Between external prescription and local practiceThe uses of official knowledge by adult education professionals in Portugal

This article presents the results of research where the main objective was to achieve abetter understanding of the uses made by professionals in the adult education sphere ofthe official knowledge that provides the framework and guidelines for their work. The study was undertaken using Bernstein's theoretical model of the structure of official pedagogical discourse, and employed an essentially ethnographic fieldwork methodology to analyse the work of a team of adult education specialists working in a local development association in the north of Portugal. The results of the study show that the team was able to make both reproductive and recontextualising use of official knowledge, thereby demonstrating that, even in workplaces where external prescription is extremely influential, it is possible to put official knowledge to alternative i.e. more effective, locally-adapted use.