Radical visible pedagogy and specializing the everyday

Studies in pursuit of understanding a pedagogic practice to optimise learning across socioeconomic classes have taken various forms, with classroom-based studies ranging from focussing on single pedagogic elements to Bernsteinian-type studies allowing for the investigation of the relationship between elements. What has been less prevalent is understanding the relationship between knowledge and pedagogy within the pedagogic discourse. In this study the aim was to explore this relationship as it operates within an apparent optimal pedagogy, especially in relation to a classroom comprising learners from mixed socio-economic backgrounds. The study was done via classroom observations of two teachers at a high achieving high school serving learners of mixed socio-economic status. In high school the subjects are more specialised and the selection of two different subjects, with different knowledge structures, was done to foreground and optimise the knowledge component. Teacher competence was selected for using qualifications and experience. The analysis was done in two parts: first, developing the concept of a teaching episode to generate units for analysis, and second, coding each episode in terms of strength of classification, framing and the purpose of the horizontal discourse, where present. Analysis showed that both teachers used a dynamic variable pedagogy, which constituted of a dominant traditional visible pedagogy, but moments of weakened framing occurred where it temporarily took the form of a mixed pedagogy. Investigation into these moments revealed, firstly, that they were intentionally used, and secondly, the weakening was enacted by the strategic and managed introduction of the horizontal discourse. The latter was recruited for different purposes in the different subjects but operationalised in the same manner through “specializing” the everyday by relocating it into the meaning structure of the vertical discourse. The impact thereof resulted in the differentiation of the class rather than the individual ...