Journal of Education, 2016
Issue 66, http://joe.ukzn.ac.za

Knowledge and knowers in teaching and

learning: an enhanced approach to

curriculum alignment 

Sherran Clarence
(Received 16 November 2015; accepted 4 June 2016)

Abstract

John Biggs’ well-known curriculum design approach, constructive alignment, is widely used in
higher education in the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa. Developed with one
dominant account of learning through curriculum, this approach has a gap in terms of accounting
for other kinds of knowledge building, and associated knower development. This paper proposes a
complementary approach that accounts for different kinds of knowledge and knower building.
Using Legitimation Code Theory’s concept of Specialisation, the paper argues that accounting for
what makes a discipline ‘special’ in terms of its basis for legitimate achievement can enable
curriculum writers to align curricula more effectively with that basis in different disciplines. Using
a case study approach, this paper shows how this tool can provide lecturers and academic
development practitioners with a useful mode of analyzing curriculum alignment to more ably
account for differential development of disciplinary knowledges and knowers.

Introduction

Since its initial appearance in the late 1990s, John Biggs’ concept of
constructive alignment as a tool for designing curriculum in higher education
has become popular in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and New
Zealand (Kahn, 2015). Simply put, this approach to designing curricula
requires that they be aligned in service of an end-goal of demonstrable student
learning. Beginning with learning outcomes, moving through teaching and
learning activities and assessment and ending in evaluation, all the steps of
this process need to be clearly connected, so that what students are supposed
to be learning is taught, assessed and evaluated, creating a clear connection
between aims and outcomes (Biggs, 1996, 2012). 

This approach is now widely used, with several authors indicating its
usefulness as a tool for curriculum design (Edström, 2008; Joseph and Juwah,



66        Journal of Education, No. 66, 2016

2012; Treleaven and Voola, 2008). However, this paper, while
acknowledging the need for the aims and outcomes of curriculum to be
carefully planned and aligned, acknowledges that there is a gap in this
approach that needs to be addressed. According to Kahn (2015), the
constructive alignment approach, building on Biggs’ earlier work on the
SOLO taxonomy, account predominantly for one form of knowledge building
in education. This form is aggregative, and similar to Bernstein’s account of
hierarchical knowledge structures that develop by subsuming and building on
prior knowledge (cf. Bernstein, 1999; Kahn, 2015). This leaves other forms of
knowledge-building which are less aggregative and more segmented, like
Bernstein’s horizontal knowledge structures which grow through the
introduction of new speakers, ideas, and theories (Bernstein, 1999), under-
considered in the application of such an approach.
 
Biggs’ approach is useful in highlighting the need to interrogate closely the
appropriateness of learning outcomes and the aligned teaching, learning,
assessment and evaluation that will lead students to achieving those
outcomes. However, it is focused largely on pedagogy and the enactment of
curriculum, rather than on the knowledge that is included in the curriculum
itself, or on the different kinds of knowers students need to become. In
essence, there are gaps within the design of constructive alignment that merit
further consideration, and the need for complementary approaches to
strengthen its applicability across the disciplinary map (Kahn, 2015). 

This paper seeks to consider one such complementary approach to enhancing
constructive alignment as a useful tool for curriculum design. The paper
approaches this consideration from a realist theory of knowledge, particularly
that which underpins Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) within the sociology
of education. It begins by unpacking in more detail Biggs’ formulation of
constructive alignment, as well as the potential gaps that could be filled by a
complementary approach drawn from LCT, specifically from the dimension of
Specialisation. It then moves on to explain what LCT has to offer as an
invaluable set of additional tools to enhance a process of constructive
curriculum design, before moving on to illustrate the tools in action within a
defined case study. 



Clarence: Knowledge and knowers in teaching and learning. . .       67

Constructive alignment and the question of knowledge

 ‘Constructive alignment’ as a tool for curriculum design and renewal is
drawn primarily from the work of John Biggs (1996, 2012). This approach
advocates designing curricula focused on what students are doing in the
classroom, with aligned learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities,
assessments and evaluation tasks. In essence, Biggs’ model for aligning
curricula suggests that all teaching and learning activities and assessments
must be able to lead learners towards achieving identifiable outcomes, and
activities need to focus on giving students opportunities to engage as far as
possible in ‘authentic’ (Herrington and Herrington, 2006) and ‘student-
centred’ (O’Neill and McMahon, 2005) learning. Learning and teaching
activities should be designed to enable students to construct knowledge and
make meaning in ways that connect with and build on their prior learning, and
encourage students to be active participants in their own learning. 

