ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with referring to a current in curriculum theory which foregrounds the importance of specialisation and differentiation of knowledge domains. It takes forward an interest in pedagogic ritual through a broader engagement with different pedagogic modalities. The chapter identifies highly ritualised practices across Grade 3 mathematics classes, which entailed chorusing of responses and highly regulated question and answer cycles. It extends the authors' work on ritualised pedagogic practices to consider how pedagogic evaluation provides the basis for ritualised behaviour to emerge. Boyer and Lienard argue that ritualised behaviour exhibits five core features: compulsion, rigidity, adherence to a script, goal demotion, repetition and redundancy, and a restricted range of themes. The interest in ritual in education has tended to focus on the ceremonial features of schooling rather than on pedagogy, and with functions related to the maintenance of social order. The chapter indicates that content-orientation is convergent with respect to content, but divergent or convergent with respect to expression.
