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Devising inequality: a Bernsteiniananalysis of high‐stakes testing andsocial reproduction in educationWayne W. Au aa Department of Secondary Education, College of Education,California State University – Fullerton, Fullerton, California, USA

Available online: 10 Nov 2008

To cite this article: Wayne W. Au (2008): Devising inequality: a Bernsteinian analysis of high‐stakestesting and social reproduction in education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29:6,639-651

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British Journal of Sociology of EducationVol. 29, No. 6, November 2008, 639–651

ISSN 0142-5692 print/ISSN 1465-3346 online© 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/01425690802423312http://www.informaworld.com

Devising inequality: a Bernsteinian analysis of high-stakes testing and social reproduction in education

Wayne W. Au*

Department of Secondary Education, College of Education, California State University – Fullerton, Fullerton, California, USATaylor and Francis LtdCBSE_A_342499.sgm(Received 23 October 2007; final version received 29 November 2007)10.1080/01425690802423312British Journal of Sociology of Education0142-5692 (print)/1465-3346 (online)Original Article2008Taylor & Francis296000000November 2008Dr WayneAuwau@fullerton.edu

High-stakes, standardized testing has become the central tool for educational reform andregulation in many industrialized nations in the world, and it has been implemented withparticular intensity in the United States and the United Kingdom. Drawing on researchon high-stakes testing and its effect on classroom practice and pedagogic discourse in theUnited States, the present paper applies Bernstein’s concept of the pedagogic device toexplain how high-stakes tests operate as a relay in the reproduction of dominant socialrelations in education. This analysis finds that high-stakes tests, through the structuringof knowledge, actively select and regulate student identities, and thus contribute to theselection and regulation of students’ educational success.

Keywords: high-stakes testing; social reproduction; pedagogic device; sociology ofknowledge

Introduction

The pedagogic device acts as a symbolic regulator of consciousness; the question is, whoseregulator; what consciousness and for whom? It is a condition for the production, reproductionand transformation of culture. (Bernstein 1996, 53)

High-stakes, standardized testing has become the central tool for educational reform andregulation in many industrialized nations in the world, and it has been implemented withparticular intensity in the United States and the United Kingdom. Researchers have foundthese assessments to reproduce race-based and economic class-based inequalities thatgenerally correlate with those present in society at large. However, while this research basehas made powerful and compelling arguments about the relationship between high-stakestesting and educational inequality, a detailed analysis of how these tests function toreproduce inequality has yet to be done. Drawing on research on high-stakes testing and itseffect on classroom curriculum and pedagogic discourse in the United States, the presentpaper applies Bernstein’s concept of the pedagogic device to address this gap in the researchby explaining how high-stakes tests operate as a relay in the reproduction of dominant socialrelations.

The central argument of this paper is that there is a relationship between two phenomena:test-induced changes in classroom practices and the reproduction of race-based and class-based inequalities in education. To explain the relationship, I apply theoretical work in the

*Email: wau@fullerton.edu

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sociology of knowledge, particularly that of the concept of the pedagogic device (Bernstein1990, 1996; Bernstein and Solomon 1999). This concept provides a coherent analyticalframework for understanding how high-stakes, standardized testing reproduces inequality inschools through the selective regulation and distribution of different forms of knowledge,and therefore through the selective regulation and distribution of different forms of identityand consciousness. Finally, I conclude my analysis with a discussion of the relationshipbetween the pedagogic device and the relative autonomy of education inherent inBernstein’s conception.

