1

Proceedings of the Higher Education and Teaching Association of Southern Africa (HELTASA) 2013 Conference

ISBN: 978-0-620-60939-5

Edited by Nomathamsanqa Tisani & Amanda Hlengwa

Conference date and venue:

27 – 29 November 2013

University of South Africa, Pretoria

2

Table of contents

Introduction 3

Peer Review process 3

HELTASA Editorial Committee 4

List of Peer Reviewers 5

Papers:

Avoiding deficit conceptualisations of students and their learning: methodological considerations. 6-21

Lynn Coleman

Integrating isiXhosa into clinical skills to address the linguistic landscape of the Western Cape 22-32

Somikazi Deyi and Thabisa Xhalisa

Positioning academic literacies at the core of curriculum design 33-44 Moragh Paxton and Vera Firth

Quality practices in teaching by academics in higher education 45-58 Cynthia K Dongwe

‘Struggling with Postgraduate Students’: Bachelor of Technology Students Writing Academic genres 59-72

Kabinga Jack Shabanza

Teaching the Students we have: Two perspectives on first year students at the University of Johannesburg and the UJ First Year Experience initiative 73-88

Andre van Zyl

3

Introduction

The 2013 HELTASA annual conference was held at the University of South Africa from 27 to 29 November. As the Pro Vice Chancellor, Professor Narend Baijnath pointed out, the conference provided an auspicious ending to year-long celebrations which marked UNISA’s 140 year anniversary since its founding. As has become norm with conferences, the event was preceded by workshops at which experts led participants in hands-on and deeper explorations of topics related to teaching and learning in higher education. The publication of Conference Proceedings is now in its second year of existence. HELTASA members, through the Executive Committee, remain committed to ensuring production of quality papers delivered at its conferences and also support the empowering HELTASA membership with knowledge and skills in academic writing. The rigorous peer review process for papers submitted for publication is a route that has the potential to help HELTASA realise its dreams on peer reviewed publication.

Peer review process

The peer review process is a method by which scientific work produced by academics is vetted by colleagues. This is a general practice as well as a procedure outlined by the Department of Higher Education and Training as a condition for the recognition and accreditation of conference papers. The HELTASA peer review process followed several quality management steps that were publicised to all potential authors. The first step involved the reviewing of abstracts. A team of reviewers helped to ensure that papers that were eventually accepted for presentation tat conference had satisfied the basic tenets of a scholarly presentation. Secondly, feedback was given to all presenters at the conference sessions. Such feedback could be further infused in the manuscripts before submission for a review. Through the double blind review the author submitted a manuscript to two reviewers who would independently of one another, give the writer feedback. Reviewers would have to state if the paper was publishable, publishable after corrections, or not yet publishable. Authors of papers that are deemed not yet publishable are strongly

4

advised to continue working on the manuscript and to consult fellow HELTASA members. Revised papers are finally submitted to the Editorial Committee.

HELTASA Editorial Committee

Hlengwa, A. (Chair) a.hlengwa@ru.ac.za

Skead, M. (Deputy Chair) melanie.skead@nmmu.ac.za

Vorster, J. (Secretary) j.vorster@ru.ac.za

Timm, D. (Treasurer) timmdn@dut.ac.za

Behari Leak, K. kasturi.behari-leak@uct.ac.za

duToit, P. Pieter.dutoit@up.ac.za

Leibowitz, B. brendal@uj.ac.za

Mohlake, M. mosimaneotsile.mohlake@ul.ac.za

Sabata, S. sabatas@cput.ac.za

Strydom, F. strydomjf@ufs.ac.za

Tshivase, A. tshivac@unisa.ac.za

Tjabane, M. masebala@vut.ac.za

5

List of Peer Reviewers

Name E mail

Baokaye, N. Dr Naomi.boakye@up.ac.za

Barnes, V. Ms barnesv@cput.ac.za

Bitzer, E. Prof. emb2@sun.ac.za

Campbell, A. Ms anita.campbell@uct.ac.za

Gachago, D. Ms gachagod@cput.ac.za

Hassan, L. Dr hassanl@cput.ac.za

Ivala, E. Dr ivalae@cput.ac.za

Jacobs, M. Dr jacobsm@cput.ac.za

Jama, M. Dr jamamp@ufs.ac.za

Jonck, P. pjonck@cut.ac.za

Leibowitz, B. Prof. brendal@uj.ac.za

Leisegang, K. Dr kleisegang@uwc.ac.za

Lephalale, M. Dr lephammk@unisa.ac.za

Lutz, M. m.lutz@sun.ac.za

Maimane, C. Ms mmaimane@cut.ac.za

Naidoo, A. Prof. ana.naidoo@up.ac.za

Ndlangamandla, S. Dr sbundlanga@gmai.com

Schreiber, B. Dr birgitewes@gmail.com

Siyepu, S. Dr siyepus@cput.ac.za

Winberg, C. Prof. winbergc@cput.ac.za

Winstead, J. Dr Jennifer.winstead@nmmu.ac.za

6

Avoiding deficit conceptualisations of students and their learning: methodological considerations

Lynn Coleman

Cape Peninsula University of Technology

colemanl@cput.ac.za

Abstract

The current climate of change confronting the higher education sector offers researchers unique opportunities to reflect on and review their research approaches and methodologies. Particularly in the South African context, where inequalities and racially defined disparities linked to student success continue to constrain other transformative gains, there is renewed urgency to reconsider how research agendas can show sensitivity towards avoiding deficit conceptualisations of students and their learning. This paper illustrates the research design and methodology of a recent ethnographic research study, which brought together an academic literacies perspective with Bernstein’s curriculum theory of knowledge recontextualisation. The distinct dual focus of the design and analysis framework, attending to both the student and the curriculum context, allows for exploring the student experience of assignment production without neglecting the influence of the curriculum on this activity. The existence of an interrelationship between students’ assignment production practices and curriculum decision making is shown, drawing on empirical data from the recent study. The ethnographic framing of the research methodology, with its emphasis on providing rich and detailed accounts, was further able to illustrate students’ agency as they worked with the assignment requirements. This paper demonstrates that when the research approach attends to the students and their learning, in ways that validate and affirm their perspectives, but also brings the curriculum into view, a credible way of explicitly avoiding deficit conceptualisations of students is possible.

