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In response to the second sub-research question, this study found that Legitimation Code Theory, as a social realist analytical, conceptual and explanatory framework, has provided a powerful set of tools for analysing and understanding pedagogic practice in these two disciplines. The data this study was able to gather, guided by these tools and the research questions posed, was rich and varied, and it is a pity that time and space in this particular study did not allow for more of this data to be included, analysed and discussed in depth. This study concludes that, in order to make stronger claims about pedagogic practice – to argue for a stronger theory of pedagogy as was this study’s aim – a framework that can help researchers to dig beneath appearances and surfaces to find, see and understand the real mechanisms and tendencies that are shaping and giving rise to practices, events and experiences is necessary. Knowledge is a generative mechanism that is real, and has its own powers and properties that enable it to talk back to pedagogic practices, shaping them as it is in turn shaped by them. This has come through in the findings of this study. Further, this study has shown that there is a great need in research on pedagogic practice for a theoretical and analytical framework that can focus on knowledge and related ways of knowing without conflating or collapsing the two. In other words, while they are, as social realism argues, two aspects of a relational field of practice, actors doing the knowing and the knowledge that can be known are two separate things and need to be analysed separately in order to understand, within discipline-specific fields, what kinds of knowledge and practices are valued, and what kinds are not. This understanding is necessary for designing pedagogical approaches that enable the kinds of cumulative and

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ongoing teaching and learning that will bring students into the disciplines as recognised knowers over time, and that will give them the means of acquiring, using and producing knowledge in the ways that are valued or acknowledged as being valid. Thus, LCT as a broad and deep set of conceptual, analytical and explanatory tools is one such framework that has allowed this study, as part of a wider field of social realist research in higher education, to make strong, valid claims about pedagogic practice, as it has enabled a layered, nuanced and thick empirical account of the pedagogic practices in these two disciplines.

It is worth noting here, in spite of these findings, that a classroom or lecture hall is an open system in critical realist terms (Sayer 1992). In other words, events within classrooms do not happen with any fixed regularity, and while one can observe certain patterns, it is difficult to attach causes to these with any certainty. Similar kinds of behaviours could be caused by different factors. For example, students may comply with rules for behaviour in lectures at first because they are new to university and the lecturer and feel less secure. Later on they may comply because they see the value of these rules for promoting a respectful learning space in which they can listen to and learn from their peers and lecturer. These case studies, and indeed any lecture room or pedagogic relationship such as the ones represented in this study, are open systems in the sense that there are many different factors that have influenced the behaviour of both lecturers and students, such as past teaching or learning experiences, desired goals for these courses, or relative levels of expertise or knowledge of the disciplines. It would impossible to control for all of these, and this study has necessarily attempted to draw valid conclusions based on particular pedagogical patterns emerging from the data, taking into account the fact that these conclusions could be different if other parts of the system were taken into account in the analysis, or if another lecturer was teaching the same course.

In spite of the fact that these case studies represent open systems, and that any patterns or regularities noted in the data gathered and analysed in this study may not be found in the same way if, for example, different lecturers taught these same courses, it is possible to extend the findings and conclusions to contexts beyond these specific case studies and this particular university. Specifically, one could certainly argue that Political Science, as a discipline taught in many different universities around the world, tends to be a knower code, and given the nature of how the learning needs to happen – in close contact with knowledgeable lecturers and peers over time, immersing students within the disciplinary ways of thinking, reading and responding – it tends to be a cultivated knower code. Thus, while different lecturers may approach the teaching of a course such as the one discussed in Chapter Five in a range of ways influenced by, for example, their own research interests or their own immersion in the disciplinary knowledge and ways of knowing, what may well be similar across Political Science departments will be a

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need for students to cultivate their gaze over time, with the basis of achievement being the ability to cultivate this gaze and the attendant dispositions, attitudes and abilities successfully. Looking at Law, one could argue that this discipline, certainly in South African universities, tends to represent a knowledge code, given the emphasis in practice on legal professionals being technically competent, deeply knowledgeable and well trained in the required ways of doing legal research, leading evidence, writing heads of argument or preparing legal memos or briefs for example. Further, because of the stronger focus on these technical or knowledge- based rather than personal or knower-based competencies or abilities, it tends to represent a trained gaze which students who apply themselves and become proficient in the required knowledge and procedural and technical practices can acquire successfully.

These findings may not always hold true in every case, and empirical research in different Law faculties and Political Science departments in different national contexts may reveal contrary data, but as a rule of thumb this kind of knowledge can be useful in at least beginning, as a lecturer or a curriculum writer, to understand what kinds of knowledge or aptitudes are valued and what kinds of things are emphasised, often tacitly, in the way the discipline is presented and taught to students. This kind of understanding, and an ability to use some of the tools this study has used to analyse and unpack pedagogic as well as curriculum processes and underpinnings can help lecturers to begin to make changes in their teaching that can address this sense of a ‘gap’ between what is expected and what many students are able (and unable) to do adequately. Although this study has necessarily drawn boundaries around what has been selected and analysed from the data, as well as around what LCT and other conceptual and explanatory tools have been used, it has found that using the kind of framework created and employed here can provide a useful, illuminating and also empowering alternative approach to creating pedagogic environments than the ones offered by many constructivist approaches that are currently very popular in higher education.

Having discussed the significant findings and the responses to the first three research questions this study posed, this chapter will now turn to the final research question and consider this study’s contribution to the field, as well as briefly discuss the implications of this research for pedagogic practice and for further research.