Exploring Bernstein's conception of ‘framing’ for researching students' epistemological access in digitally mediated learning environments

This chapter presents a novel adaptation of Bernstein's concept of framing for research in digitally mediated learning environments. Drawing on qualitative data from a doctoral study exploring online and blended pedagogic practices in South African higher education, the chapter demonstrates why and how framing needs to be adapted to analyse and understand these learning environments. Existing Bernsteinian empirical work often conflates two dimensions in framing – relative teacher or student control of aspects of pedagogy, like pace and sequence, and relative explicitness or implicitness of these aspects. This chapter argues for the importance of separating out these two dimensions. The empirical data illustrates how aspects of framing manifested following COVID-19 lockdowns when much teaching and learning shifted online. Students experienced autonomy in the pace and sequence of their work, but teaching staff recognised the importance of scaffolding this self-regulation through explicit course design and instructional text. The control and the explicit/implicit dimensions of framing were thus coded differently but reflected complementary pedagogic aims. The chapter demonstrates how these aspects of framing impact students' epistemological access – i.e. their engagement with powerful disciplinary knowledge.