Analyzing Determinations: Understanding and Evaluating the Production of Social Outcomes in Schools

Abstract

Both Basil Bernstein (1977) and Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977), among others, have argued that the organization of knowledge, the form of its transmission, and the assessment of its acquisition are crucial factors in the cultural reproduction of class relationships in industrial societies. That is, curriculum, pedagogy, and evaluation are not to be seen as neutral artifacts or activities. Instead, they need to be interpreted as in part resulting from the interaction between class and economic and cultural power. In essence, while schools and what happens within them have some degree of what might be called relative autonomy (Bernstein 1977, especially chapter 8; Althusser 1971), we miss a good deal of the latent effects of these institutions if we conceive of them in technical, rather than ethical and political, terms. This has an important bearing on our own research and evaluative work, clearly, since if Bourdieu and Bernstein are even partly correct (as I believe they are), then evaluation of the social and educational outcomes of schooling itself must be seen as having ties to unequal cultural and economic power. Notice what this perspective asks us to do. It asks us to place our own activity as educators and researchers, and the activity that goes on in schools, within a wider social context. Situate it within the question of Who benefits? (Paulston 1977, p. 285). Above all, don't assume that because all of us are well-motivated individuals who struggle mightily to help students become more knowledgeable and make programs more