In developing first the SOLO taxonomy and later constructive alignment
(Biggs, 1996), Biggs accounted primarily for one form of knowledge building
or learning, that more closely associated with Bernstein’s hierarchical
knowledge structures (Kahn, 2015) that grow through subsuming and
extending established knowledge. This has left a gap where forms of
knowledge building or learning that may not be aggregative in the same ways
are under-considered (Kahn, 2015). What is important about this in the
context of this paper is that, in foregrounding only one broad form of
knowledge building Biggs also under-accounted for different kinds of
knowers that are developed through encounters with different forms of
knowledge building and meaning-making. In other words, in obscuring a set
of relations within curriculum – that associated with horizontal knowledge
structures, and their curricula and pedagogic practices – Biggs also obscured
the development of associated kinds of knowers. Thus, following Kahn
(2015) constructive alignment as a useful tool for curriculum development
could be expanded and complemented by approaches that can account more
adequately for both knowledge and knowers, and for the different ways in
which both are developed in higher education. 

A significant first step in extending constructive alignment to more
adequately account for different forms of knowledge and knower construction
is to consider what we mean by knowledge. The argument proposed in this
paper is premised on a realist theory of knowledge; that knowledge emerges



68        Journal of Education, No. 66, 2016

from but cannot be reduced to the contexts in which it is created (Maton and
Moore, 2010). In other words, knowledge is not only subjectively created
within the minds of those who make and know it. This theory of knowledge
acknowledges that there are always two dimensions of learning that should
not be conflated: there is an objective dimension – the knowledge itself, and a
subjective dimension – those who come to make and hold that knowledge. If
we only see knowledge as that which is created in the minds of knowers,
rather than as having its own objective properties, we may risk obscuring
important differences between commonsense and theoretical knowledge
(Wheelahan, 2009) and further make it difficult for students to grasp these as
part of a basis for success in university studies. 

This paper contends that in order to encourage and enable students to make
meaning and build knowledge within their disciplines in appropriate and
engaged ways, curriculum designers need to acknowledge that different
disciplines have different purposes or aims in terms of who they are trying to
enable students to become, how they are trying to encourage students to act,
and what they are trying to enable students to know (see Barnett, 2000;
Schulman, 2005). In other words, teaching and learning needs to account
more fully for different forms of knower and knowledge building across the
disciplines. This requires a critical consideration of the underlying organising
principles or epistemic and ontological purposes of a discipline, which
indicate what counts as legitimate knowledge and legitimate ways of creating
and disseminating that knowledge (Maton, 2014). 

Using the Specialisation dimension of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), this
paper selects relevant data from one case study within a wider research
project undertaken in a South African university as an illustrative example of
how constructive alignment could be enhanced. The data analysis reveals one
set of underlying organising principles within a discipline that represents a
less aggregative form of learning and knowledge building. Thus, it considers
a particular set of goals for who the knowers should be and what attributes
they should possess to be successful. Possible implications of employing this
kind of analysis are discussed in relation to how the findings can open up new
conversations between academic staff development practitioners and
lecturers, or between lecturers and their students, about what counts as
knowledge, in what ways it can come to be known in particular disciplinary
fields, and what attributes successful students need to develop over time.



Clarence: Knowledge and knowers in teaching and learning. . .       69

Conceptual framework

Legitimation Code Theory, or LCT, is a realist sociological ‘toolkit’
developed by Karl Maton that subsumes and extends the prior work of mainly
Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu, specifically Bernstein’s code theory and
Bourdieu’s field theory (for a fuller account please refer to Maton 2014,
Chapter 2). Specialisation is a dimension of LCT that reveals one set of
organising principles or underpinning logics that shape and inform what
academic disciplines do with knowledge and associated ways of knowing. 

