Parlo Singh is a Professor in the field of Sociology of Education, based in the Institute for Educational Research at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Her work explores how educational policies are enacted through the three message systems of curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation in primary schools serving high poverty communities. She worked with Basil Bernstein from 1989 to 2000, and has been part of the international Basil Bernstein symposium from 2000 to 2014.

This book explores how to empirically work with Basil Bernstein's ideas on code theory, contributing to the debate about the nexus between theory and methods. The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in Taylor and Francis journals or previously published in Taylor and Francis books.

Introduction 1. Ways of Meaning, Ways of Learning: code as an explanatory concept 2. Pedagogic practices in the family socializing context and children's school achievement 3. Literacy and Pedagogy in Flux: constructing the object of study from a Bernsteinian perspective 4. Explorations in policy enactment: feminist thought experiments with Basil Bernstein's code theory 5. Britton and Bernstein on Vygotsky: divergent views on mind and language in the pedagogic context 6. Pedagogic discourse and sex education: myths, science and subversion 7. From psychic defences to social defences. Recontextualizing strategies and Klein's theory of ego development