Education, Symbolic Control, and Identity: Theoretical Research and Critique

Over the past two decades, Taiwan has experienced unprecedented changes across various facets of society, economy, politics, and culture. Amidst this rapidly shifting environment, educational reform has been underway for over ten years. All social groups have vigorously striven to construct their own educational discourses, vying for control over official educational mechanisms to establish their ideologies as the dominant framework of consciousness. How to interpret the educational changes of the past two decades is a highly significant issue.

Basil Bernstein's "Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity" introduces highly original concepts such as code theory, pedagogic device, recontextualizing field, identity, and vertical and horizontal discourse types. These provide a valuable framework for us to penetrate beyond the surface of the myriad phenomena, delve deeply into Taiwanese society, and reflect upon, investigate, and explain educational changes and their resultant problems. This can inspire more meaningful empirical research topics; furthermore, it helps us to untangle the social foundations of educational reform, and understand the intricate power structures and interactions between various educational discourses and identities. Theoretically, this book allows us to appreciate the new landscape of the sociology of education; empirically, it opens up a deeper and broader perspective for us to consider educational changes in Taiwan; and practically, it assists teacher educators in developing diverse teacher training methods to meet the demands of educational reform, thereby elevating the quality of teacher education.

Due to his academic originality, Bernstein was honored by British sociologists J. Halsey & A. Kable as "the pioneer of a new synthesis" and was appointed the Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) Professor at the University of London. Additionally, in August 2001, the Sociology of Education section of the American Sociological Association awarded him the Willard Waller Award in recognition of his lifetime achievements and contributions.