Specialisation, in the context of this paper, posits that all disciplines need to
stake their claim to status, recognition and position within higher education,
and that they do so by using particular discourses that mark them as having
attributes worthy of recognition. For example, Political Science uses, crudely
put here for the purposes of brevity, a discourse of critical imagination and
analytical thinking that applies theory within the field to understanding and
critiquing global or local issues. Political Science knowers construct
particular forms of arguments to accomplish this, and to stake claims to
legitimacy and status within higher education. Actors within this discourse
may and will argue about whether these claims are correct, and whether they
should be changed and how. But political science academia globally is
marked, broadly speaking, by a discourse of rigorous, empathetic reasoning
and argument underpinned by particular methods or ways of engaging with
both theory and the application or development of that theory (even if there
are contextual differences between universities and national political systems)
(see Goodin and Klingeman, 1998). 

These claims to status, or legitimacy are based on deeper, often tacit
understandings of the principles underlying the knowledge structure within
the intellectual field in question (Maton, 2007). Actors and discourses within
these intellectual fields, out of which higher education disciplines are drawn,
are “selected and recontextualised on the basis of a principle emanating from
the knowledge structure, knower structure or. . .neither or both” (Maton,
2007, p. 92). If we can understand the discursive practices of the intellectual
fields as structures that select, position and empower actors and discourses in
different ways, then we can begin to consider the influence that a particular
set of discursive practices may have on what we select in developing a
curriculum, and how we recontextualise and enact the curriculum knowledge
through aligned pedagogic and assessment practices. Different disciplines are



70        Journal of Education, No. 66, 2016

likely to employ curriculum forms aligned with their aims of, for example,
training a particular kind of future professional such as an attorney, or
nurturing a particular kind of thinker who could work in a range of
professional fields, such as an analyst working for government, an NGO or a
private sector company.

Specialisation is employed here as a tool for analysing the organising
principles that form the basis for claims to legitimacy within one academic
discipline: Political Science. Specialisation considers two dimensions that
comprise these organising principles, arguing that there is always knowledge
and there are always knowers that need to be considered. Specialisation
comprises two sets of relations: epistemic relations (ER), or relations to that
which is known, and social relations (SR), or relations to those doing the
knowing (Maton, 2007). Considering both relations simultaneously enables
curriculum designers and lecturers to think relationally about how they are
developing both knowledge and knowers, rather than only seeing one or the
other (Maton, 2007, 2014). 

Using the analytical distinction between epistemic relations and social
relations (ER and SR), LCT conceptualises four specialisation codes (Maton,
2014), which can be used as an analytical tool for ‘seeing’ and describing the
principles underlying curriculum design and teaching. These four codes are
represented on a Cartesian plane as points on a compass within which a great
deal of variation can be found. Epistemic relations and social relations can be
stronger or weaker in relation to one another along two continua, with
stronger epistemic relations and social relations signified with ER+ and SR+,
and weaker epistemic relations and social relations signified with ER- and
SR- (see figure 1 below). 



Clarence: Knowledge and knowers in teaching and learning. . .       71

Figure 1: Specialisation codes represented on a Cartesian plane (Maton, 2007, p 96)

The code on the bottom right is the one that will be focused on in this paper,
and is termed a knower code (ER-, SR+), indicated by the emphasis on what
forms the basis of legitimate achievement within knower code disciplines.
With a knower code the disposition of the knower is emphasised, and this
disposition can be “innate”, learned or “resulting from the knower’s social
position” (Maton, 2007, p.97). Elsewhere this code is defined as being
legitimated on the basis of  “a distinct subject of study, the ‘knower’ ” (Maton
2000, p.87, emphasis in original). Thus the underlying principles of this code
privilege who is learning the knowledge, and the personal, professional or
social attributes and attitudes they need to develop. Political Science, as we
shall see in the next section, represents a knower code.

Before moving on to the case study and analysis of the data, it is important to
note that LCT differentiates between the focus of claims to legitimacy and the
basis for these claims. The basis of claims to legitimacy is what determines



72        Journal of Education, No. 66, 2016

the specialisation code of the discipline or field. For example, it can be
observed that in political science education learning political theory –
concepts such as power, sovereignty, freedom, citizenship and so on – is often
a focus of teaching. One could therefore believe that the content of the
curriculum is largely theoretical and thus that mastering the theory or
procedural knowledge it represents is the basis for success. However, while
theory is often the focus, the basis for legitimate achievement is rather the
selective use of theory to influence, inform and shape the construction,
substantiation and defense of arguments, using particular methods of
reasoning and arguing that are recognised as valid. This will become clearer
in the analysis of the data. While the focus of any curriculum may shift and
change over time, and in relatively short periods of time, the basis of
legitimacy tends to be more enduring. While it can indeed change, this
process of change tends to take place over longer periods of time, and often as
a result of more protracted struggles over control of the field, or discipline (cf.
Maton, 2014).