High-stakes testing, educational inequality, and classroom control

High-stakes tests are assessments that exist as a part of a policy design (Schneider andIngram 1997) that connects standardized test scores to student grade level promotion andgraduation, and sometimes to teacher and principal salaries, job security, and increasedpublic scrutiny (McNeil 2000; Orfield and Wald 2000). Test score disparities in the UnitedStates are readily apparent. For instance, scores on the 2005 National Assessment of Educa-tional Progress test show White students outscoring African American and Latino studentsby 26 points in scaled reading scores, by 20 points in fourth-grade mathematics scores, by23 points in eighth-grade reading scores, and by more than 26 points in eighth-grade readingscores – with these disparities persisting over time (Ladson-Billings 2006). Compoundingthese disparities is evidence that increased used of high-stakes tests correlates withincreased high school dropout rates (Amrein and Berliner 2002), including that AfricanAmerican and Latino students are twice as likely as White students to drop out of school,and that students from low-income families are five times more likely to drop out thanstudents from high-income families (Laird et al. 2006). Thus, comparable with the findingsof researchers in the United Kingdom (see, for example, Gillborn and Youdell 2000),researchers in the United States consistently find that high-stakes, standardized tests have adisproportionately negative effect on low-income and non-white students generally (see, forexample, Madaus and Clarke 2001; McNeil 2005; McNeil and Valenzuela 2001; Nichols,Glass, and Berliner 2005).

Research also highlights the controlling aspects of high-stakes testing over pedagogicdiscourse in the United States (Au 2007). Specifically, this research has found that high-stakes tests exert control over three central areas. The first is classroom content, wherehigh-stakes, standardized tests have defined what counts as legitimate school knowledge: Ifa knowledge domain is on the test, then it is considered legitimate. In the United States thishas meant that non-tested subjects such as art, science, and social studies are pushed out ofthe curriculum at both the classroom and school levels (see, for example, Renter et al.2006). Second, high-stakes tests have been found to exert considerable control over theform that content knowledge takes in the classroom. Classroom teachers in the UnitedStates, in shifting their subject matter towards the knowledge domains contained on thetests, have shifted the forms in which they present this knowledge increasingly towards thatof the tests as well (Au 2007). Specifically this has resulted in classroom knowledge beingpresented as isolated facts, as bits and pieces of datum that students need to memorize forthe tests alone (see, for example, Pedulla et al. 2003). Third, research on high-stakes testinghas also found that these tests leverage control over teacher pedagogies. Teachers in theUnited States are turning more towards teacher-centred, lecture-based pedagogies in aneffort to keep up with the content and knowledge forms required by the tests (Au 2007).This has led, for instance, to substantial decreases in student-centred activities, field trips,and opportunities for independent learning (see, for example, Taylor et al. 2001).

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It is my argument here that these two phenomena – race and class inequalities associatedwith high-stakes tests and increased restrictions on pedagogic discourse – are linked.Granted, this argument has been made elsewhere by researchers examining the effects ofhigh-stakes tests on non-white student populations in the United States (see, for example,McNeil 2000, 2005; Valenzuela 2005). One of the prime effects of this standardization,these researchers correctly argue, is that student identities that lay outside the test-basednorms are thus ‘subtracted’ from the curriculum (Valenzuela 1999). While I support thesescholars’ research, I suggest that high-stakes, standardized tests perform a more powerfulfunction of selecting student identities that is at once subtractive to some students andadditive to others through the active regulation of forms of consciousness and identitydeemed acceptable within pedagogic discourse, a regulation that takes place through thestructuring of school knowledge (Bernstein 1996). It is through such structuring that we seehow high-stakes, standardized tests act as a systematic relay of macro-level, sociallydetermined inequalities to the micro-level, pedagogic discourse in the classroom. This relayis explained through the concept of the pedagogic device (Bernstein 1990, 1996; Bernsteinand Solomon 1999).

The pedagogic device

The pedagogic device (Bernstein 1990, 1996; Bernstein and Solomon 1999) explains theregulation of consciousness in classrooms as an extension of socio-economic power relationsthat exist externally to schools. Contrary to the popular usage of the term ‘device’, it isimportant not to think of the pedagogic device as a physically existing machine. Rather, thepedagogic device refers to a process whereby a set of rules for the communication and acqui-sition of school knowledge that effectively serves to regulate consciousness in the classroom,and, by extension, serves to legitimate specific identities within pedagogic discourse(pedagogic discourse being the sum of communication and acquisition of knowledge at theclassroom level). Thus the concept of pedagogic device offers a conceptual framework forunderstanding how ‘the intrinsic grammar of pedagogic discourse’ (Bernstein 1996, 42) isdevised through the processes of communication and acquisition of knowledge. The rulesof the pedagogic device are the distributive rules, recontextualizing rules and evaluativerules. These rules relate to each other hierarchically: the distributive rules are the mostfundamental – they produce the recontextualizing rules, which in turn produce the evaluativerules (Bernstein 1990, 1996).

