Basil Bernstein: The thinker and the field

Rob Moore’s text offers a provocative and challenging account both of Bernstein, and of British sociology and education, approaching Bernstein’s work as a complex model of intertwining ideas rather than a single theory. Continued interest in Bernstein’s work has opened up a world-wide network of scholarship, and Moore considers contemporary research alongside classical sources in Durkheim and Marx, to provide a historical analysis of the fields of British Sociology and the sociology of education, pinpointing Bernstein’s position within them.

The book is organised into two main parts:

The Field

• Background and Beginnings
• Durkheim, Cosmology and Education

The Problematic

• The Structure of Pedagogic Discourse
• Bernstein and Theory
• Bernstein and research
• The Pedagogic Device

Written by a leading authority in the field, this text will be valuable reading for post-graduate students of sociology and education, along with active researchers and their research students.