Political science as a knower code

This case study puts into practice the conceptual tools explained in the
previous section. The data was generated during a larger study conducted in
2013 (Clarence, 2014). The larger data set comprised interviews with
lecturers, extensive field notes and video data generated over 14 weeks of
teaching observations in two undergraduate courses, as well as course
outlines and lecture notes. The two courses in the study were a first year
course in the undergraduate LLB (Law) degree, and a first year Political
Science course in the undergraduate BA/BAdmin degree. 

The data selected in this paper comes only from Political Science, and only
from the course outlines and notes the lecturers make available to their
students, which encapsulate their curricular expectations of learning outcomes
for the course, as well as indications of teaching and learning activities and
assessment tasks. Although these course outlines and guides may give
students only a partial view of the kinds of learning that are expected and
offered in the whole degree programme, they provide a window into what the
discipline regards as important, and thus enable a Specialisation analysis to
tease out what the specialisation code of the discipline is, and how this can be



Clarence: Knowledge and knowers in teaching and learning. . .       73

used to enhance the alignment of learning outcomes and activities with the
underlying purposes and goals of Political Science as an academic discipline. 

The course guide data were organised and coded using Nvivo10, and the data
were analysed for indications of the relative strengths of epistemic relations
and social relations indicated in the conveyed learning outcomes and
expectations for the course, and lecturers’ design of tutorial and assessment
tasks. In other words, the data were read for the organising principles and
basis of legitimate achievement in Political Science. Relevant parts of the data
have been selected in this paper to show how the specialisation code has been
heuristically determined, and what this enables lecturers to consider
differently in terms of accounting for knowledge and knowers together in
aligning their curricula.

The Political Science case study is a first year, first semester foundational
course, POL131, divided into two halves: the first half of the course
introduces students to basic core concepts used in Political Studies generally,
and the second half introduces students to core concepts and methods in the
study of International Relations as a sub-discipline. The 2013 study guide
(p.1) informs students that:

After completion of POL131 you should be able to:

! Identify, define and describe key concepts in Political Studies, e.g.
power, legitimacy and authority.

! Identify, define and describe the key concepts in International
Relations, e.g. sovereignty, world order, international anarchy,
international political economy, etc.

! Explain Galbraith’s theory of power and apply it to South Africa.

! Compare and contrast the key theories of International Relations,
e.g. Realism, Liberalism and Marxism.

! Differentiate between and explain selected processes in Political
Studies and International Relations, e.g. social activism,
development or trade.



74        Journal of Education, No. 66, 2016

In addition, you should:

! Be able to take notes in class.

! Be able to read with comprehension (understanding), summarise
arguments presented in reading and the lectures, and explain these
verbally and in writing.

! Be able to do basic research tasks (library use, internet use, course
reader use etc.).

! Have the basic skills to write in an academic style (including
referencing).

! Present your opinions verbally (in class, tutorials and informal
conversations).

! Be more aware of how politics influence society and how you can
express your political views.

Indicated as the learning outcomes for the course, these points highlight both
knowledge of particular content in the first bulleted list, as well as
development of practices, skills and dispositions that the discipline values in
the second bulleted list. In terms of practices, the document highlights reading
‘with comprehension’, and being able to ‘summarise arguments’ and ‘explain
these’ which is a key precursor to students being able to craft their own
arguments. The final two bullet points highlight a disposition that students
need to begin developing, that of both having and expressing their own
opinions on issues raised in or relevant to the course, and being aware of how
‘politics influence society’. This final point indicates a need for students to
become more critically aware of politics at work around them, and not just in
their coursework.

The separating of these learning outcomes into core knowledge outcomes, as
well as more practical and dispositional outcomes is further elaborated on in
the Departmental Policy document (2014) that students, staff and tutors in the
department have access to, and which sets out the aims of the department in
terms of their curriculum, as well as their expectations of both students and
staff. This document (2014, p.1) states that:



Clarence: Knowledge and knowers in teaching and learning. . .       75

In terms of graduates, we want students who are hard-working, disciplined, self-motivated,
with a decent knowledge of a broad spectrum of political science, a capacity to research in a
variety of ways, and most importantly, to construct a compelling argument. 

