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Basil Bernstein’s theoretical ideas have been called upon by far fewer higher education researchers than would be expected. We argue that the international higher education field of research is ripe for further application of Bernstein’s theoretical ideas. Through reference to our own and that of others, we illustrate five key affordances of Bernstein’s theoretical framework. First, it provides a unique approach that leads researchers to pose formerly unthinkable questions and encourages the development of new knowledge to address them. Second, Bernstein’s valuable concepts raise questions about the specific but inter-related macro- (societal), meso- (organisational) and micro- (individual) level processes involved in producing (in)equalities. Bernsteinian analysis can help to identify how inequalities emerge from and can be addressed at these levels. Third, we contend that the approach encourages empirical exploration of the ways in which education may be disruptive of the social order. Fourth, we suggest Bernstein’s concepts can be adapted to capture the complexity of intersecting inequalities in a way that allows the object of analysis to determine what inequalities are foregrounded. Finally, we argue that concepts help to orientate questions around inequality and social justice in a way that does not over-determine answers.

Building on the proposition that Bernstein's ideas are due for a revival in higher education research, the call for studies in which theory is put to use and for policy studies to engage in textual analysis, this chapter argues for the affordances of the theoretical underpinnings of Bernstein's pedagogic device and critical discourse studies in investigating connections between policy and practice. Drawing on the sociology of pedagogy and applied linguistics, this chapter aims to explore the theoretical complementarities of the chosen approaches for exploring how policy ideas move through time and space. A focus on the notion of recontextualisation enables an understanding of how influences beyond the discipline itself, including policy discourses, can shape learning, teaching and assessment practices. The illustrating case examines policy on learning and teaching and how these ideas are recontextualised from national policy through to institutional policy and individual practices. The critical or questioning angle of both approaches in seeing ideas, including policy, as never value-free but as situated within their sociopolitical context can shed light on how policy ideas make their way into universities and in whose interests.

In this chapter, the focus is placed on the interplay between the broader policy context and the content of postgraduate studies in educational administration and leadership in an effort to understand how it influences the conscience of future school administrators about their role and mission. The socio-cultural theory of Basil Bernstein is used for analysing the process of symbolic control regulated by the notions of classification, framing and meaning orientation which operate simultaneously for establishing dominant practices and forming individual consciences through postgraduate studies. Specifically, the analysis is based on information derived from the official websites of all the existing postgraduate programmes in school administration and leadership in two countries, Greece and UK, which represent two polar cases as regards the degree that new forms of educational management have permeated into their educational systems.

The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretically-informed analysis of an exploratory study which included a focus on postdoctoral researchers' views of their training needs.

The wider mixed-methods study was focused on post-doctoral career trajectories at a time of ongoing policy interest in doctoral education. Bernstein's theoretical perspectives are used to illuminate the data, particularly his concepts of classification and regionalisation.

Respondents' reflections on their doctoral training showed a much stronger appreciation of training which was based in disciplinary practices, even if these were subject to regionalisation, as opposed to more generic professional skills training.

The small scale and exploratory nature of the study is recognised, as well as the need for more independent research in this area.

The study has implications for the nature of the training provided as part of doctoral education. First, it is argued that this should include more explicit discussion of policy shifts relating to doctoral education. Second, rather than being glossed over in the imposition of generic competency frameworks (conceptualised through Bernstein as a generic performance mode), researcher training should attend closely to the social and cultural base of the skills and practices of different regions of knowledge production, at the same time as recognising these to be fluid and dynamic.

Overall, while recognised as exploratory, the study aims to contribute insights on doctoral graduates' perspectives on researcher training as well as suggesting the usefulness of Bernstein's theoretical framework for understanding the reconstruction of doctoral education in the UK.