7

Introduction

The 2013 conference theme, ‘Higher Education in a shifting landscape: emergence, fragmentation and convergence’ foregrounds the notion of a higher education (HE) environment confronting change. This theme suggests that traditional practices and approaches within the HE sector are coming under pressure to adapt more responsively to an increasingly diverse and changing socio-economic and political environment. In response, this paper suggests that this shifting landscape presents a unique opportunity for HE researchers to reflect on and review what we do, how we do it and the research methodologies we choose to use when interrogating our practices. A key consideration is the degree to which our research activities, especially when they are focused on students and their learning, display sensitivity towards avoiding deficit conceptualisations of the student. The research design discussed in this paper is offered as a contribution towards exploring new methodological lenses more appropriate to the shifting HE landscape. In this paper, I describe the research design and analysis framework of a recent ethnographic study that explored assignment production in two visual communication and media courses at a local university of technology. The theoretical framework and methodological approach of this study had a distinct dual focus; it paid attention to the students and their experiences of assignment production, while at the same time exploring curriculum decision making. This dual focus is positioned as a valuable way of ensuring that research about students and their learning can avoid deficit framings, by taking cognisance of the influence of the broader learning environment and especially the curriculum, in determining what counts as successful learning. The study’s findings illustrate the complexity of the vocational HE environment and show how the curriculum incorporates professional content and knowledge, signalling this primarily through the assignment practices students are required to utilise. Also illustrated are the approaches students adopt when completing their assignments, which highlight the flexible, multiple and agentive ways in which they engage with the requirements of these tasks. The methodological approach described in this paper finds points of connection between an academic literacies framework (Blommaert, Street & Turner, 2007; Lillis & Scott, 2007; Lea, 2008) and Basil Bernstein’s (1975, 1996, 2000) curriculum theory more generally, and the concept of knowledge recontextualisation in particular. The empirical research of Moss (2000; 2002) and Coleman (2012; 2013) demonstrates that meaningful analytical insight into the influence of the broader curriculum context on students’ experiences of their course environments can be gained when these two frameworks are brought together. The key argument made in this paper is that research can be designed to pay attention to the student while simultaneously acknowledging the broader curriculum context and its influence on student learning. Thus, greater emphasis is placed on

8

how the curriculum and broader institutional structures influence student learning and success. The study described here focused attention on providing rich, descriptive accounts of students’ experiences of their assignment production that were free of evaluative judgement. At the same time, the focus on the curriculum decision making allowed for data collection that provided insight into how the curriculum was influenced by professional and institutional directives and values. When methodological approaches are framed to accommodate both these equally important objects of enquiry, in a manner that validates the student perspective, a credible challenge to deficit thinking can become incorporated into the research agenda.

The paper starts by discussing the notion of deficit discourses and how it has become expressed in the South African context. The particular contours of the South African HE landscape are then described, highlighting the specific necessities that are driving calls for renewal and critical self-reflection. This description helps provide reasons why our research agendas should show more sensitivity towards avoiding deficit conceptualisations of the student. The research design and analysis framework are then discussed. Drawing on data collected in two courses, Film and Graphic Design, specific examples from Film course are used to illustrate how the overarching methodological approach of the study accommodated a dual focus on the student and the broader curriculum and institutional context.

Deficit discourses and understanding ‘disadvantage’ in the South African context

Haggis (2006) has highlighted and critiqued the dominance of psychological conceptualisations of learning in HE, claiming that such conceptualisations place the burden of responsibility on the student for their success and adaptation to HE. When students experience problems with learning and adapting to HE, it is often assumed to be a result of their (lack of) cognitive or intellectual abilities or inadequate preparation for university. Students are therefore perceived as not having the necessary and prerequisite cognitive, social and cultural abilities needed to fit in and do well in the HE learning environment. When students are viewed in this manner, such conceptualisations are imbued with a deficit framing. As a result the spotlight is effectively turned away from the values, assumptions and practices of HE and how these might be creating barriers to learning and success for the student (Haggis, 2003). In the SA context, deficit thinking is epitomised by the use of the label ‘disadvantaged’. While masquerading as a term which indexes structural accounts of inequality, ‘disadvantage’ has disturbingly become a means whereby the socio-economic position of the majority of black students has become ‘refracted’ or recontextualised as low academic ability’ (Smit, 2012: 372). A concerning

9

consequence of the widespread use of the 'disadvantage' label is the “strengthening of stereotypes” (Smit, 2012: 372), which reinforce and perpetuate inequalities (Pym & Kapp, 2013). My research design offers a model that turns the spotlight onto the student without neglecting the structuring and influencing role of the curriculum and broader learning environment. Furthermore, when attention is placed on the student using ethnographic methodologies, rich and detailed accounts that validate the students’ experiences of their learning activities and environment are created.

The South African context: imperatives for adopting a different approach

After two decades of democracy and various attempts to systematically confront the legacy of the past, South African HE scholars and practitioners have had to acknowledge that persistent problems constrain the quality of the learning and therefore limit the success experienced by students in most of its institutions (Badat, 2009; Boughey, 2004; Chisholm, 2004; Jansen, 2004; Shay, 2012). These acknowledgements have resulted in calls for bold, creative yet systematic solutions that interrogate the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the sector’s core functions and practices (Boughey, 2007; Council for Higher Education (CHE), 2013; Fisher & Scott, 2011; Scott, Yeld & Hendry, 2009). Of particular concern in the South African context are the racially skewed participation rates (Case, 2013; CHE, 2013; Leibowitz, 2012). Despite the increased numbers of blacki students currently participating in the HE system in South Africa, continued racial disparities in the completion rates for most undergraduate programmes remain (CHE, 2013; Scott et al., 2009; Fisher & Scott, 2011). According to Fisher & Scott (2011: 10), this trend has effectively neutralised “the growth in African access and severely constrained overall graduation rates”. Boughey’s (2007) research into the educational development movement in South Africa has shown that HE institutions have actively attempted to confront the problems created by inferior schooling for black students during apartheid. Academic Support Programmes were a key focus of these initiatives, which provided additional tutorials and remedial courses in language and study skills to mostly black students who were “deemed to lack the language proficiency and conceptual background or ‘skills’ necessary to engage with higher education” (Boughey, 2007: 6). Increasingly, institutional initiatives modelled on such programmes have become the subject of critique (see for example Boughey, 2007; Shay, 2008). Marshall and Case argue that these remedial interventions have contributed to the creation and pervasive use of ‘an essentialised ‘deficit’ model’ of the student (2010: 492). In a bid to avoid turning the spotlight primarily onto students and their deficiencies, which in turn contributes to deficit conceptualisations, calls have been made to refocus the attention onto the ‘universities themselves’ (Haggis, 2009: 377). These calls suggest that the

10

underlying structures, socio-cultural values and principles and knowledge practices of universities also play a significant role in whether or not students succeed. Adding her voice to this debate, Case (2013) argues that teaching and learning research has seldom given attention to the broader context of such activities. Other SA scholars have also been vocal in their assertion that the barriers to improving student success are primarily systemic and institutional, rather than being located in the student (CHE, 2013; Boughey, 2007; Fisher and Scott, 2011; Scott et al., 2009). These commentators point to systematic curriculum reform as the only viable way in which the particular contextual problems can be reasonably addressed, especially with the glaring racial distortions in graduation rates experienced within the South African system (CHE, 2013; Leibowitz, 2012). The arguments presented here suggest that there is value in designing research that actively seeks to avoid deficit conceptualisation of the student. It demonstrates the importance of putting institutional structures and systems under the research microscope while also showing sensitivity towards students and their learning.