From these two sets of expectations, one can see that reading critically,
analysing texts, and articulating and defending ‘compelling arguments’
(Department Policy Document, 2014, p.1) are practices connected to the
discipline; they mark out Political Science graduates as having particular
abilities and dispositions towards thinking and ongoing learning. In order to
enable students to master these practices, the department notes that teaching
Political Science “concerns [developing students’] capacities for constructing
arguments” and creating “the learning culture required to support this –
essentially the skills and dispositions to support a good argument”
(Department Policy Document, 2014, p.1, emphasis added). 

An example of a tutorial task students are expected to do, drawn from the
course outline/study guide, highlights the creation of the learning culture
necessary to develop the skills and dispositions the discipline values, using
the knowledge or content that forms part of the first year curriculum:

TUTORIAL THREE: IS POLITICS INEVITABLE? HOW DOES
POLITICS AFFECT OUR DAILY LIVES? 

Imagine South Africa in 2030 as you would like it to exist and answer
the following questions. 

! What will life be like and what would people be doing in an ideal
2030? 

! Describe the person who could operate successfully in 2030. 

! What skills and attributes would they need? 

! What needs to be done to achieve the scenario that you’ve
sketched?

! What factors could undermine this scenario?

! Are there trends present now which point to how South African
society will actually develop? (POL131 course outline, 2013, p.5,
emphasis added)



76        Journal of Education, No. 66, 2016

This task highlights an approach used in teaching this discipline, to move
students deliberately towards developing a more thoughtful and critical
disposition, one that enables them to consider issues from more than only one
perspective. It highlights the use of the imagination, encouraging students to
imagine a particular scenario and apply their present knowledge to that
scenario as they consider this set of questions. This kind of task, coming early
in their first year, also begins to scaffold them into the process of thinking
through argumentation, particularly points four and five in the list, where they
would need to justify or reason their answers, rather than just present the
answers as fact.

In Political Science, one can argue that the basis for legitimate achievement
emanates from the knower structure and therefore that what is valued is the
ability for knowers to develop a critical, thoughtful, engaged and curious
disposition, and a certain set of aptitudes related to knowledge, such as being
able to read analytically, make and defend coherent arguments, and being able
to make relevant links between knowledge in the everyday political sphere
with theoretical knowledge. The emphasis in this discipline is therefore on
social relations to knowledge (SR). Although particular theories or concepts –
epistemic relations to knowledge (ER) – are often the focus of pedagogy, they
are not the basis for claims to legitimacy in Political Science. Political
Science thus represents a knower code, with stronger social relations and
weaker epistemic relations (ER-, SR+). This is represented heuristically in
figure 2 below.



Clarence: Knowledge and knowers in teaching and learning. . .       77

Figure 2: Political Studies as a knower code represented on a Cartesian plane (Clarence,
2014, p.138)

The paper now returns to constructive alignment to consider what the kind of
analysis outlined in this section could offer as a way of complementing and
enhancing curriculum alignment in disciplines that represent knower codes,
like Political Science. 

Implications for curriculum: enhancing constructive

alignment

This paper has thus far argued that, while useful in promoting a thoughtful
approach to curriculum design and alignment, Bigg’ constructive alignment
approach has a gap in terms of considering different, non-aggregative forms
of knowledge building or learning. This paper has proposed a complementary
approach to analysing curricula, particularly those that fall into this gap, with
a view to enhancing constructive alignment and its ability to be useful across
the disciplinary map. The analysis presented in the previous section, as a
small but illustrative example of a curriculum that represents a knower code,



78        Journal of Education, No. 66, 2016

offers us two key insights and implications for enhancing a constructive
alignment approach to curriculum design and enactment.

