Good argument by Bernstein

1. EVERYDAY KNOWLEDGE VS EDUCATIONAL
(SCHOOL) KNOWLEDGE
 In this paper Bernstein’s underlying concern
is with the trend of teachers teaching
everyday knowledge (horizontal knowledge)
rather than educational knowledge (vertical
knowledge) in schools.
Everyday knowledge Educational knowledge

2. EVERYDAY CONTEXT AND SCHOOL CONTEXT
 In this paper we look at Bernstein’s view of
how communication differs in everyday
contexts and in formal education contexts

3. HOME AND SCHOOL
 How does communication with friends or in
the home differ from communication in the
classroom?

4. 2 FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FORMS OF
DISCOURSE (KNOWLEDGE)
Horizontal
• Oral
• Everyday/common-sense/local knowledge
Vertical
• Written
• School/official/formal knowledge

5. THE STRUCTURE OF TWO FORMS OF DISCOURSE
Personal
Settings
Home, peer
group,
community
Horizontal
discourse
(HD)
Public
Settings
Schools,
institutions
of learning
Vertical
discourse
(VD)

6. WHAT IS HORIZONTAL DISCOURSE?
 Everyday or common-
sense knowledge that
one acquires from an
everyday context.

7. HORIZONTAL DISCOURSE: PURPOSE AND
FEATURES
 Purpose: what is
learned is useful to
communicate in
everyday life.
 All in a context (family,
peer-group or local
community) have
access to it.
 Features: Oral, local,
context-dependent and
specific.

8.  Segmentally
organized - What is
learned in one
segment/context is not
related to what is
learned in another
segment/context


9. HOW IS HD LEARNED?
 Segmental pedagogy
– face-to-face relations
in the family, peer-
group or local
community.
 Pedagogy is tacit (not
explicit)
 Learned by modelling
- by showing; by
observing.
 Pedagogy is
exhausted in the
context of the act –
embedded in ongoing
practices; not extended
and sequenced.

10. WHAT IS VERTICAL DISCOURSE?
 Examples:
educational knowledge
e.g. science, maths,
language, etc.
 2 forms
 (a) vertical knowledge
structure (natural
sciences)
 (b) horizontal
knowledge structure
(social sciences) a
series of specialized
languages

11. FEATURES OF VERTICAL DISCOURSE
Coherent, explicit,
systematic,
principled structure
what is learned is
related within or across
the subject discourse
Context-
independent

12. VERTICAL DISCOURSE (VD)
• strong
• e.g. mathematics or weak e.g.
sociology
Grammar
• acquired when explicitly taught
• institutional pedagogy
• ongoing process in extended time
How is it
learned?
• by principles of recontextualisation
How is it
distributed?
Ideology
• seen as elitist, authoritarian, contributes
to social stratification

13. VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL DISCOURSES IN
EDUCATION
 specialized subject knowledge – ‘segments of
horizontal discourse are recontextualised and
inserted in the contents of school subjects’.
 recontextualisation does not lead to effective
learning
 insertion of HD into VD is restricted to the ‘less
able’.
 subject taught in terms of its direct usefulness
in everyday life
 improving students’ ability to deal with issues
arising in everyday life e.g. health, work,
parenting, domestic skills etc.

14. VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL DISCOURSES IN
EDUCATION
 VD reduced to strategies for improving
effectiveness in the everyday world.
 HD promotes pedagogic populism to
challenge the elitism and absolutism of
vertical discourse.
 HD displacing VD in the classroom especially
for marginalised social groups.
 disadvantage the disadvantaged