A research design that challenges deficit frameworks

Boughey (2007) and Shay (2008) contend that particular concerns and limitations have become visible in research that focuses only on students and their inadequacies or that only recommend remediation options. Cognisant of these concerns, my research also sought to bring the broader learning, curriculum and institutional environment into view, by focusing on the student and exploring the curriculum context. This dual focus resulted in an overarching methodological approach that showed sensitivity towards avoiding deficit conceptualisations of the student. The discussion that follows explains how the research design, and in particular the analysis framework, attended to both the student and the broader curriculum context, using data from the study as illustration.

Brief overview of the research study

The ethnographic study was conducted at a South African vocational HE institution, exploring how students produced assignments in two visual communication and media courses, namely Film and Graphic Design. The research was conducted over a six month period and this allowed me to spend one academic term, on a full time basis, in each of the two courses that were part of the study. The ethnographic approach guiding academic literacies research (Lillis & Scott, 2007) provided a strong grounding for the data collection strategies employed in the study. The study aimed at gaining insight into the kinds of assignments students were required to

11

produce, how they were produced and the underpinning social and cultural values and principles that determined which assignment production practices were seen as valid in the different course environments. Data collection was therefore guided primarily by participant observation of the daily activities of teachers and students. A range of interactional, documentary and textual artefacts in visual, audio-visual, written and digital formats were also collected and generated. These resulted in rich and highly detailed accounts of the assignment production practices that Film and Graphic Design students were required to engage in. These ethnographic accounts were also able to situate assignment production within the broader learning environment, providing details of how curriculum content and structure were directly implicated in these assignment practices. In order to explore curriculum decision making, specific interviews were undertaken with staff and lecturers directly involved in curriculum development and design in both courses. The analysis framework (Figure 1, below) incorporated two analytical lenses, drawing from the academic literacies and Bernstein’s theoretical frameworks. These lenses, one of literacy practice (Barton, 1994) and the other of knowledge recontextualisation (Bernstein, 1996, 2000), were focused on the assignment production processes of the Film and Graphic Design courses. The analysis framework looked in two directions: towards the literacy practices associated with assignment production and towards the knowledge recontextualisation processes implicated in curriculum decision making. The concept of literacy practice describes the social ways in which reading and writing are used in different contexts. When used analytically, literacy practice is able to indicate accepted ways of doing ‘things’, how appropriate and inappropriate activities are regulated and how situation and contexts determine different types and approaches to reading and writing (Barton, 1994). Within the HE context, Lea (1999) asserts that literacy practices are at the heart of studying and learning, and how students learn new subjects and develop their knowledge about new areas of study. The concept of knowledge recontextualisation describes the process through which knowledge and practices that typically reside outside the educational context, in the disciplines or in professional environments, become transformed, adapted and re-appropriated to constitute subjects and the curriculum (Bernstein, 2000; Shay, 2011; Wheelahan, 2010). By analysing recontextualisation rules, the provenance of knowledge can be identified. However, the particular ways in which this knowledge is reconfigured and transformed into course content and assignment topics and tasks are also significant. Using the concept of recontextualisation, this approach provides insight into how the professional contexts and their privileged values and knowledge become implicated in curriculum decision making. Simultaneously, the analysis framework also indicates how values relevant in industry are reflected in the literacy practices associated with students’ assignment production processes and the kind of assignment texts given status in the courses.

12

Figure 1: Representation of the analysis framework

Attending to the student and the broader curriculum context

Including the academic literacies perspective as part of the research design ensures that the students and their experiences of producing assignments are a central feature of the research methodology, as illustrated in Figure 1. The ethnographic framing favoured by academic literacies research (Lillis & Scott, 2007) reinforces this principle of devoting empirical attention to the students and their perspectives of the assessment requirements. Lea (2004; 2013), a leading academic literacies scholar, asserts that the ethnographic methodology also ensures that the voices of students producing assignment texts are foregrounded in a manner that avoids judgement and evaluation of the practices they have employed. A hallmark of this research approach is producing research accounts which are highly situated and provide rich descriptions of the multiple, conceptual language and literacy resources and practices students bring to their learning environments and their encounters with institutional practices (Gough, 2000; Kapp & Bangeni, Pym & Kapp 2013). In both course environments detailed individual and participant-centric accounts of the assignment production practices were described. The descriptions focused on how students went about producing their assignment texts while illustrating how the broader learning and curriculum environment supported, regulated and directed appropriate strategies for assignment production.

13

In the Film course strong emphasis was placed on ensuring that students were provided with practical opportunities to produce the kinds of film products that the film industry recognises as legitimate and relevant. During their three-year diploma, Film students typically worked on at least 10 short film productions and the study’s data collection focused on how students approached these assignments. Short film assignments were always completed in groups, with each group member required to fulfil a particular industry-specific role associated with being a filmmaker, for example, director, producer, cameraperson or editor. Groups of first year students were observed while producing their first short film assignment and then interviewed. The analysis illustrated how students start to use the film production process, an industry model for producing films, to guide their activities when producing this assignment (see Figure 2 of a pre-production meeting). Also highlighted was how students explore and enact the different filmmaking roles associated with the film production process, use filmmaking equipment (Figure 3) and produce the necessary supporting documentation required, such as the shot list (see Figure 4 and storyboard). When students were interviewed about this assignment, they noted how the theoretical descriptions of the different production roles taught in class were not always enacted during their film making assignments. Groups often adopted more collaborative approaches that provided group members with opportunities to take responsibility for multiple production roles. One group mentioned how their script for their short-film was developed collaboratively:

We had lots of ideas…which was good…we brainstormed our ideas for the script. It was best to give it to everyone, not just one person, who is responsible for doing the script or the story because then the others might not agree (1st year student, Film)

Such collaborative approaches were accommodated despite contradicting the orthodoxy of the film industry where production roles are clearly delineated and bounded, and relationships between different members of the film crew are organised in a hierarchical fashion. Students were also able to identify why this more egalitarian approach was adopted for their first filmmaking project, as one of the first year students explains below:

I think everybody actually helped with every job, which was important at this point of our student career, because we must still learn the different production roles, and how to go about doing it. So at this point we kind of, you know, learnt, but I mean later on I’m sure, when you have your particular role then you will stick to it. (1st year student, Film)

14

This short description shows how students followed the film production process taught in the course and required by the assignment prescriptions, but also exercised a degree of agency by adopting a more co-operative and egalitarian approach towards the production roles associated with filmmaking. The theory of knowledge recontextualisation was used analytically to explore and understand how the broader curriculum context, including the implicit and explicit values and principles operating at institutional level, influenced and shaped assignment construction. Scholars using Bernstein’s theories have highlighted the importance of turning attention to the knowledge structures of the curriculum and exploring how choices about curriculum content and structure influence student learning experiences (Ashwin, 2009; Luckett, 2009; Shay, 2011; Wheelahan, 2010). When the aims of the Film course were analysed, a clear vocational orientation was identified. This orientation was articulated by both staff and students, who suggested that the main aim of the course was to prepare students for a future role in the South African film industry.