The first key insight addresses this question: how could Specialisation help us
to account for a different kind of knowledge building or learning process, as
well as a different way of understanding the knowers we seek to cultivate
over time? The question that begins an alignment process should be: what do
my learning outcomes need to be to achieve the aims of this course? It is
implied that we must consider the bigger picture, but given that knowledge is
only tacitly included in Biggs’ account of curriculum alignment, and that only
certain forms of knowledge-building are included in his analysis, we may well
end up using such a tool to focus more narrowly on making sure that just the
course we are teaching is aligned within itself, without having the tools to use
in considering where and how the course fits into the bigger picture, and even
what the bigger picture is. Thus, Specialisation, in helping us to ‘code’ a
discipline and characterise in finer detail what the content or form of that code
is within our different contexts, enables us to ask and answer an additional
question: Do these outcomes align with the aims of the degree as well as the
overall goals of the discipline, in terms of both the knowledge students must
learn, and the kinds of knowers we need them to become? 

A Specialisation analysis of a discipline could offer lecturers writing curricula
in ‘siloed’ or separately developed and taught courses a less tacit connection
to the discipline they are teaching, and to what it is that the discipline itself
requires of graduates who will eventually work within the field the discipline
references (for example, Law as an academic discipline referencing the wider
field of legal practice). I would argue that we need to articulate as clearly as
possible exactly what kinds of knowers and knowledge the disciplines aim to
nurture and develop over the course of a degree programme in order to select
and develop appropriate learning outcomes. For example, Political Science, as
a knower code, wants to develop critical, analytical knowers who are able to
work with a range of knowledges in different contexts, and are able to make
and defend arguments through learning to judge competing knowledge claims
and perspectives against their own perspective on a given issue.

We can look again, through a Specialisation lens, at the learning outcomes in
the course outline, specifically at what they are asking students to do with the
knowledge in this course:



Clarence: Knowledge and knowers in teaching and learning. . .       79

– Identify, define and describe key concepts in Political Studies, e.g.
power, legitimacy and authority.

– Identify, define and describe the key concepts in International
Relations, e.g. sovereignty, world order, international anarchy,
international political economy, etc.

– Explain Galbraith’s theory of power and apply it to South Africa.

– Compare and contrast the key theories of International Relations,
e.g. Realism, Liberalism and Marxism.

– Differentiate between and explain selected processes in Political
Studies and International Relations, e.g. social activism,
development or trade. (Course outline, Introduction to Political
Studies, 2013: 1, emphasis added)

If we consider the dominant verbs used here – identify, define, describe,
explain – and then consider the most important goal of this discipline – to
teach students to construct compelling arguments, we can see these verbs as
connected to the knower code, and to the kinds of things students need to do
to begin understanding and constructing arguments. Students need to have a
knowledge base on which to draw in constructing their own arguments,
whether verbally or in writing, so that they do not only have their own prior or
everyday knowledge to use. Hence, the course begins with having students
describe and show understanding of key concepts, before moving on to
comparing and contrasting opposing theoretical perspectives, differentiating
between differing political processes.
 
With a Specialisation analysis, we can go one step further in analysing these
outcomes, and wonder whether the lecturers for this course can more
explicitly include an initial attempt at getting students to evaluate or analyse a
particular issue using the key concepts they have been taught in this course.
Perhaps this is beyond the remit of a first semester, first year course, but this
analysis offers lecturers teaching in the second semester and in the subsequent
years of study a lens on their learning outcomes, to look for ways in which
they can build on this foundation and further cultivate within students the
desired dispositions, and also teach them the methods required to produce
‘compelling arguments’ (Departmental Policy Document, 2014, p.1). This



80        Journal of Education, No. 66, 2016

analysis therefore can connect and align individual courses with the knower
code of this discipline, and further align the aims of subsequent or
simultaneously offered courses with both this course and with the knower
code to enable more overt consideration of how to build or cultivate knowers
cumulatively (cf. Maton, 2014).

