The Sacred and the Profane in Recent Struggles to Promote Official Pedagogic Identities

This paper begins by highlighting the concerns of a number of commentators about what they perceived as an unprecedented incursion of market-oriented instrumental values in higher education in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Bernstein's analysis of these issues is shown to draw upon Durkheimian concepts of the sacred and the profane. Similarities and differences between Durkheim's and Bernstein's definitions of these concepts are examined, and Bernstein's use of them in relation to the formation of pedagogic identities is a major focus of the paper. The second part of the paper examines two particular aspects of Bernstein's exploration of the consequences of growing marketization and managerialization for identity change in education: the displacement of 'singulars' by 'regions', and the introduction of 'generic' pedagogic modes. In both cases, although perhaps to differing degrees, the sacred is displaced and, under certain conditions, the profane 'outer' is in danger of becoming the subjective 'inner'. Bernstein's discussion of generic modes is illustrated by reference to recent changes in teacher training in England and Wales.