Regulation in 'progressivist' pedagogic discourse: individualized teacher-pupil talk

<p>This paper examines some discursive practices of 'progressivist' education, in order to investigate the forms of power and control which constitute pedagogic knowledges and institutional subjects in the context of the 'progressivist' classroom. It draws on the work of Basil Bernstein (1990), so as to theorize the classroom as 'pedagogic discourse' and to foreground classroom practices as regulative practices which 'recontextualize' discourses and knowledges under a principle of institutional control. rather than under a principle of pedagogic experience and learning. for pupils. Simultaneously, it uses Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough.1992, 1995) as a methodology which grounds the theoretical claims on the regulative practices of 'progressivist' pedagogic discourse onto concrete data of individualized teacher-pupil interaction. By examining textual properties of such interactions (particularly the teacher's extensive use of modality), the article claims that 'progressivist' practices work in a subtle way, so as to privilege 'procedural' or 'ritual' types of knowledge rather than 'principled' ones (Edwards and Mercer. 1987) and to produce pedagogic subjects who are oriented towards executing secretarial tasks. rather than developing autonomy and creativity in their learning.</p>