The distributive rules

Bernstein explains that ‘The distributive rules mark and distribute who may transmit whatto whom and under what conditions, and…attempt to set the outer limits of legitimatediscourse’ (1996, 46). Or, in the words of Wong and Apple, the distributive rules ‘mediatethe social order through distributing different forms of knowledge and consciousness todiverse social groups’ (2003, 84). In performing this function, the distributive rules, accord-ing to Bernstein (1996), regulate the gap between that which is understood to be possibleand that which is considered impossible; the gap between what is understood as existingreality and what might be understood as potential or imagined reality. Bernstein refers tothis gap between the knowable and unknowable, between material reality and ourconsciousness (ordered system of meanings) of that reality, as the ‘potential discursive gap’(1996, 44). This gap is very important because it ‘can become (not always) a site foralternative possibilities, for alternative realizations of the relation between the material and

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immaterial … It is the crucial site of the yet to be thought’ (Bernstein 1996, 44; originalemphasis). The potential discursive gap exists as the site where consciousness can change;where new material realities can be imagined; where new identities are envisioned; wherenew social relations might be realized.

The distributive rules, as part of the pedagogic device, describe the process of the regu-lation of the potential discursive gap, attempting to place limits of possibility on conscious-ness, identity, and social relations via pedagogic discourse. The distributive rules operate,for instance, through the teacher’s curricular planning, textbook creation and adoption byeducational institutions, or state-mandated content standards, where, through the social andpolitical process of content selection, the limits of legitimate knowledge and forms thisknowledge takes are established and regulated. Thus, as Bernstein notes, the distributiverules are directly linked to relations of power in society more generally since, ‘Any distri-bution of power will regulate the potential of this gap in its own interest, because the gapitself has the possibility of an alternative order, an alternative society, and an alternativepower relation’ (1996, 45). Consequently, the distributive rules also seek to regulate notonly what is thought of as possible or impossible, but also who has the right or power to setthe limits of possibility. As Bernstein states, ‘Through its distributive rules the pedagogicdevice is both the control on the “unthinkable” and the control on those who may think it’(1990, 183).

The recontextualizing rules

According to Bernstein (1996), the recontextualizing rules of the pedagogic device arederived from the distributive rules. They refer the process in which pedagogic discourse‘selectively appropriates, relocates, refocuses and relates other discourses to constitute itsown order’ (Bernstein 1996, 47). Thus, pedagogic discourse can be seen as a re-translation,a re-articulation, and a recontextualization of other discourses associated with knowledgedomains outside education into pedagogic discourse. Put differently, what takes placewithin pedagogic discourse is essentially a recontextualization of knowledge forms that aredeveloped outside education. Consequently, whether it is through teachers’ own curricularplanning, textbook creation and adoption, or state-mandated content standards, subjectmatter content knowledge from discourses outside education are in essence being appropri-ated, relocated, refocused, and related into the classroom vis-à-vis pedagogic discourse.Further, because the form in which knowledge is recontextualized into pedagogic discoursealso carries with it implications for delivery (Apple 1995; Au 2007; Segall 2004), inBernstein’s formulation the recontextualizing rules also dictate how knowledge is commu-nicated within pedagogic discourse by providing a ‘theory of instruction’ (1996, 49)embedded within the recontextualized content.

The process of recontextualization in pedagogic discourse also carries socio-economicpower relations with it. In part, as a derivative of the distributive rules that seek to regulateboth what is thinkable and who has the power to think it, the recontextualizing rules explainhow that power is immediately translated into pedagogic discourse, particularly in terms ofwho has the power to determine what knowledge is recontextualized and the form thatrecontextualized knowledge takes. Again, whether it is through teachers’ own curricularplanning, textbook creation and adoption, or state-mandated content standards, the recon-textualization of knowledge into pedagogic discourse is ultimately connected to externalsocio-economic relations that grant teachers, schools, districts, and governing bodies thepower to make decisions regarding the content and form of knowledge. These decisions are,in effect, a manifestation of the recontextualizing rules.

