ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on an etic, observer's rather than actor's account. Although Bernstein's essay is eloquent sociology and the searching for supporting evidence an exciting enterprise, the whole edifice lacks authenticity, now believe, until the practices and notions about these practices are elicited from teachers and pupils as well as observers. Teachers may be observed on the first few days of each new school year defining the rules of their relationship with pupils. These rules subsequently resurface when they are broken. At any other time lessons continue with varying degrees of unremarkable activity. During these times we might look for misunderstandings, reformulation of ideas, and joint production of utterance and so on, but the teacher's actions define the classification and frame. The project's task was to see if it was possible to shift the teachers' practice to a weaker frame by means of the teachers evaluating their own performance against their own pedagogic aspirations.