In general it is to prepare students to work in the South African film industry. (Film course co-ordinator)

They do prepare us fairly well for what’s out there in industry. (3rd year Film student)

The participants’ foregrounding of a vocational education philosophy resonated with the dominance of a vocational ethos promoted at institutional level and throughout the wider university of technology sector. The rationale guiding the curriculum and subject syllabi is therefore framed by the importance ascribed to developing the kinds of knowledge, skills and competencies required in the film industry. The Film course co-ordinator reiterated this focus, when says that the course “provides students with all the skills that a filmmaker needs, like directing, producing, lighting, camera, research skills, scripting and writing skills…”. A key way in which the curriculum, and especially assignments, facilitated development of these filmmaking skills and competencies, was through the incorporation of the film production process – the primary structuring mechanism used by the film industry to organise film production. Analysis of the Film curriculum and the decision making that informed its structure, using knowledge recontextualisation as analysic lens, emphasised how the film production process was adapted, transformed and refashioned when brought into the course. The recontextualisation of this industry process was visible in the subject naming conventions used, the nature of the content taught in each subject and, importantly, in the kinds of assignments students were required to produce.

15

Especially at the first year level, the topics discussed in the different subjects often focused on encouraging students to develop a detailed conceptual understanding of the film production process and how it was typically applied and used in the film industry. In order to reinforce this understanding, many of the assignments, especially the short films, required students to demonstrate their ability to apply the process in their practical filmmaking projects, show adherence to the sequencing of the film production process, and produce the necessary documentation linked to each stage of the process (as shown in Figures 2–4). These short film projects were thus an important way of providing opportunities for students to enact the film production process and gain ‘on-set’ experience in the different production roles linked to the different stages of the process. The analysis of the Film course data demonstrates how insights were gained into students’ experiences of producing a short film assignment, while also highlighting how these assignments were influenced by imperatives that impacted on curriculum decision making. The underpinning curriculum values of industry relevance, also promoted at institutional and sectoral levels, shaped students’ responses to assignment production and ultimately their learning. Significantly, when attention was placed on the students and their assignment production experiences, the intention was not to cast an evaluative gaze over whether or not students followed or deviated from the assignment prescriptions, but rather on providing a detailed and rich account of their learning experiences. This crucial realignment of the focus away from an evaluative stance on the student learning experience, while seeking to understand how the curriculum was implicated in directing student assessment activities, avoids deficit conceptualisation of the student.

16

Figure 2: Students during a pre-production meeting of a short film assignment

Figure 3: Students working 'on-set' during a short film assignment

17

Figure 4: Documentary evidence: the shot list for a short film

Conclusion

In this paper I have argued that HE researchers should respond to the challenges presented by the changing contours of the HE landscape, by reframing their research methodologies so that these display an acute sensitivity towards avoiding deficit conceptualisations of students and their learning. The paper offered an illustration of how the research design and analysis framework of a recent ethnographic research study undertaken in South Africa was able to achieve this goal. The research design incorporated the theoretical frameworks of academic literacies and Bernstein’s curriculum theorisation. In doing so, the design allowed the empirical and analytical activities of the study to focus on students’ experiences of assignment production while also exploring curriculum organisation and decision making. A representation of the analysis framework was presented in Figure 1 and this showed how the concepts of literacy practice and knowledge recontextualisation

18

were used as analytical lenses to give attention to both the student and the broader curriculum context. Using data from the Film course, the manner in which industry-relevant knowledge was recontextualised into the curriculum was illustrated. Also emphasised were the unique and agentive experiences of some first year Film students who worked with, but also refashioned the film production process. The dual focus on the research design and its ethnographic methodology was able to capture the interrelationship between curriculum decision-making and student assignment practices, in ways that validated and affirmed, rather than judged the practices used by students. The methodological approach presented in this paper, and in particular the analysis framework, is of particular significance to researchers in the South African context. If, as a sector, we are serious about providing equitable opportunities for success to all students who enter our institutions, then we have to mount a serious challenge against the negative impact of our pervasive use and internalisation of deficit conceptualisations of our students. One way to work towards achieving this ideal is to ensure that our research focuses on the students and their learning without neglecting the influencing role of institutional structures and values on this learning.

Notes

i) Black here is used as a generic racial category for all people regarded as not white. However, common usage of the term in South Africa still alludes to the apartheid defined categorisations of African, Coloured, Indian and White, with the use of the term black only referring to Africans.

References

Ashwin, P. 2009. Analysing teaching-learning interactions in higher education. Accounting for structure and agency. London: Continuum. Badat, S. 2009. Theorising institutional change: post 1994 South African higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 34 (4): 455–467.

Barton, D, 1994. Preface: Literacy events and literacy practices. In World of literacy. Edited by M. Hamilton, D. Barton, & R. Ivanič. vii–x. Avon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

19

Bernstein, B. 1975. Class, codes and control. Vol 3. Towards a theory of educational transmissions. London: Routledge.

Bernstein, B. 1996. Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research,

critique. London: Taylor & Francis.

Bernstein, B. 2000. Pedagogy, symbolic control, and identity: theory, research, critique. Revised Edition, Lanham, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Blommaert, J., Street, B. & Turner, J, 2008. Academic literacies – what have we achieved and where to from here? Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4 (1): 137–148.

Boughey, C., 2004. Higher education in South Africa: context, mission and legislation. In Teaching and learning in higher education. Edited by S. Gravett & H. Geyser. 1-21. Hatfield: Van Schaik Publishers.

Boughey, C. 2007. Educational development in South Africa: from social reproduction to capitalist expansion. Higher Education Policy, 20 (1): 5–18.

Case, J, 2013. Researching student learning in higher education. London. Routledge.

Coleman, L. 2012. Incorporating the notion of recontextualisation in academic literacies research: the case of a South African vocational web design and development course. Higher Education Research & Development, 31 (3): 325–338.

Coleman, L. 2013. Literacy practice and curriculum context: exploring student assignment production in a vocational higher education context in South Africa. Unpublished PhD, Milton Keynes: The Open University. Chisholm, L. 2004. Introduction. In Changing class. Education and social change in post-apartheid South Africa. In L. Chisholm (ed), 1–28, Cape Town and New York: HSRC Press and Zed Books, 2004.

Council on Higher Education, 2010. Higher Education Monitor No 9. Access and throughput in South African higher education: Three case studies. Pretoria: CHE.

Council for Higher Education, 2013. A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa: The case for a flexible curriculum structure. Pretoria: CHE.

20

Fisher, G. & Scott, I. 2011. Closing the skills and technology gap in South African. Background Paper 3: The role of higher education in closing the skills gap in South Africa. (The World Bank).

