ABSTRACT
Of major importance, both to an appreciation of schools as organizations and in evaluating the nature of social reproduction, is an understanding of how knowledge is defined, transmitted and evaluated within educational institutions. This lacuna in sociology of education stems from the neglect of some of the leads which Durkheim and Weber provided almost a century ago. The importance of the curriculum in developing attitudes towards the world, in providing frameworks through which the world is interpreted, were also recognized by Weber. In Bernstein's model the third message system, evaluation, is dependent upon the other two; the style of evaluation is constrained by the content of the curriculum and the form of its transmission. The rationalist model of the curriculum has been dominant in both developed and developing countries, attractive because of its neat logic, its seeming objectivity and its correspondence with an 'efficiency' conception of education.
