The contemporary pedagogic device: Functional impositions and limitations

Abstract

This article attempts to analyse and interpret Bernstein's recent theoretical construction, which indicates the internal structuring of the official pedagogic device, as well as its functional intentions in the process of constructing school knowledge. In particular, the study accepts that the contemporary pedagogic device of the official educational system is the condition for the selection, classification, distribution, transmission and evaluation of school knowledge. In this frame, the article attempts to elucidate the orientations of the pedagogic device, which seems to be dominated by the state's functional impositions. However, this work makes an effort to clarify the complexity of the social-ideological contradictions that, nowadays, arise in the field of symbolic control, as well as within and between the structures of the pedagogic device. These contradictions undermine the regulation of the potential meaning and result in the ineffectiveness of the ‘controlled’ pedagogic device. © 2002 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.