Gough, D. 2000. Discourse and students’ experience of higher education. In Routes to writing in Southern Africa. eds B. Leibowitz & Y. Mohamed, 43-58.Cape Town: Silk Road International Publishers.

Haggis, T. 2003. Constructing images of ourselves? A critical investigation into “approaches to learning” research in higher education’. British Educational Research Journal, 29 (1): 89–104.

Haggis, T. 2006. Pedagogies for diversity: retaining critical challenge amidst fear of “dumbing down”. Studies in Higher Education, 31 (5): 521–535.

Haggis, T. 2009. What have we been thinking of? A critical overview of 40 years of student learning research in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 34 (4): 377–390.

Jansen, J. 2004. Changes and continuities in South Africa’s higher education system, 1994 to 2004. In Changing class. Education and social change in post-apartheid South Africa. Ed L. Chisholm, 293–314. Cape Town: HSRC.

Kapp, R. & Bangeni, B. 2009. Positioning (in) the discipline: undergraduate students’ negotiations of disciplinary discourses. Teaching in Higher Education, 14 (6): 587– 596. Lea, M.R. 1999. Academic literacies and learning in higher education: Constructing knowledge through texts and experiences. In Student writing in the university: cultural and epistemological issues. Eds. C. Jones, J. Turner, & B. V. Street. 156– 171, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lea, M. R. 2004. Academic literacies: a pedagogy for course design. Studies in Higher Education, 29(6): 739–756. Lea, M.R. 2008. Academic literacies in theory and practice. In Encyclopedia of Language and Education. 2nd Edition, 2:Literacy. Eds. B. V. Street & N. H. Hornberger. 227–238. US: Springer.

21

Lea, M. R. 2013. Reclaiming literacies: competing textual practices in a digital higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 18 (1): 106–118. Leibowitz, B. 2012. Reflections on higher education and the public good. In Higher education for the public good, Ed. B. Leibowitz. xvii – xxvii. Stroke on Trent: Trentham and SUN MeDIA. Lillis, T. & Scott, M. 2007. Defining academic literacies research: issues of epistemology , ideology and strategy. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4 (1): 5–32. Luckett, K. 2009. The relationship between knowledge structure and curriculum: a case study in sociology. Studies in Higher Education, 34 (4): 441–453. Marshall, D. & Case, J., 2010. Rethinking ‘disadvantage’ in higher education: a paradigmatic case study using narrative analysis. Studies in Higher Education, 35 (5): 491–504. Moss, G., 2000. Informal literacies and pedagogic discourse. Linguistics and Education, 11 (1): 47–64. Moss, G., 2002. Literacy and pedagogy in flux: constructing the object of study from a Bernsteinian perspective. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23 (4): 549– 558. Pym, J. & Kapp, R. 2013. Harnessing agency: towards a learning model for undergraduate students. Studies in Higher Education, 38 (2): 272–284. Scott, I., Yeld, N. & Hendry, J. 2007. Higher Education Monitor No 6. A case for improving teaching and learning in South African higher education. Pretoria: Council for Higher Education. Shay, S. 2008. Assessment at the boundaries: service learning as case study. British Educational Research Journal, 34 (4): 525–540. Shay, S. 2012. Educational development as a field: are we there yet? Higher Education Research & Development, 31 (3): 311–323. Smit, R. 2012. Towards a clearer understanding of student disadvantage in higher education: problematising deficit thinking. Higher Education Research & Development, 31 (3): 369–380. Wheelahan, L. 2010. Why knowledge matters in curriculum: A social realist argument. London: Routledge.

22

Integrating isiXhosa into clinical skills to address the linguistic landscape of the Western Cape

Somikazi Deyi and Thabisa Xhalisa

University of Cape Town

s.deyi@uct.ac.za; thabisa.xhalisa@uct.ac.za

Abstract

The Language Plan of the University of Cape Town (2001) suggests that language is integral to our social and academic discourse at all levels including communicating and learning. In an attempt to live up to the Language Plan and be responsive to the linguistic needs of the Western Cape community, the Medical School in the Faculty of Health Sciences and the African Languages Department developed isiXhosa in Health Sciences Programme. The programme aimed at developing students’ multilingual awareness and multilingual proficiency skills as an innovative programme. This programme, simultaneously gives students an opportunity to gain access to content and language. Although there are still several challenges in getting all students to achieve the desired proficiency levels in the target language, the value of the programme for students cannot be ignored. Research conducted through interaction with students and field notes during clinical observation reveals the significance of being able to communicate with the patient in the language of the patient. Of importance is being able to gather information in isiXhosa beyond classroom content and using that information to strengthen their learning of the language (isiXhosa). Different types of pedagogical practices are used to teach the language integrated into clinical skills. This study aims to show clinical benefits of integrating isiXhosa into repertoire of dominant Western Cape languages such as English and Afrikaans and which have historically benefited from use in Universities in health Sciences field to promote better communication between patient and health science professional. It will be conducted through observing student participation and performance during clinical skills integrated session where they interact with patients using the target language.

23

Introduction and contextual background

The importance of multilingualism in South African higher education is widely acknowledged in government language policy documents such as the Language Policy for Higher Education (LPHE) (DoE, 2002) and the Ministerial report for the Development of African Languages (DoE, 2005). The LPHE (DoE, 2002) states that multilingualism should be promoted in higher education to ensure access into languages of the people in the region particularly for public service purposes. Accordingly, provinces developed language policies or language plans that are coherent to their multilingual realities.

Similar to other regions, the multilingual reality of the Western Cape is evident in workplaces such as hospitals, where health care professionals might likely use Afrikaans, isiXhosa and/or English when communicating with their patients or colleagues. This paper is concerned with health care professionals in training, who are students of medicine. When medical students attend clinics most of the patients they see are not fluent in English or do not know English at all. Where medical students speak a different language to that of their patient, misunderstandings may result in misdiagnosis. For example, when another member of the health care professions, for example, a nurse who speaks the same language as the patient, interprets for the medical student the condition of the patient, it might easily be misinterpreted. Furthermore, to explain procedures and routines required for treatment, there is a clear need for those conveying these procedures to communicate in the language of the patient (Wyrely-Birch, 2006: 72). It is for these reasons that UCT has made it mandatory for their medical students to learn isiXhosa and/or Afrikaans, the dominant languages of the region. Patients whose mother tongue is not English or Afrikaans appear to encounter difficulties in expressing the illness bringing them to a public hospital or clinic in the Western Cape where the majority of doctors speak a different language to that of the patient. This restricts them from providing a detailed account of the illness. Health practitioners are also restricted when language is a barrier. As a result cleaning staff or health practitioners who speak isiXhosa are often called to interpret. Although this appears plausible, meaning could easily be lost in translation. In an attempt to deal with the language the University of Cape Town undertook to make it compulsory for students studying medicine to learn isiXhosa as one of their subjects. This will hopefully bridge the language gap between patients and doctors.