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The evaluative rules

According to Bernstein, ‘Evaluation condenses the whole meaning of the device’ (1996,50). Thus, the final set of rules of the pedagogic device are the evaluative rules, which

… regulate pedagogic practice at the classroom level, for they define the standards which mustbe reached. Inasmuch as they do this, then evaluative rules act selectively on contents, theform of transmission, and their distribution to different groups of pupils in different contexts.(Bernstein 1996, 118)

This order of rules focuses on pedagogic discourse at the classroom level, as knowledge iscommunicated and acquired between teachers and students. They illustrate how evaluationinfluences pedagogic discourse through the regulation of the selection of content and theform of transmission as well as the selective distribution of both form and content tostudents as they manifest in the classroom setting. Pedagogic discourse is realized in theclassroom, in practice, through the evaluative rules. Thus, as the lowest order of rules of thepedagogic device, the evaluative rules – as a derivative of the recontextualizing rules, whichthemselves are a derivative of the distributive rules – provide the final step of the relay ofdominant social relations in pedagogic discourse.

The whole of the device, however, cannot be reduced to the evaluative rules alone. Thethree sets of rules of the pedagogic device are hierarchical and interrelated, and they identifyhow three different processes operate as dominant social relations are communicatedthrough pedagogic discourse. The distributive rules operate through, and provide thestructural basis for, the control over acceptable content, knowledge forms, and pedagogy. Ina sense, it is this power that defines the distributive rules, for it is this manifestation ofpower and social relations that attempts to regulate what is viewed as being possible (orimpossible) within pedagogic discourse. The recontextualizing rules explain a different, yetrelated, process. Based on the distributive rules, which determine both what is legitimateand who can determine legitimacy, the recontextualizing rules selectively take otherdiscourses (e.g. disciplines of knowledge, political discourses) and appropriates, relocates,and relates them into pedagogic discourse. Thus, the recontextualizing rules explain theprocess of how knowledge is selected, distributed, and communicated into pedagogicdiscourse, the authority of which is granted as a function of the distributive rules. However,the recontextualizing rules only explain how knowledge is translated into pedagogicdiscourse, not within pedagogic discourse as it happens in the classroom. The evaluativerules then explain this process, and this process alone, by addressing how knowledge,knowledge forms, and identities are selected and distributed amongst students and teacherswithin pedagogic discourse as they manifest in classroom practice.

If we use the conceptual framework provided by the pedagogic device to consider theevidence regarding educational inequality and curricular control associated with high-stakestesting, it becomes possible to identify how these tests function as a relay for dominantsocio-economic relations to manifest in the classroom. In what follows I relate the three setsof rules of the pedagogic device to the research evidence on high-stakes testing in order toillustrate how this process occurs.

High-stakes testing and the pedagogic device

The distributive rules of the pedagogic device operate through high-stakes testing throughcontrol over pedagogic discourse. Most immediately, these rules regulate what is legitimatelyknowable, what is acceptable ‘official knowledge’ (Apple 2000) within test-influenced

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educational environments. Thus, as in the evidence provided above, when teachers, schools,and school districts in the United States decide to reduce the teaching of art (a non-testedsubject) in favour of increases in the teaching of mathematics or reading (tested subjects),we see the distributive rules of the pedagogic device in operation. Tested knowledge isdeemed legitimate while untested knowledge is deemed illegitimate for pedagogic discourse.Content knowledge legitimacy is literally distributed through high-stakes testing.

The distributive rules are also in operation when knowledge is learned and understoodin test-related isolated fragments associated with the control over the form of curricularcontent, discussed above, where teachers in the United States are increasingly turning toteaching disparate collections of facts for rote memorization in preparation for the testsalone (Au 2007). Here the distributive rules operate at the level of epistemology, regulatinghow the world is ‘known’ (fragmented, decontextualized, isolated), thus also placing limitson other, alternative ways that humans ‘know’ the world (integrated wholes and interrela-tions). Again, the tests literally distribute what knowledge forms are legitimate withinpedagogic discourse, and therefore attempt to regulate what counts as legitimate forms ofconsciousness.

