Time past: impacts of ICT on the pedagogic discourse in the Interactive project

Basil Bernstein’s model of pedagogic discourse describes the power relations and fields of influence in schools. Here the model is described and developed to take account of ICT-mediated teaching, and is used to consider evidence from the InterActive project undertaken by the University of Bristol in 2000-2004. The model provides insights and explanations for the successful, and less successful, uses of ICT in that project. ICT is presented as a ‘recontextualising field’ that exerts influence by facilitating communication, association, reproduction and transformation within the discourse. These processes tend to favour ‘invisible’ pedagogies: collaborative modes of working with shared competences, where the teacher is a facilitator. This contrasts with ‘visible’ pedagogies that favour individual performances, with the teacher as the voice of authority and controller of the discourse.