24

Method

The study employs conversational analysis. Conversational analysis is an eclectic approach used in analysing data collected. It allows a complete synthesis of the findings. This means the researcher is able to analyse micro issues in conversation as explained by Eggin and Slade (2004). One is able to deduce each appropriate turn in a conversation. It will also make use of interviews which yield more towards qualitative research as interviews allow participants construct their reality Creswell, (2003). A researcher employing qualitative research will have to faithfully report the realities that rely on voices and interpretations of participants (Creswell, 1994: 4). A Conversation Analysis approach is also a useful approach for data analysis and discussing findings. Eggins and Slade (2004), posit that conversation should be viewed as a generative, turn taking mechanism aimed at maintaining the flow of talk. The approach is grounded in conversational organization as in the case of interviewing students concerned. Employing aspects of qualitative study, the study will prove whether students appear confident, anxious and/or learning anything during oral assessment. This is based on assumptions that students who crawl through the test might appear nervous, and those who are confident might be those who do extremely well. Findings will tell us whether oral assessment enhances or encourages students’ understand of isiXhosa and if responses appear contradictory, we will investigate further in following studies.

Data collection

Data were collected through conducting interviews with a group of 40 students doing second year. The groups were in sub-groups of eight, each sub-group dealing with a question. They were non-speakers of isiXhosa. They had been less exposed or not exposed to isiXhosa, but had to learn it for purposes being able to communicate with patients. The curriculum involves the language of examination and chest related ailments whereby a group of four students examined one patient. The process involved introducing students to terms such as, jonga phantsi, jonga phezulu, phakamisa isandla, goba idolo, phefumelela ngaphakathi, phefumelela ngaphandle. Semi-structured and structured interviews were conducted. Student observation occurred during clinical visits.

25

Research Questions

In order to conduct structured and semi-structured interviews the following questions were asked: (i) Does integration of isiXhosa into clinical skills improve student competence in isiXhosa; (ii) Are there linguistic benefits in learning isiXhosa through an integrated approach?

Observations

Observation is a research strategy that that assists the researcher to respond to research questions underpinning the study. It assists the researcher to have first-hand information on the manner in which students cope with the demands of language integration into clinical skills (Mouton, 1999). The most difficult part was attempting to remain an outsider as it is a norm for a researcher to subconsciously loose such a status as time goes by. In this particular study the loss of observer status was expected since the researcher later conducted the intervention on using Observations was conducted during mock interviews helping students familiarize themselves with the language. Observing during lectures assisted in understanding the classroom atmosphere and the extent to which learners are able to communicate in isiXhosa. All observations were recorded to assist in giving full account of data collected at the analysis stage. The purpose of note taking was to check whether there is a reflected relationship between learners’ interview responses and the processes of oral assessment.

Interviews

For the purposes of this study structured and semi-structured questionnaires will be used to guide the interviews process. Interviews are chosen as a method of acquiring the desired information (Giles, 1993). Structured interviews are essential for face-to-face interviews where questions are asked against a coded response. The semi-structured interviews refer setting up questions around themes that seek to guide the interview process allowing the interviewer to adapt, modify and add to set questions as needs arise (Cousins, 2009).

26

Language integration

Literature on integration shows that students learn second language when integrated into content because it appears to serve purpose and tends to encourage student enthusiasm towards learning a new language. Scholars such as (Long and Robinson, 1998) appear to encourage integration of language into content since it appears to eliminate the notion of categorization between language and content. Instead of seeing language as a separate entity, it is seen as part of the content hence it is of significance in being part of studying towards becoming a doctor. Language integration also allows the social and intercultural aspects of the communicative ability to be adapted according to different contexts, purpose and language users. Understanding and using the embedded cultural codes which form part of the speech in isiXhosa are included in language integration. These could be in the form of markers of politeness, intonation and expression. Hence, research conducted by (Doughty and Williams, 1998) emphasises the form-focus intervention since it brings out the purpose of language integration. Form-focused intervention occurs when conversational interaction becomes modified to achieve message comprehensibility, and does so in ways that draw the learner’s attention to relationships of L2 form and meaning, through a focus on form (Doughty and Williams, 1998; Long and Robinson 1998). Focus on form, as defined by Long & Robinson (1998), is viewed as “an occasional shift in attention to linguistic code features which are triggered by perceived problems with comprehension or production”. Other researchers have used the term in ways that emphasize its attentional component. A focus on form need not be triggered by communication problems, but might anticipate them through learner directed models (Doughty and Williams, 1998). In this context, form-focused intervention can occur within negotiation, as the need to repair conversational breakdowns brings interlocutors to shift attention from a sole emphasis on the exchange of message meaning to the perceptual or structural shape that encodes the meaning. This shift of attention is in keeping with the meaning of Long and Robinson’s focus on form (1998). Not all negotiation involves such a focus on form. For example, one speaker might fail to interpret the meaning another interlocutor intended due to differences in message content expectations or culturally grounded world views. Such misinterpretation might lead to a negotiation of message meaning, even though the linguistic form of the message is acceptable, appropriate, and not the focus of the conversational repair. Focusing on form during integration appears plausible. However, language integration should adapt to more than form and meaning making. Although the integration model appears favourable, it has been discussed and criticised by scholars such as Brinton et al. (1989: vii). They posit that its implementation poses a challenge for adequate integration (Brinton et al., 1989:

27

vii). Amongst other issues is the pace at which isiXhosa requires to be taught and decisions about selecting content. The question about selecting content, how such content will be integrated with language, and how the resulting language skills students acquire will be directly linked to the objectives or reasons for the programme often arise, (i.e. cultural, cognitive, content, language and environment). It is difficult to immerse students who have less exposure to the language in integrated sessions as a result a lot has to be considered.

One of the difficulties is caused by the fact that, during patient examination, students come across a new set of language, terms and vocabulary that has not been used in class. This exposure compels lecturers to teach the newly found language on the spot. A process that takes away their focus on practising what they learnt but forced to focus on the acquired languages.

Language integration: a strategy for learning

Integrating isiXhosa into the clinical language required by medical students is of significance to ensure that there is a patient-doctor mutual understanding during examination. This clinical language requires students to have knowledge about the language of examination, instructing the patient to follow certain things and execute certain tasks according to the doctor’s instructions. Teaching a second language calls for an approach that assist students to practice. Hence, the use of an interactive approach which employs doctor patient interviews. Putting emphasis on integrating isiXhosa into the course content; conducting a three stage -assessment in isiXhosa, using the language of examination in group work and offering advice in mock doctor-patient interviews. The strategy hopes to develop functional bilinguals, who according to Valdes (1999) are individuals who have developed a fairly advanced level of proficiency but still producing frequent errors. The strategy assists students to see isiXhosa as the integral part of their course. Also, this is an attempt to alleviate the tendency of learning the language by memorizing the interview procedure. Memorizing the language used in procedures helps students pass exams without being conversant in the language. This makes it difficult to reflect fully on the effectiveness of the course and its development of isiXhosa. It is for this reason that we adopt a communicative approach to teaching so putting emphasis on communication as opposed to mere traditional lectures. Increase student exposure by doing more clinical practice in hospitals where isiXhosa is the dominant language (Mangena, 2003). Increase student access to online materials such as DVDs and computer based programmes which are designed together with the Multilingual Education Programme at UCT.