The distributive rules also regulate pedagogy as well, where, through high-stakestesting, limits are placed on ways of teaching deemed acceptable within high-stakes testinfluence pedagogic discourse. As explained above, teachers in the United States areincreasingly turning to the use of lecture-based and teacher-centred instruction in order tomeet the content and form demands of the tests (Au 2007). Legitimate pedagogies are thusbeing distributed through high-stakes testing, as teachers align their instruction with thetests.

Further, we see the distributive rules operating in the determination of who has thepower to decide what counts as legitimate pedagogic discourse, as test designers andpolicy-makers, who are both physically and politically distant from actual classrooms, gainincreasing control over what happens at the classroom level through high-stakes tests(Apple 1995; Au 2008; McNeil 2000). The distributive rules enable these distant actors toexercise their power through setting limits on what counts as legitimate knowledge,knowledge forms, and pedagogy.

Finally, the distributive rules of the pedagogic device also distribute student and teacheridentities. The distributive rules establish that those students and teachers who ‘fit’ thesespecific, test-defined official or legitimate norms are selected for test-defined success, thusillustrating the broad link between the distribution and selection of classroom discoursesand the distribution and selection of classroom identities (Bernstein 1999). This is evidentin the United States in the ways that high-stakes, standardized tests validate specificknowledge domains, content forms, and pedagogies (Au 2007). As the range of legitimatestudent and teacher identities is limited by the tests, multicultural, community, and localknowledge are left out of the curricular content and de-legitimized within pedagogicdiscourse (McNeil 2000, 2005; McNeil and Valenzuela 2001). Thus, high-stakes testingselects and distributes students’ and teachers’ identities within test-influenced pedagogicdiscourse. As the research on high-stakes testing and inequality in the United States illus-trates, such recontextualization has had deleterious effects on non-white and working-classstudents in particular.

The recontextualizing rules of the pedagogic device are also embodied within high-stakes testing. For instance, as I describe above, research on high-stakes testing in theUnited States demonstrates that these tests exert control over the content of the curriculum(Au 2007). The rule at work in this process is that of recontextualization. Based on thepower derived through the distributive rules, the operation of this rule is evident in the

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ways that the tests operate to appropriate, relocate, refocus, and relate the forms of knowl-edge from outside of education into pedagogic discourse as test-defined, isolate pieces ofdatum. A very concrete example of this comes from social studies education in the UnitedStates, where researchers have found that high-stakes history tests have promoted the learn-ing of a collection of historical ‘facts’ (see, for example, Vogler 2005), as opposed topromoting the teaching of ‘historical thinking’ (VanSledright 2004). Further, pedagogyitself is recontextualized on the same basis. As teachers adapt their pedagogies to meet thetest-defined knowledge structures, we see an illustration that the discourse of teaching isitself recontextualized within high-stakes testing (Ball 2003).

Finally, high-stakes tests are a physical manifestation of the evaluative rules, the distil-lation of the pedagogic device into classroom practices. Here we see pedagogic discourseas a whole changed and altered because of the tests that literally sit as a set of rules for eval-uating and regulating classroom practices and identities. Again, operating as a derivative ofthe recontextualizing rules, which themselves are a derivative of the distributive rules, high-stakes tests are a manifestation of the evaluative rules in operation. They serve as thesymbolic arbiter of pedagogic discourse, and therefore serve as the regulator of conscious-ness in the classroom because they ‘specify the transmission of suitable contents underproper time and context and perform the significant function of monitoring the adequaterealization of the pedagogic discourse’ (Wong and Apple 2003, 85). As teachers teach thetests, shifting knowledge content, knowledge forms, and pedagogies towards that containedwithin the high-stakes tests, the day-to-day and moment-to-moment realities of classroominteraction, of pedagogic discourse as it is concretely communicated between humanbeings, are transformed as a manifestation of the evaluative rules in practice. In doing so,as the immediate expression of the pedagogic device, the test-influenced pedagogicdiscourse thus selects and distributes knowledge, identities, and consciousness as a transla-tion of dominant socio-economic power relations external to pedagogic discourse itself. Inthis way, we can see how high-stakes tests function as a relay for race and class-basedinequalities.

