ABSTRACT
Bernstein’s interest in the sociology of educational knowledge has involved not just the curriculum (the focus of the previous extract) but also pedagogy — the way the curriculum is transmitted. In this summary by Robinson, Bernstein’s distinctions between ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ pedagogies are discussed and related to his previous work on classification, framing, and educational knowledge codes (pp. 227-32). An ‘invisible’ pedagogy, believed by Bernstein to be institutionalized at the level of the infant school, is seen to be a pervasive influence for the exercise of social control and thus important in the process of social reproduction in capitalist society. For further elaboration, readers are referred to Bernstein’s original paper, ‘Class and pedagogies: Visible and invisible’, in Bernstein, B. (1975) Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 3: Towards a Theory of Educational Transmissions, 2nd ed., London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 116-56.