28

Although the study materials are adapted to the language of medicine, teaching the standardized form of isiXhosa becomes a challenge. It further places an intellectual demand on students particularly those who are not exposed to isiXhosa. The integrated content cannot be simplified to a level of conversation only. Key terms that cannot be taught for they are fundamental to the context remain unable to simplify. Students have to cope with learning those (terms) by heart and constant practicing. This could appear problematic since learning a second language requires a greater exposure to rules and practice focusing on form can be used to monitor progress and understanding. Furthermore, teaching the standardized form appears to introduce students to a ‘new’ language that is foreign to health practitioners (patients, doctors and nurses). So, sometimes they have to explain themselves to isiXhosa speaking patients because they (patients) can simply not understand when students speak the standardized variety. Again, with the limited vocabulary that the students have, it becomes difficult for them to explain beyond what they are taught. For example, we would teach students to refer to diabetes as “isifo seswekile” while in the hospital context it is referred to, “iswekile” (sugar), “ixamba’ (ten kilograms of sugar which in this context indicates the amount of sugar the patient has) or “idaydayi” a word derived from “di” in diabetes. Use of these varieties marks a significant functional language for patients, doctors and nurses. So, this compels language lecturers to constantly review the curriculum reconciling terms and the vocabulary, the standardized form and the communicative form continuously, drawing from the clinical jargon (Madiba, 2001: 72).

Challenges of integrating isiXhosa

Students in the medical school programme are required to learn isiXhosa as one of the languages which form part of their studies. The structure of the course is such that students should be able to conduct a three stage interview with patients. These stages are, taking the patient’s personal information, social history and conducting the actual diagnosis. It is during the interview process that students reflect on their linguistic short falls. The interview process does not only require them to learn the communication language but to also understand key terms central to the diagnosis. This, places a huge language demands on students because most of them have not been exposed to the language. Integrating isiXhosa into the content seems to compel students to learn through rote learning, prepare themselves for the test and maybe focus only on the questions asked during the doctor-patient interview. Learning the questions without fully understanding patients’ responses does not appear to ensure students ability to communicate fly with the patient. One of the reasons is that, students have never

29

been taught isiXhosa during primary and high school. Those that learnt isiXhosa did it as a second or third language which did not give them a stronger foundation to learn the structure and typology of the language. This becomes a predicament for them in that should they have done it while at school, at university they could only be introduced to the language of medicine. Without doubt, this would enable them focus on the language relevant to the needs of the medical context. Secondly, some of the students studying medicine are from outside South Africa so, isiXhosa becomes a foreign language. The form, pattern and the typology of the language can be different from theirs. They have to put an extra effort in familiarizing themselves with the language. Lastly, the language which integration imposes on students is difficult to cope with. The nature of the course content is such that language development revolves around key terms that cannot be written otherwise to meet the linguistic level of the students.

Staff matters

The scarcity of lecturers in the language field and staff workloads creates a difficulty for lecturers to cope. The large numbers that are administered by a few lecturers creates a tension between the university’s language plan and classroom practice (University of Cape Town, 2001). This puts strain on emphasizing some of the significant of learning isiXhosa such as cultural diversity. The cultural diversity embodied by the language requires more attention in the medical field. A doctor patient dialogue which displays respect and use of appropriate language is highly regarded. The old man or woman might show respect and affection by referring to the doctor as (Gqirha mntwana’m-doctor, my child) while the doctor will say “ewe mama-yes mama” “uyaqonda mama-do you understand mama? By virtue of being the knowledgeable one, the doctor could easily say “yiza ndikuxilonge-come let me examine you”, but he or she would rather use a tone of respect and assurance, ndicela ukukuxilonga mama/tata-I would like to examine you, mama/tata). This respect is demanded by culture embodied in the language. It is recognition that language is one of the most powerful transmitters of culture (Goduka, 1991). Although in such a context language seems to be a social practice, recognising cultural diversity needs to be managed and be part of the language in the health practice. Communication in second language can be complicated by cultural issues that one has to be aware of, particularly in the medical field. However, managing cultural diversity ensures an enabling environment for patients who speak isiXhosa as his or her mother tongue (Meier and Hartell, 2009) with less sufficient linguistic expertise in other languages of the region like English and Afrikaans.

30

Embracing and managing cultural diversity would be like “training’ on one hand and education on the other hand and is critical to ensure that speaking the language of the patient creates a platform for language development for learners. Patients offer students more language than what is taught in the classrooms (Winberg, 2005). In cases where students do not understand, the patients make an effort to explain in either very ‘broken’ English or by means of interpretation. In the process the students themselves learn new vocabulary which they always verify in class for thorough understanding.

Benefits of language integration: Observations

Findings made from observations and interviews indicate that students see benefit in learning isiXhosa through an integrated approach. Since the language is part of the lesson, there is no extra burden to learn grammatical rules separately from content. This makes conversation between the patient and themselves easier. Patients become more involved, attentive to instructions and commit to compliance. Discussions flow with ease and trust seems to develop. Patients open up easily about the sickness and patients seem to feel empowered when they communicate to the patient in his/her language. Another interesting observation to note is that, during integrated sessions, students appear to have greater awareness about the amount of language skills they have learnt in class. Often, they seem to underestimate their understanding of the language and language integration gives them an opportunity to see that they are progressing relatively well. They are able to construct a valuable conversation with the patients and are also able to probe about illness to a certain level, although, we cannot claim that they have mastered the language.

Benefits of language integration: Student perspective

Students interviewed on whether there is a benefit in learning isiXhosa agree that there is benefit. However, a lot of work needs to be done to improve ensure the effectiveness of the course. The course materials need to be simplified to ensure student friendliness. Students see the benefits of learning isiXhosa or the need for learning isiXhosa highlighted in the paragraph above, during visits to the clinics, old age homes and public hospitals that students. These visits inform the students how much language they have acquired or they need to communicate effectively with their respective patients. For many, it becomes a mirror to look at themselves and a motivator to adopt a positive attitude and willingness to learn the language. This often happens at third year level when students are highly exposed to patients who

31

are English non-speakers. The exposure to patients who speak isiXhosa encourages them (students) to participate fully during lectures. This means, paying attention in class, co-operate during lecturers, asking questions and taking part in group work.

