Systemic Functional Linguistics and Legitimation Code Theory on Education: Rethinking field and knowledge structure

Abstract

This paper presents an introduction to how systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) offer complementary insights into education, focusing on key ideas that brought the theories into dialogue over the past decade. It begins with a review of SFL work on field, which foregrounds the role of forms of knowledge in education. It then discusses how SFL scholars engaged with and understood Bernstein's notions of 'knowledge structures' for modelling intellectual fields. This engagement raised a series of questions that were a basis for dialogue with LCT, which extends and integrates Bernstein's framework. The paper introduces key concepts from two dimensions of LCT -Specialization and Semanticsenacted in papers in this special issue. It then briefly summarizes two major research projects into education that enact these concepts alongside SFL and provide a context to the papers of this special issue, before introducing how these papers illustrate the growing and fruitful transdisciplinary dialogue between SFL and LCT.

Characterising Communication of Scientific Concepts in Student-Generated Digital Products

“…Nevertheless, being an analysis of language, influences from Linguistics, specifically, Systemic Functional Linguistics, is apparent [31]. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a theory of language commonly used in conjunction with LCT [37,38]. Some key ideas that originate from SFL and are relevant to this paper include 'technicality' and 'informational density', which were characteristics identified by SFL scholars as being key features of scientific discourse, as found in a range of 'expert' science texts, such as textbooks [39][40][41][42].…”

Teachers’ curriculum agency in teaching a standards‐based curriculum

“…The disciplinary borders of the school subjects are expressed in the knowledge requirements and the core content as 'a series of specialised languages' in a horizontal knowledge structure (Bernstein, 2000, p. 161). Since the social sciences are characterised by weak grammar and a pluralism of 'languages' (Martin & Maton, 2017;Maton & Doran, 2017), the boundaries between the subjects are vague. Thus, the open character of the subjects provides scope for action.…”

“…in original). The disciplines that fall within the humanities and social sciences are examples of horizontal knowledge structures with 'weak grammar', that is, competing 'languages' representing, for example, different influential schools of thought, perspectives and thinkers (Bernstein, 2000;Martin & Maton, 2017;Maton & Doran, 2017). This weak grammar suggests that the boundaries between the disciplines in social sciences become blurred in the recontextualisation of pedagogic discourse.…”

Balancing ‘flexibility’ and ‘employability’: The changing role of general studies in the Finnish and Swedish VET curricula of the 1990s and 2010s

“…An important reason for using the theory of pedagogic codes and their modalities was that it creates a common language to describe and compare curricular principles across different reforms and countries. Basil Bernstein’s theories and concepts, such as regarding horizontal and vertical knowledge discourses, have been actively developed and applied to research during the last decade (Martin and Maton, 2016; Shay, 2013; Young, 2008). While some of his concepts have received plenty of attention, the concept of pedagogic code, particularly for use in comparative curriculum analysis, has not been as thoroughly explored.…”