The second key insights addresses this question: how do lecturers, once they
have aligned a curriculum more consciously with their discipline’s code, help
students to see the code, and achieve the outcomes in ways that begin to
cultivate them as knowers? Here I would like to note that seeing the code of a
discipline in the terms enabled by a Specialisation analysis can open up
different kinds of conversations between lecturers teaching together about
how they are designing their curricula, what kinds of outcomes are important,
and how they could teach and assess their students. Further, being able to see
and characterise a discipline as a knower code of a particular kind (or other
specialisation code of a particular kind) can help lecturers to make more overt
and visible the tacit expectations they have of their students’ classwork,
writing and thinking, often communicated through feedback or the kinds of
in-class questions and tasks they set (O’Donovan, Price and Rust, 2004).
These tacit expectations, if unseen by students, are difficult to meet
consistently and successfully, and the result may be a ‘hit and miss’ effect,
with some students getting things right at some points and wrong at others
without them (or their lecturers and tutors) necessarily knowing why. A
Specialisation analysis, making clear as it can the underlying organising
principles of a discipline, or the basis for legitimate achievement, can mitigate
against the misses by showing both lecturers and students what is expected in
order for students to achieve success, and also how these expectations can be
more ably and consistently met over time. If the curriculum, the enactment of
it through teaching and tutoring, and the assessments students complete
carefully consider and align with the underpinning basis for achievement, it
can be argued that success becomes more possible for a greater number of
students, as the ‘rules’ they are being asked to play by become more visible.

Conclusion

This paper has argued that constructive alignment, as a popular approach to
curriculum design, leaves a notable gap in terms of its consideration of
different forms of knowledge building, as well as different kinds of people, or



Clarence: Knowledge and knowers in teaching and learning. . .       81

knowers, that disciplines aim to cultivate. Working from a realist theory of
knowledge, that enables an analysis of curriculum focused both on knowledge
and knowers without obscuring one or the other, the paper has proposed a
complementary tool for curriculum alignment. Drawn from Legitimation
Code Theory, the dimension of Specialisation can enable an analysis of the
underlying organising principles of disciplines that indicates what the
legitimate basis for achievement and success could be. With this analysis in
mind, the basis for achievement can be consciously considered by lecturers
writing and teaching curricula, such that different forms of knowledge and
knower development can be taken into account more critically.

Using specialisation codes as an analytical lens enables lecturers to consider
not only the specific course or module they are designing, but also the course
or module’s place within the degree programme as a whole. Most importantly,
this analysis highlights the underpinning organising principles of the
discipline and how the stated aims of the courses or modules and the degree
programme align with these. In other words, it provides a critical lens that
looks beneath the surface of the curriculum to ask whether the learning
outcomes, teaching activities, and assessment tasks are appropriate, or
adequately expressed to students, given the underlying organising principles
of the discipline, conceptualised as a specialisation ‘code’. The illustrative
case in this paper, Political Science as a knower code, provided a way of
showing how such an analysis offers an additional conceptual tool to use with
constructive alignment’s more practical approach to curriculum design.

Aligning a curriculum, when the underlying code of a discipline has been
conceptualised and unpacked, can become less focused on connecting
‘content’ with ‘skills’ in teaching and assessment; rather it can shift to
aligning teaching and students’ learning with the code of the discipline itself.
In the case of a knower code, what needs to be aligned across and between
years of study is the underlying critical, imaginative and analytical
dispositions and aptitudes valued by the discipline, as mastery of these is the
basis for achievement. In Political Science, as an example, each course in
each year of the undergraduate degree would need to incrementally and
cumulatively develop students’ ability to read texts with critical and careful
comprehension, understand the ways in which the authors are analysing and
unpacking political and/or social problems, and further begin to position
themselves to make and defend their own arguments.



82        Journal of Education, No. 66, 2016

Rather than trying to debunk constructive alignment, this paper has taken a
cue from Kahn’s research (2015), which argues that, given its lack of
consideration of horizontal knowledge structures, and the implications for
developing students as knowers, this approach to curriculum writing has
limited use in higher education as it stands. This paper has picked up that cue
and argues that, given that constructive alignment is a popular approach to
curriculum writing in higher education in several contexts, what we may
benefit from is an additional and complementary conceptual approach to
analysing curriculum. Underpinned by a realist theory of knowledge, this
complementary approach can offer a wider perspective on the kinds of
knowledge and knowers that higher education disciplines, and the intellectual
and professional fields they connect to, are trying to nurture and educate over
time. Specialisation provides such a lens, and offers us valuable insights into
what the organising principles of disciplines could be, how these may shift
over time, and how this view can enhance our ability to write, teach and
assess aligned and effective curricula.

Acknowledgements

Part of the research this paper is based on was made possible with thanks to
an NRF Doctoral Sabbatical Grant in 2013.

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Sherran Clarence
Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL)
Rhodes University

sherranclarence@gmail.com