This book provides an accessible way into the ideas of Basil Bernstein. It introduces, explains and exemplifies key conceptual landmarks in the development of his theory, from his sociolinguistics in the 1960s through analyses of classrooms and the construction of curriculum in the 1970s and 1980s, to studies of intellectual fields of research through the 1990s. The book introduces how these ideas can and have been used in empirical research over the past fifty years, and how they are being built on by scholars in the twenty-first century to create a cumulative approach to understanding education, knowledge and society that is alive and growing today. ​