Calibración

The field of research using Legitimation Code Theory is relatively small compared to other intellectual fields of production within higher education research. But it is growing fast, and many new studies are being proposed, conducted and reported on. As Chapter One pointed out, however, there are many more papers and articles reporting on research into curriculum, and understanding how knowledge structures and specialisation codes influence what kinds of knowledge get recontextualised into curricula and how this happens, rather than on pedagogy. This study thus aimed to contribute new understandings of how LCT tools, in particular from Specialisation and Semantics, can be used to create a conceptual and explanatory framework that can be used to study pedagogy in a relatively novel way.

Semantics in particular is a very new part of the LCT ‘toolkit’ and thus there are not yet very many studies researching how Semantic tools can be used to analyse and understand curriculum design, and there are even fewer about pedagogic practice and knowledge-building processes in different academic disciplines. The tools themselves, semantic gravity and semantic density, are relatively new compared to the Specialisation tools which were first written about over ten years ago. It has therefore been a challenge to apply and enact their use in this study, as one can at this stage only draw heuristic diagrams to represent teaching moments or a series of moments, and this can seem a little vague rather than concrete and exactly measurable. I would argue that trying to measure how high or low one is on a semantic scale would perhaps be easier in the intended curriculum on paper rather than in the enacted curriculum seen in the messiness of teaching and assessment. Nevertheless it is one of the limitations of this study that it can only present the reader with heuristics, rather than with more accurate, clear and measured representations of classroom dialogue and interaction. In spite of this limitation and others noted in the following sub-section, one of the contributions this study has made is to join this rapidly growing conversation, or set of conversations, on social realist and LCT analyses of pedagogic practices, and how different kinds of emphases and underlying organising principles can shape and influence different kinds of pedagogic practice with important implications for cumulative learning, social inclusion and epistemological access. Legitimation Code Theory research is one field to which this study has contributed,

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extending conversations regarding, in particular, the use of Semantics to analyse and understand practice, and adding new understandings to the ways in which Specialisation can also be used to analyse different dimensions of pedagogy.

A further field of research and practice this study speaks into, and perhaps also troubles, is that on ways of teaching to enable epistemological access and student success in higher education. Much of the current research that is gaining ground and also followers in higher education centres on how to create ‘authentic’ learning experiences for students that teach them skills that are relevant for the world of work and that are also relevant for them to be lifelong learners and critical citizens in the world. In part this research is influenced by student-centred approaches to learning that prioritise students’ prior learning and personal ways of making meaning out of their learning (see Chapter One, section 2.1 for detailed discussion). Much of this research is influenced by constructivist paradigms and tends therefore to conflate knowledge with knowing, and in doing so becomes ‘knowledge-blind’ (Maton 2013a: 4). This knowledge- blindness means that these studies tend to take a relativist approach to knowledge, which means that knowledge as an objective and real mechanism that can act upon students, lecturers and pedagogy as much as it is produced through pedagogy and made sense of by students and lecturers in social contexts is obscured. Research that does this can end up presenting ways of designing pedagogic approaches or methods as a kind of one-size-will-fit-all; for example creating authentic learning environments with ill-defined tasks and an emphasis on student-led inquiry and teachers as facilitators rather than knowledgeable expert teachers (Herrington & Herrington 2006; Jonassen 1998), or student-centred learning with an emphasis on students being more able to select what they want to learn, and manage the sequencing and pacing of their learning to a greater extent (Chen et al 2011; Mims 2003).

A final area of research to which this study has made a small contribution concerns the differences between teaching disciplines that can be regarded as singulars and those that can be regarded as regions. Although I cannot reach very firm conclusions here, and more research would most certainly be needed to do so, my study does point to a difference in terms of the way in which lecturers tend to orient students towards a field of practice as very clearly defined or less defined and clearly articulated. In Law, a professional discipline, the lecturers made many mentions of ‘practice’ defined as practicing the law, and indicated at different points during the course what students might need to do, think about, or take action on one day when they are practicing attorneys or advocates. In Political Science, by contrast, while there were mentions of students thinking like ‘analysts’ or like ‘NGO workers’ what this consisted of was less clearly defined or articulated, and there was a more vague sense of what the possible world of practice was here. It seems that, based on my data and a broad understanding of other

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professional disciplines like Physiotherapy, Accounting and Engineering, that teaching in regions does require lecturers to face both ways (Barnett 2006) in their pedagogic practice and not just in their curriculum design. They need to bring the world of practice more visibly and more articulately into the classroom and show students what will be expected of them through the assessment tasks they design and the teaching and learning activities they set up and use to enact the curriculum in practice. Based on my data and my own experience of studying in disciplines like Political Science, English and Philosophy, which can be described as singulars, I can tentatively conclude that there is far less need for such lecturers to consider the world of practice or to bring it into the classroom in tangible ways. Thus, this study’s small contribution to this research can be summarised as saying that this study has begun to grapple with the ways in which singulars and regions need to consider which way they are facing in pedagogy as well as in curriculum, and that considering this in the latter does not always ensure that the students make the relevant connections between the world of academia and the world of practice; the connections need to be made meaningfully where relevant through pedagogy and assessment as well.

There are limitations to how much my study can both contribute to and trouble current and existing research and literature, narrow as its focus is. But I hope it has made a valuable contribution to research on pedagogic practice by offering a viable, strong alternative to research that focuses shallowly on pedagogy as being student-centred and focused on more general or generic kinds of learning that can be used by students to make their way in the world, rather than more deeply and in a nuanced way at what the tools and methods need to be helping students to learn in relevant ways within different disciplinary contexts and the worlds of work that these tend to connect to.