Regulation, relative autonomy, and the pedagogic device

Up to this point I have argued that socio-economic relations external to schools are opera-tionalized within pedagogic discourse, with high-stakes tests functioning as the relay for thisoperation. Thus it is through the test-defined distribution of knowledge and knowledgeforms, recontextualization in pedagogic discourse, and evaluation at the level of the class-room, that social relations manifest in classroom practice through high-stakes testing. In thisway the pedagogic device limits and regulates consciousness itself through the regulation ofpedagogic discourse. This is why Bernstein refers to the device as a ‘symbolic regulator ofconsciousness’ (1996, 53). It is not that the device itself is symbolic, or that its control issymbolic of something else. Rather, the device regulates consciousness through the controlof symbols, codes, and sign systems – that is, through the control of knowledge – byattempting to place limits on the range of meaning-making. One could read this conclusionin a simplistic manner, and suggest that Bernstein’s (and my) formulation is just a reitera-tion of Bowles and Gintis’ (1976) overly deterministic analysis of the relationship betweencapitalism and inequality in education; that there is a mechanical correspondence betweenthe needs of capitalist production and educational outcomes. However, I would argue, as didBernstein (1977), that this conceptual framework provides a much more fluid and non-deterministic way of understanding how schooling and education interact with externalsocio-economic power relations.

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Bernstein (1996) himself offers two reasons why his model of the pedagogic device isnot overly deterministic. First, the device creates its own inherent contradiction, one thatserves to subvert the device itself. He states that:

Although the device is there to control the unthinkable, in the process of controlling theunthinkable it makes the possibility of the unthinkable available. Therefore, internal to thedevice is its own paradox: it cannot control what it has been set up to control. (Bernstein1996, 52)

Here, Bernstein is pointing out an internal contradiction of the device: as soon as youdelineate what is ‘unthinkable’, you automatically make ‘the possibility of the unthinkableavailable’. Put differently, once boundaries are established in our consciousness definingwhat ‘is’ or ‘is not’, a cognitive structure is immediately established for thinking about what‘might be’. Thus, as Bernstein observes, ‘[F]rom a purely formal perspective, the pedagogicdevice cannot but be an instrument of order and of transformation of that order’ (1990, 206).Our sense of alternatives (e.g. alternative forms of education, alternative social andeconomic relations) is immediately conditioned by our sense of how things are now, and asource of that conditioning is that which works to regulate our consciousness of such possi-bilities: the pedagogic device itself.

Further, as Bernstein explains, the second reason why the device cannot be deterministicexists externally to the device:

[T]he distribution of power which speaks through the device creates potential sites of challengeand opposition. The device creates in its realizations an arena of struggle between differentgroups for the appropriation of the device, because whoever appropriates the device has thepower to regulate consciousness. Whoever appropriates the device appropriates a crucial siteof symbolic control. The device itself creates an arena of struggle for those who are to appropriateit. (Bernstein 1996, 52)

Here Bernstein identifies another contradiction of the device. Its very existence means thatit can be struggled over by forces both within and outside of education. A clear exampleexists regarding high-stakes testing. As soon as high-stakes testing is established as a forcewithin pedagogic discourse, the possibility of the realization of an anti-high-stakes testingmovement is automatically created. Forces both within and outside education can nowunite around their opposition to high-stakes testing because, as Bernstein points out above,‘[t]he device itself’ has created ‘an arena of struggle for those who are to appropriate it’(1996, 52).

I would add a third reason why the pedagogic device is not overly deterministic. Atevery level of the device, through the operation of every set of its rules, there are individualactors and groups involved in interpretation and implementation. This guarantees that thetransmission of power and control via the device is an imperfect operation; that the devicedoes not transmit a perfect mirror reflection of power relations external to education. Thus,for instance, at the level of the classroom, at the level of the evaluative rules, teachers in theUnited States are taking up active resistance to high-stakes testing and the controls itattempts to exert on their practice, even if that resistance is limited by circumstance andevokes punishment by educational and political authorities (see, for example, Jaeger 2006).

