English Teaching: Practice and Critique
Bernstein's theory of pedagogic discourse: Linguistics, educational policy and practice in the UK English/literacy classroom
Volume 4 Number 3 December 2005
Urszula Clark (School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University)
In “The English Patient: English Grammar and
teaching in the Twentieth Century”, Hudson and Walmsley (2005) contens
that the decline of grammar in schools was linked to a similar decline
in English universities, where no serious research or teaching on
English grammar took place. This article argues that such a decline was
due not only to a lack of research, but also because it suited
educational policies of the time. It applies Bernstein's theory of
pedagogic discourse (1990 & 1996) to the case study of the debate
surrounding the introduction of a national curriculum in English in
England in the late 1980s and the National Literacy Strategy in the
1990s, to demonstrate the links between academic theory and
educational policy.