Using Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) to develop external languages of description in empirical research in education [abstract only]

Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) is a toolkit that provides a means of analysing socio-cultural practices in education along five dimensions: Autonomy, Density, Semantics, Specialisation and Temporality. The coding orientations of these provide the organising principles underlying practices and their contexts. This session will introduce LCT and describe how a number of these dimensions are being used in doctoral research in education:  Elaine Aldred: The semantic structure of the curriculum and knowledge in EdD programmes in England  Temi Ladenika: Exploring autonomy in students' understandings of independent learning as a graduate attribute  Steve Kirk: Analysis of a Pre-sessional EAP (English for Academic Purposes) programme and its classroom enactment in the curriculum using Specialisation and Semantics.  Richard Pountney: Curriculum autonomy and the epistemic insights operating in forms of curricular coherence in UK higher education Background: LCT emerged as an approach for the study of knowledge and education and is now being used to analyse a growing range of social and cultural practices across increasingly different institutional and national contexts, both within and beyond education. LCT builds most directly on the approaches of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu. It also integrates insights from sociology (Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Foucault), systemic functional linguistics, philosophy (such as Karl Popper and critical realism), cultural studies, anthropology (such as Mary Douglas and Ernest Gellner), and other approaches. See http://www.legitimationcodetheory.com/ for key papers, recorded lectures, networks, PhDs, conferences, etc.