Bernstein’s formulation of the pedagogic device has its political roots in the concept of‘relative autonomy’ (Apple 2002; Bernstein 1990), a concept usually credited to Althusser(1971) by neo-Marxists that in reality was originally conceived within Marx and Engels’own dialectical analysis of capitalist production and its relation to social structures

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(Au 2006). The concept of relative autonomy asserts that the social relations associated withcapitalist society are relatively autonomous from the economic relations of capitalistproduction: that what we see happening at the level of the ‘superstructure’ is not totally andperfectly determined by the ‘economic base’ of capitalism. A relatively autonomouseducational system thus might ‘reproduce capitalist relations, but it cannot be reduced tothem’ alone (Apple 2002, 609). As Bernstein explains:

[T]he concept of relative autonomy plays an important role in defining the space available toagents, and agencies in recontextualizing fields, and so a crucial role in the construction andrelaying of pedagogic discourse. Relative autonomy here…points to all pedagogic discourse asan arena of conflict, a site of struggle and appropriation. Relative autonomy refers to theconstraints on the realizations of the pedagogic device as symbolic ruler. Whose ruler, whatconsciousness, is revealed by the discourses’ privileging texts and the procedures of evaluationsuch texts presuppose. (1990, 209)

Consequently, even though the concept of the pedagogic device explains the communi-cation of social power relations and the regulation of consciousness in pedagogic discourse,the negotiation, interpretation, and acquisition of such communication and regulationalways holds the potential for resistance, disruption, and even critical intervention becauseof its relatively autonomous relationship to external social and economic conditions.

The official recontextualizing field and the pedagogic recontextualizing field

Bernstein’s use of relative autonomy is also apparent within his conception of the two socialfields produced by the pedagogic device: the official recontextualizing field (ORF) and thepedagogic recontextualizing field (PRF). The ORF is created by and consists of the state andits agents. The PRF, on the other hand, consists of teachers in schools and colleges, as wellas journals, research foundations, and publishing houses (for further discussion, see Singh2002). Regarding their relationship, Bernstein explains that:

If the PRF can have an effect on pedagogic discourse independently of the ORF, then there isboth some autonomy and struggle over pedagogic discourse and its practices. But, if there isonly the ORF, then there is no autonomy. (1996, 48)

In the United States, high-stakes, standardized testing is a product of the ORF. Both USfederal and state governments are involved in the legitimation of high-stakes testing as thetool for educational regulation and reform. However, the entirety of the US test industry(test designers, test administrators, test-score interpreters and reporters, and makers of test-preparation materials) is part of the PRF (Toch 2006). In the United States we see a weak-ening of the autonomy of the PRF, as many parts of this field are nearly indistinguishablefrom their promoters in the ORF (Au 2008), particularly as education policy createsincreased opportunities for privatization vis-à-vis the testing industry (Burch 2006). Thishelps to explain the power relations embedded in high-stakes testing, as the decreasedautonomy of the PRF also denotes increased control over pedagogic discourse. Hence wesee that ‘the state is attempting to weaken the PRF through its ORF, and thus attempting toreduce relative autonomy over the construction of pedagogic discourse and over socialcontexts’ (Bernstein 1996, 48).

However, control of pedagogic discourse is always contested, as illustrated by therelationship between the PRF and ORF. As Wong and Apple explain, ‘First, when thePRF is strong and has a certain level of autonomy from the state, the discourse it creates

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can impede official pedagogic discourse’ (2003, 85). For instance, discourses of socialequality often promoted in education policy sometimes contradict the official pedagogicdiscourses that effectively reproduce social power relations. Second, as Wong and Appleassert:

… [B]ecause of the manifold agents within the ORF and PRF – the former includes a coreconsisting of officials from state pedagogic agencies and consultants from the educationalsystem and fields of economy and symbolic control, whereas the latter comprises agents andpractices drawn from universities, colleges of education, schools, foundations, journals andpublishing houses, and so on – there is the potential for conflict, resistance, and inertia bothwithin and between these two fields. (2003, 85)

