ABSTRACT
It is a commonplace in social scientific research to argue that theory and practice should be related. The frequency with which proclamations recur, however, attests to how far the rhetoric outreaches reality. Theory often remains separated from the practice it purports to explain and transform. As this volume highlights, Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) enables false dichotomies to be overcome, whether between concepts and data (Chapter 2), quantitative and qualitative methods (Chapter 3), theories from different disciplines (Chapter 5) or, as we illustrate in this chapter, ‘the canonical opposition between theory and practice’ (Bourdieu 1996: 179). That LCT is a ‘practical theory’ (Chapter 1) manifests in myriad forms. Principally, an ever-growing body of research attests to its capacity to provide practicable solutions to practical problems. Such studies typically bring theory to bear on the analysis of practice or articulate the implications of analysis for practice. This chapter, however, explores an arguably closer relation: embedding theory within practice or (to distinguish this focus) what we shall refer to as ‘praxis’. Specifically, we explore a form of praxis where theory is invisibly integrated into action. To clarify our focus we shall distinguish between explicit praxis where theory is voiced and tacit praxis where theory is silent. Consider as an example different uses of the LCT concept of semantic waves, which describes recurrent movements between simpler, concrete meanings and more complex, generalized meanings, and vice versa (Maton 2013, 2014a). Macnaught et al. (2013) describe a pedagogic intervention in which the concept of ‘semantic waves’ was explicitly taught to schoolteachers as part of shaping the knowledge they express in classroom discourse. In this training the concept was voiced – explicit praxis. However, though it informed their subsequent teaching, the teachers typically did not explicitly discuss ‘semantic waves’ in the classroom. In this teaching the concept was
significant but not made manifest – tacit praxis. The use of LCT concepts to generate explicit praxis is growing rapidly, particularly in academic development and academic literacy programmes.1 However, this form is not always feasible or welcomed. In education, possibilities may be limited by a perceived lack of time or capacity to teach and learn both content knowledge and a meta-language for understanding the nature of that knowledge. Beyond education, explicit use of technical concepts may be viewed as militating against informal learning. In such contexts tacit praxis offers an alternative where actors need not learn the theory – they may engage in practices based on a theory without being fluent in or even knowing about the framework itself. Tacit praxis thus offers the potential for theory to guide practice on a large scale. However, the means whereby theory can be systematically transformed into praxis remains underexplored. This is a particularly pressing issue for tacit praxis as concepts must be translated into the discursive practices that characterize the context without losing their integrity. Basil Bernstein (2000) provided a starting point by distinguishing between ‘internal languages of description’ or how constituent concepts of a theory are interrelated, and ‘external languages of description’ or how concepts are related to their referents. What he termed ‘strong external languages of description’ that translate between theory and the specificities of different data are crucial for knowledge-building by bringing disparate phenomena within the purview of an integrating theory. Chapter 2 (this volume) describes the creation of a ‘translation device’ for relating theory and data. However, integrating theory with practice has been less discussed. Maton (2014b: 209) extends Bernstein’s ideas to describe ‘external languages of enactment’ for translating between theory and actions and suggests that each kind of practice requires its own language of enactment. Continuing our example above, the concept of ‘semantic waves’ can be enacted within a range of practices in education (classroom practice, student assessments, research publications, etc.) as well as beyond the field (legal proceedings, parliamentary procedures, etc.). Accordingly in the pedagogic intervention (Macnaught et al. 2013), enacting semantic waves in secondary school classrooms in History and Biology required translation of the concept into specifically pedagogic terms that, moreover, were appropriate to this level of education and these subject areas. To this end, genre-based pedagogies developed by the ‘Sydney School’ of systemic functional linguistics were drawn upon to translate semantic waves into pedagogic practices. Thus an external language of enactment is a means for embedding theory into practice in ways appropriate to the concrete particularities of that situated and contextualized action. It is a translation device for praxis. This raises the question of how such a device can be developed. In this chapter we discuss the process of creating external languages of enactment through a case study of a mobile e-learning environment embedding the LCT concepts of specialization codes into learning activities within
a museum. In doing so, we also demonstrate the flexibility and functionality of the framework. First, we illustrate its capacity to embrace diverse contexts. Thus far, this volume has focused on studies of universities (Chapter 2) and schools (Chapter 3); here we venture beyond formal education to explore informal learning. Second, we show how LCT enables not only the analysis but also the generation of practice. Maton (2014b: 210) distinguishes ‘organizing frameworks’ that highlight issues for analysis and ‘analytic frameworks’ that provide means for analysing those issues. To this we add ‘design frameworks’ that enact the findings of analyses within praxis. Here LCT serves both as analytic framework, revealing the organizing principles of knowledge practices, and as design framework, embedding those principles within an e-learning environment. The case study is a mobile e-learning environment called ‘Design Studio’ that was created by Lucila Carvalho as part of her doctoral research at the University of Sydney under the supervision of Andy Dong and Karl Maton.2 The study is reported in Carvalho (2010) and selected findings published in Carvalho and Dong (2007) and Carvalho et al. (2009). Here our concern is less the product of the study than its production. In particular we focus on how external languages of enactment were developed to create a translation device between theory and tacit praxis. This represents a retrospective reanalysis of that process. In the case study in Chapter 2 (this volume) of how an ‘external language of description’ was developed within a qualitative study, the concept preceded the research. Here the concept of ‘external language of enactment’ emerged after the research, enabling a fresh understanding of the process and its methodological principles to be explicated. Thus, one wider insight into the ‘craft of LCT’ (Chapter 1, this volume) offered by this re-analysis is that not everything may be evident, intended or conceptualized prior to or even during research. Sometimes the logic underpinning a study becomes more explicit upon completion or when new concepts emerge that allow the gaze shaping the work to be converted into theory (see Chapter 1). The chapter discusses the research process in five stages. First, we outline how the problem-situation occasioning the development of the e-learning environment shaped the choice of tacit praxis and LCT. We highlight how the specific theatre of social action and form of practice created a need for what we term informal learning of principled knowledge that, in turn, required a framework for enabling tacit praxis that embodied organizing principles of design practice. Second, we discuss how LCT concepts, specifically specialization codes, served as an analytic framework both for identifying the diverse organizing principles of design disciplines and for couching those principles in non-technical language suitable for museum visitors. Third, we describe how specialization codes served as a design framework for the e-learning environment by embedding organizing principles of design disciplines within an informal learning experience. We illustrate the external languages of enactment that underpin the architecture of
Design Studio. Fourth, we briefly discuss the resulting tacit praxis enabled by the environment. Finally, we stand back from the case study to consider the characteristics of external languages of enactment and their wider potential for informing practice.
