An epiphany unpacked: codes of legitimation in an upper secondary level humanities subject

This paper uses autoethnography to examine how privileged forms of classroom performance shape student achievement and resistance to change in Danish upper secondary education. The analysis centres on a critical incident where one of the authors attempted to shift the established patterns of classroom interaction by modifying assessment criteria. This change prioritized subject-specific understanding and interpretive skills over the previous scheme that rewarded students’ personal characteristics and ways of engaging. To reveal the underlying principles governing what counts as legitimate performance in this educational context, we rely on the dimension of Specialization from Legitimation Code Theory. Using this dimension as our analytical framework, we show how the original assessment practice operated between an ‘elite code’ and a ‘knower code’, where success was largely determined by students’ abilities to engage in particular ways of speaking and being in the classroom. The strong negative reaction from previously successful students when the assessment criteria were challenged reveals how deeply embedded these patterns of classroom interaction had become, potentially limiting educational equity by privileging particular ‘knower’ dispositions.