The internationalisation of industries has spilled over to academia, whereby institutions of higher learning (IHL) increasingly compete in the graduate quality and applied graduate knowledge capabilities that they can offer. With increasing global competition for students, combined with the evolving need for lifelong learning in dynamic industries impacted by digital knowledge management, there is an opportunity for IHLs to be able to evolve to ensure their business models enable services and service delivery to cater to and help shape industry demands. This chapter will look at micro-credentialing (MC) and how the provision of MCs has changed along with the evolving IHL education environment. The demands of students, employers and ecosystem considerations will be addressed through a review of the current landscape, pathways to MC and how MC may be operationalised. The Bersteinian approach to pedagogic classification, which identifies the framework of knowledge as being communicable via three axes of singularism, regionalism and a wider generalist approach is referenced as a framework. The resultant recommendations that draw upon these foundations will conclude the chapter.

This chapter aims to contribute to research on standards and regulation in education, taking as a point of departure three sets of interrelated policies, core to the globalised educational agenda: policies on competencies and skills, school autonomy and performance-based accountability, representing a new governmental logic founded on the values of efficiency, quality, competitiveness and outcomes. The chapter has a double purpose: first, to make a theoretical contribution to the literature interrogating the new modes of governing schools and curricular knowledge. It does this, by explicating the relationship between the regulative dimension of global policy discourses, embodying the principle of performativity, and the discourses regulating pedagogic practices in local sites, where policies are enacted. Second, to present aspects of a study carried out in the Greek education context, in which policies towards a post-bureaucratic administration regime (school autonomy, national testing, accountability mechanisms) have failed to be institutionalised. Focusing on the Modern Greek Language curriculum and its enactments in demanding school settings, the study illustrates how discourses on inclusion, diffused within the educational field and invading the school space, exert strong control over teachers' instructional practices. It is argued that developments of Bernstein's theory of knowledge pedagogisation provide a language to describe the complex ways in which regulative discourses operate in global times, affecting the recontextualisations of curricular policies. The theory thus contributes to the literature on the enactments of globalised education policies and helps explain the diversity of national and institutional responses to such policies.

In the light of recent debates on the possible issues in curriculum studies, formulated particularly in the field of sociology of education, this chapter discusses the role and the importance of curriculum theories in higher education. Focusing on the historical and the conceptual roots of curriculum theory approaches, the argument is that the dispute and the separation between normative and critical roles of curriculum theories are important to overcome in today’s competency-based and outcome-focused context of higher education. Basil Bernstein’s ideas on the vital role of knowledge are discussed in relation to the origins of the so-called crisis in curriculum theories. It is suggested that in the debate between normative and critical curriculum approaches, a danger is that the focus on the educational importance of curricula may be neglected and silenced in the midst of the pressure to renew curricula in higher education.

The visualisation of knowledge structures through concept mapping can be employed to reveal critical links between theory and practice. This allows consideration of particular disciplinary knowledge structures and the active role of the student in manipulating these structures to gain understanding, in a manner that can encourage students to contribute to the evolution of practice. The focus on knowledge structures can highlight the relationship between the curriculum and the discipline, and provides a tool to facilitate the integration of contemporary educational theories that may underpin teaching and curriculum development, such as learning styles, threshold concepts, conceptual stasis and semantic gravity. Visualisation invites original connections to be made between ideas and re-orientated to reveal new ways of conceptualising teaching at university: to include the structural transformation of knowledge as a potential threshold concept in higher education.

In the home help service, food provision is one common welfare service that involves different professionals at different levels within a social organisation. The purpose of this paper is to examine how different professionals involved in this sector view and describe their work and responsibilities.

A qualitative study was designed based on interviews with 17 professionals representing different positions in the organisation, and an inductive thematic analysis was carried out.

The various professionals’ views of food provision mainly focus on the meal box and other meals seem to receive much less attention. The professionals also illuminated their respective roles within the food provision organisation by means of boundaries and split responsibilities, and expressed a view of food provision as an issue for outsourcing. The restricted manner in which food provision was viewed and described illuminates a risk of food insecurity for dependent people in home help service situations.

The restriction of how food provision was viewed and described illuminates a risk of food insecurity for dependent people in home help service.