ABSTRACT
The current time is one of the most crucial periods in the history of higher education: universities are in a process of change. Furthermore, prescribed institutional changes such as curricular restructuring (often termed course “renewal”) have effects on the academic content offered. This chapter addresses curricular transformations taking place within French universities over the last two decades, particularly since the implementation of the “European higher education area” policy, initiated in the late 1990s and of the “LMD” (“licence” (i.e. bachelor’s), master’s, doctorate) French Reform of 2002. I discuss the contribution of Bernstein’s concept of the recontextualization of knowledge in investigating change in pedagogic models and in pedagogic content at the university level. I consider recontextualization as a concept which enables the examination of changes in the process most fundamental to education: the transmission of knowledge. The object of this empirical research is to examine transformations of knowledge within curricula in the human and social sciences at the university level and, particularly, their shift towards an alternative model of professionalizing courses based on the regionalization of knowledge.1
