Movement

Legitimation Code Theory: Movement

LCT is growing. Unlike many approaches, its take-up is not dependent on direct transmission from supervisor to student - many who have come to LCT have done so through reading publications or hearing presentations. Alongside many individuals using LCT, there are currently three main clusters of scholars engaged in LCT-influenced research:
- Australia: Sydney legitimators meet fortnightly at the LCT-SFL Roundtable (see below for details of meetings) for informal discussions.
- South Africa: contact Suellen Shay (Suellen.Shay@uct.ac.za) at the University of Cape Town for details of discussions, the LCT Workshop in July 2009, the Knowledge and Curriculum conference in June 2009, and for information on future activities.
- France: contact Philippe Vitale (University of Provence) or Karl Maton for details of future events.
There are also scholars in the UK, Spain, Singapore, and elsewhere ... feel free to join the LCT email listserv to make contact with fellow researchers and postgraduate students (bottom of page).

SEMINARS AND DISCUSSIONS

LCT-SFL Roundtable, Sydney University, Australia, May 2009 onwards

The Roundtable brings 'Legitimators' and SFLers together on a regular basis. It is part reading group, part workshop, part discussion group, part presentation forum. The presentations and discussions are recorded and these will be posted to the LCT Listserv (see below) so others can join in. Anyone can come along or post queries / issues they'd have liked to be discussed. For more information contact Sue Hood (Sue.Hood@uts.edu.au), Erika Matruglio (e.matruglio@usyd.edu.au) or Karl Maton (kmaton@usyd.edu.au).

Meetings:

Friday, 1st May
Introductions and discussion of purpose of LCT Roundtable

Friday, 22nd May
Discussing one strand of LCT(Specialisation). Readings are 'Languages of legitimation' (slightly revised 2009 version) and 'Progress and canons in the arts and humanities: Knowers and gazes' (2009)

Friday 5th June
Presentation of work by Lucila Carvalho using LCT(Specialisation) to analyse design studies, which is a laboratory for code clashes, and then to create an interactive and mobile e-learning environment for informal learning in a Sydney museum.

Friday 19th June
Discussing LCT(Semantics). Reading: 'Cumulative and segmented learning', and 'Grammars of sociology'

Friday 21st August
Sue Hood (UTS) will discuss using LCT(Specialisation) and SFL to analyse disciplinary writing, specifically the ways in which authors create a warrant for their research in the introduction to research articles. This work forms the last chapter of her forthcoming book.

Friday 11th September
Karl Maton and Erika Matruglio will show how they set about analysing an example of classroom practice. This was part of preparatory work for an ARC funded research project. The aim is to illustrate how one can move between LCT concepts and data, the practice of analysis that is often invisible in research publications and almost never demonstrated in at least the sociology of education.

Friday 25th September
Karl Maton will discuss his paper 'Knowledge-building' which uses LCT(Semantics) to analyse the kind of theory that can enable cumulative knowledge and introduces new concepts that address the axiology of fields.

Friday 23rd October
The group will discuss ideas raised in the 'Knowledge-building' paper, including semantic gravity, semantic density, cosmologies, axiological condensation and constellationality.

Friday 6th November
Prof Fran Christie will discuss her work looking at school English, an issue raising all kinds of questions concerning the nature of knowledge and how it should be taught.

The Roundtable will recommence on Friday, January 15th 2010, at 10am in Room 318, School of Public Health, Edward Ford Building A27, Physics Road, Sydney University
 

University of Sydney, monthly: Engaging Realism seminar series

Karl Maton organises the Engaging Realism seminars at the University of Sydney. Held monthly, Engaging Realism is a series of seminars and discussions of readings organised by the AACR. They are open to anyone interested in coming and engaging with realist ideas. Neither speakers nor other participants need be 'critical realists' - the aim is to open up and encourage debate and discussion. Contact Karl Maton kmaton@usyd.edu.au for more details.
 

CONFERENCES

University of Cape Town, June-July 2009: Knowledge and Curriculum in Higher Education

A two-day conference followed by a two-day Legitimation Code Theory Workshop, organized by a team led by Assoc Prof Suellen Shay, CHED, University of Cape Town (Suellen.Shay@uct.ac.za).
Abstracts of papers
Several papers are available for download, including:
• Suellen Shay 'Curriculum formation: A case study from History'
• Kathy Luckett 'Disciplinarity in question'
• and papers by Bruce Kloot and Janice McMillan
 

Brisbane, 2010: The International Basil Bernstein Symposium.

Traditionally an intense and highly productive conference, the Bernstein Symposium is not divided into parallel streams, enabling a high level of interaction, discussion and debate. It is held every two years, and book collections have drawn from selected papers from each conference: 2000 Lisbon, Portugal; 2002 Cape Town, South Africa; 2004 Cambridge, UK; 2006 Rutgers, USA; 2008 Cardiff, UK.

    Singh, P., Sadovnik, A. & Semel, S. (Eds.) (2009) Toolkits, Translation Devices, Conceptual Tyrannies: Essays on Basil Bernstein's sociology of knowledge. New York, Peter Lang.
    Moore, R., Arnot, M., Beck, J. & Daniels, H. (Eds.) (2006) Knowledge, Power and Educational Reform: Applying the sociology of Basil Bernstein. London, Routledge, 44-59.
    Muller, J., Davies, B., & Morais, A. (Eds.) (2004) Reading Bernstein, Researching Bernstein. London, Routledge, 218-231.
    Morais, A., Neves, I., Davies, B. & Daniels, H. (Eds.) (2001) Towards a Sociology of Pedagogy: The contribution of Basil Bernstein to research. New York, Peter Lang, 153-182.

The next conference will be held in Brisbane, Australia, at the Ship Inn at Griffith University's South Bank Campus, from 30 June to 3rd July 2010. The symposium aims to encourage informed dialogue between scholars from around the world undertaking work that engages with Bernstein's sociology of education in the broadest sense.
For my information about the symposium visit:
http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/bernstein-symposium-2010
 

University of Sydney, Dec 2008: Disciplinarity, Knowledge and Language: An international symposium

A three-day interdisciplinary conference, bringing together Bernsteinian sociology, LCT and systemic functional linguistics. For more details visit: http://www.asfla.org.au/dkl08/

The symposium built on and extended the highly successful Reclaiming Knowledge symposium held at the University of Sydney in December 2004 that gave rise to Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy (Christie & Martin, eds 2007, Continuum Press).

Fran Christie and Karl Maton are co-editing a book inspired by the Disciplinarity conference for Continuum Press.
 

University of Cambridge, July 2008: Social Realism in Education International Colloquium.

An event organised by Karl Maton and Rob Moore, bringing together younger scholars from the UK, South Africa, Australia and beyond, and from social realist approaches and critical realism.
 

EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUPS

For anyone interested in LCT and related theories, there are several email listservs:

• Legitimation Code Theory:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LCTheory/
This is a friendly, informal email group for those interested in LCT to share ideas, raise questions, share draft papers, and keep informed of developments in each others' work.

• Basil Bernstein:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/B_Bernstein/

• Pierre Bourdieu:
http://groups.google.com/group/Bourdieu

• Australasian Association for Critical Realism:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/A-A-C-R/

• Critical realism:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism

• Systemic functional linguistics:
http://listserv.uts.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/sys-func