This second point is basic, but important. It acknowledges that, because individuals andgroups exist in both the ORF and PRF, there may be differing interpretations, implementa-tions, and political interests within fields. This creates the potential for real conflict bothwithin and between fields. Again, taking up high-stakes testing as a case example, all 50 USstates have introduced legislation that rejects all or part of the No Child Left Behindlegislation, which relies heavily on high-stakes testing (Karp 2006). Even though most ofthis introduced legislation has not and will not be passed into law, the fact of its introductiondemonstrates conflict within the ORF, as state agencies and agents have increasingly shownsigns of revolt against No Child Left Behind as a US federal policy. Similarly, there isconflict within the ORF, as researchers, teachers, and activist organizations in the PRFcontinue to struggle for the relative autonomy of pedagogic discourse (as well as socialjustice) by challenging official pedagogic discourse through research and classroompractice (Au 2008).

Reproduction of culture or capital?

Bernstein’s formulation of relative autonomy and the selection and distribution of identitiesthrough pedagogic discourse, however, poses an important question: What is beingreproduced through the pedagogic device? On one level, Bernstein is clearly analysing thereproduction of culture (Apple 1992; Bernstein 1977). Such a ‘culturalist’ position,however, can prove to be problematic if one is interested in working towards social andeducational equality. If power relations are essentially cultural relations, then social trans-formation (and educational transformation) is mainly a matter of cultural transformation,thus leaving the inequalities associated with capitalist socio-economic relations untouched.This is the critique of Bernstein (and Apple) made by Kelsh and Hill (2006), and, althoughI disagree with their reading of Bernstein and Apple, I do share this particular politicalconcern regarding more culturalist analyses of power and education.

I would argue, however, that even though Bernstein did focus on culture in his analysis,it is not necessarily because culture is the hinge upon which social and economic transfor-mation is made. Indeed, Bernstein has consistently maintained that, while there is somelevel of relative autonomy between education and capitalist production:

Education is a class-allocatory device, socially creating, maintaining and reproducing non-specialized and specialized skills, and specialized dispositions which have an approximaterelevance to the mode of production…The state, historically, has gained increasing controlover the systemic relationships whilst maintaining the educational system in its essential roleas a class distributor or the social relationships of production. The class-based distribution ofpower and modalities of control are made substantive in the form of transmission/acquisitionirrespective of variations in the systemic relationships between modes of education and

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production. In this way, the educational system maintains the dominating principle of the socialstructure.

It is clear that the systemic relationships between education and production create for educationthe form of its economic or material base. (Bernstein 1977, 185–186; original emphasis)

Hence, Bernstein’s focus is on a specific unit of analysis: pedagogic discourse. Relative tothis specific unit of analysis, Bernstein’s thesis is that, in education, power is transmittedthrough cultural codes and that the pedagogic device is the relay for this transmission –leaving open the possibility that both culture and education have much of their groundingin the materiality of socio-economic configurations associated with capitalist production.Thus, while the structure of education is generally bound by the unequal social relationsassociated with capitalist economic relations, this binding is at least in part communicatedthrough the transmission of cultural codes (symbolic control) – and, within educationspecifically, the relay of these relations is the pedagogic device.

Conclusion

Synthesizing the findings and analyses from existing research on high-stakes testing in theUnited States with Bernstein’s conception of the pedagogic device, I have sought togenerate a theoretical explanation of how high-stakes testing operates as a relay betweensocio-economic relations and classroom-level pedagogic discourse, and therefore, howhigh-stakes testing reproduces social and educational inequality. This explanation beganwith an overview of the research linking high-stakes, standardized tests to the productionof race-based and class-based inequalities in the United States, as well as with increasedcontrols over the types of content knowledge, knowledge forms, and pedagogies consid-ered acceptable in test influenced environments. I further argued that the distributive rules,the recontextualizing rules, and the evaluative rules of the pedagogic device operatethrough such controls. Thus we see how social relations are relayed through the distribu-tion, recontextualization, and evaluation of knowledge and knowledge forms embodied byhigh-stakes testing. In this way, systems of high-stakes, standardized testing inherentlyreproduce inequalities associated with socio-economic relations external to educationthrough the selective regulation and distribution of consciousness and identities.

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