Basil Bernstein’s Theory of the Pedagogic Device Applied to Curriculum Construction in Music Education: From the Macro- to a Microview of Instructional Practices Page: 474

                                
Ruth Wright and Hildegard Froehlich  Bernstein's Theory of the Pedagogic Device  474
Introduction
At the 2007 symposium, two separate papers (Froehlich & Johnson, 2008; Wright,
2008) addressed Basil Bernstein's work in its application to music educational
practices. Both presentations pointed out that Basil Bernstein's work, while receiving
much attention by general educationists, has not been given the same attention by the
music education research and academic community in the United States or, until very
recently, in the United Kingdom. This year, Wright and Froehlich have joined forces
to delve deeper into Bernstein's theoretical framework than the two previous
presentations did. For this reason, this paper takes on the character of an information-
providing essay rather than a report of original research.
The paper's premise is that the United Kingdom and the United States
experience a phenomenon called cultural inversion, meaning that those holding
economic and cultural capital are no longer advocates of high or elite culture, nor are
they particularly interested in buying into this form of cultural capital through arts
education for their children. Bourdieu explained this phenomenon with his theoretical
frames of field and habitus, constructs also featured in Bernstein's later work. It is
this work on the relationship of educational fields to the field of power that we believe
demonstrates Bernstein's continued relevance for (1) understanding music schooling
as a class- and code-specific educational practice; and (2) drawing close connections
between specific societal expectations, instructional practices, and their respective
codes. Both issues reflect what school music practices are sociologically: accepted
and expected patterns of conduct that stand for a particular concept of 'what being

cultured & educated' means. Teachers are being held to such expectations by the need
to use specialized instructional language; choose repertoire from a somewhat
predetermined catalogue of accepted, if not controlled, musical and academic