particular outcomes for the specialization of student voice in those schools. The contribution of the thesis is two-fold. It offers a methodology for examining how it is that social class differences are reproduced through classroom processes, and it presents an analysis of pedagogic forms that could be said to represent a breakdown in pedagogy. Secondly, the thesis points forward to further research that places the teacher as a sub-relay in the reproductive processes of schooling at the centre of the analysis, and takes seriously the social class positioning of teachers, students and their schools.
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Includes bibliographical references (p.276-298).
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Hoadley, U. 2005. Social class, pedagogy and the specialization of voice in four South African primary schools. University of Cape Town.