In the face of students' growing alienation, resistance, and disengagement in school life and
class, the paper aims to contribute the literature on the relationship between pedagogy and
students engagement. After noting the failure of many educational literature addressing this issue
only in terms of individual and psychological lens, this paper, instead, provokes educational
researchers to deal with such problems through the sociological research questions. In an effort
to do this, the paper explores the applicability of Basil Bernstein's analytical framework to the
phenomena of alienation and resistance in many South Korean classrooms. For this, first, the
paper provides the basic understanding of Bernstein's elusive but profound theoretical framework
of students engagement. Second, its thematic focus is on the usefulness and limits when this
framework comes to South Korean school contexts. Third, the possible methodological issues
are discussed, projecting them to the future subsequent empirical research. In the process, the
paper reviews core concepts of the typology, focusing on to what extent students accept the
instrumental and expressive orders of their schools and classes. Then, two research cases are
presented to show the way in which Bernstein's theory have empirical validity. Finally, authors
discuss on the applicability of the code theory in South Korean contexts.