Bernstein's analysis of the organisation and distribution of educational knowledge was originally proposed over 30 years ago. In his important new book, Bernstein formulates a comprehensive model of the structuring of pedagogic communication from the principles yielded by his on-going research in the ensuing decades. The model focuses on how different ways of selecting and putting curricular knowledge together produce different identities and relations in pedagogic contexts. Formulated with reference to the substantial restructuring of educational systems which has occurred since the 1960s, the model attempts to understand emerging forms of curricular organisation and the attendant production of educational identities. Bernstein's work is notably controversial. For over three decades it has been discussed, debated, tested and challenged. One persistent criticism is that Bernstien presents a deficit model of working class language. This interpretation arose from the erroneous assumption that Bernstein's use of terminology such as 'restrictive' and 'elaborated' codes was a claim about essential differences between working and middle class people, rather than a description of learned forms of language use complexly caught up in relation of class power in educational institutions. This is an example of the criticism that Bernstein's work attends inadequately to the relational dimensions of class. It is connected to the more general criticism that Bernstein's work is overly functionalist; technical, at the expense of theorising social relationships; and insufficiently illustrated with reference to real schools (McFadden, 1995).