Conclusion

The aim of this paper was to show clinical benefits of integrating isiXhosa into repertoire of dominant Western Cape languages such as English and Afrikaans and which have historically benefited from use in Universities in health Sciences field to promote better communication between patient and health science professional. It was conducted through observing student participation and performance during clinical skills integrated session where they interact with patients using the target language. The findings of this paper therefore indicate that for effective language integration, learners should be exposed to isiXhosa during their schooling years. Bringing isiXhosa to early ages of schooling would ensure that they are exposed to the structure of the language, typology and form which are fundamental to learning isiXhosa. Lack of exposure and immersion at university places a demand, on both students and lecturers (Vygotsky, 1978). Students only begin to learn about the structure and language form when in fact they should be focusing on the language of medicine. Should this be implemented it would ensure that understanding is accelerated and learning is progressing. Furthermore, the vocabulary and terms used should be cognizant of the jargon used in the clinical context since standardized terms appear to create a communication barrier between the students and the patients. The clinical context has its own jargon so our curriculum and study materials should rather speak to what is already happening. Regarding students with absolutely no exposure to South African languages, coming from outside South Africa, they should be immersed into a communication language programme that will familiarize them with the basics of the language before they are introduced to structure and form. Presumably, the ability to communicate basically in the language could encourage them to learn more about typology thereby improving their communication. Amongst other essential components of language learning is the teaching strategies. The teaching strategies should strive to enhance interaction in the classroom and help develop student communication in the target language. Learning big chunks of information and simple phrases through rote learning does not help students learn the language effectively.

32

REFERENCES

Doughty, C., & Williams, J. (Eds.). (1998). Focus on form Teresa Pica 17 in second language classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press. Goduka, M.I. 1991. Affirming unity in diversity in education. Cape Town. Juta & Co.Ltd. Long, M., & Robinson, P. (1998). Focus on form: Theory, research, and practice. In C. Doughty & J. Williams (Eds.), Focus on form in second language classroom (15–41). New York: Cambridge University Press. Language Plan for the University of Cape Town: 2005–2010. Available on UCT website (accessed on the 16th July 2013). Madiba, M. 2001. Towards a model for terminology modernisation in the African Languages of South Africa. Language Matters: Studies in the Southern African Languages; Volume 32: 53–78. Mangena, M. 2003. The role of tertiary institutions in the promotion and development of African Languages; African Languages Colloquium, Issued by the Ministry of Education (27 March 2003).

South African Department of Education. 2002. Language Policy for Higher Education. Available at http://www.education.gov.za/content/documents/67.pdf accessed 26 June 2013 Vygotsky, L. 1978. Mind in Society. The development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

33

Positioning academic literacies at the core of curriculum design

Moragh Paxton and Vera Frith

University of Cape Town

Moragh.paxton@uct.ac.za

Vera.frith@uct.ac.za

Abstract The Council of Higher Education’s proposal for Undergraduate Curriculum Reform in South Africa has called for a renewed focus on curriculum design given the high attrition rates affecting all students, but particularly African students, in the South African higher education system. This paper argues for embedding the academic literacies in the early stages of curriculum design processes and uses illustrations from research to show how findings from academic literacies research projects can be quite significant in informing the design of new curricula.

Introduction

As the Council of Higher Education’s Proposal for Undergraduate Curriculum Reform (2013) shows, South Africa’s standard undergraduate educational process is not working effectively for a large proportion of the student body, particularly for first-generation, socio-economically disadvantaged students. In particular, the traditional curriculum structures have been identified as being a major obstacle to learning. Scott (2013) argues that curriculum structure which includes basic parameters such as the starting point, expected rate of progress, progression paths and exit standards of a program is so embedded in the system that it is seldom examined or problematized. In developing countries where far-reaching changes have occurred in the nature of the student intake, he contends that the appropriateness of current curriculum parameters for contemporary conditions needs to be reviewed.

34

As a result of low participation and high attrition rates affecting black students only 5% of African youth in South Africa are currently succeeding in any form of higher education (Scott, Yeld and Hendry, 2007). We are aware that township and rural students are underprepared for the traditional programmes offered in mainstream higher education even though they all fall into the top decile of their age group in terms of school performance. The central challenge is therefore to design curricula and curriculum structures as well as pedagogical approaches that will enable these students to unlock their potential (Scott, 2013). This article seeks to respond to this renewed call to focus on curriculum design in higher education in South Africa by emphasising the importance of the academic literacies and the teaching of these in new curriculum structures. It seems important to point out that in this article we use the plural form of the term ‘academic literacies’ to signal a focus on modes of meaning that are broader than language alone, therefore the plural form of the term includes the quantitative, the visual, the spatial, and the digital literacies conceptualised as social practices in social contexts. These various literacies are not entirely separate and are practiced interdependently within the context of academic discourses. For example quantitative literacy cannot be disentangled from language as quantitative concepts are conveyed through language, using terminology and forms of expression that are associated with specific quantitative ideas. The reasons for focusing on the academic literacies in curriculum are multiple. Firstly, the development of the academic literacies is an essential graduate attribute for all students. Secondly, most students find the transition to academic literacy practices challenging but changes in South African schooling such as the new National Senior Certificate (2009) with its lower baselines for passing matric and entering university have meant that there is a greater diversity in language proficiency and preparedness for academic literacies even in students from better funded schools. Research at the University of Cape Town (Thesen and van Pletzen, 2006) has indicated that students who declare English as a first language may have difficulty with reading and writing at university. In addition, results from the National Bench Mark Tests Project indicate that many students are poorly prepared to meet the quantitative literacy requirements in university curricula1 (Yeld, 2009: 79). Thirdly, much research in South Africa has shown that students for whom English is an additional language with poorly resourced schooling backgrounds face a much greater challenge with the academic literacies (Thesen and van Pletzen, 2006; Leibowitz and Mohamed, 2000; Angelil-Carter, 1998; Paxton, 2006). Finally, the academic literacies play a central role in learning and concept development. Therefore, it is crucial that, in the process of designing new and flexible curricula, the

1 In the pilot tests in the National Benchmark Test Project in 2009, only one quarter of all students tested were classified as proficient in quantitative literacy.(Frith and Prince 2009)

35

teaching of academic literacy practices is positioned at the heart of this design process. This article argues that it is very important that the academic literacies are not taught as generic skills courses, but are rather embedded in disciplinary curricula. In addition it illustrates by means of examples the ways in which academic literacies research can inform the design of such integrated curricula. The article will begin by considering the variety of ways in which academic literacies is understood and how that has led to a variety of ways of teaching it, both locally and internationally. It will then outline the relatively new field of academic literacies research and focus on a number of different academic literacies research projects which have been able to inform curriculum design. The article will close with some illustrations from an empirical study in the natural sciences to consider in more detail what academic literacies research can bring to the curriculum design process in disciplinary teaching in higher education.

Ways in which “academic literacies” is understood Both internationally and in South Africa, the term ‘academic literacies’ has taken on a number of different meanings which has led to considerable confusion as to what we mean when we use the term. Jacobs (2014) argues that one common (mis)understanding that still dominates thinking in South Africa is one that sees academic literacies as a description of the generic ‘skills’ that students need to be taught in academia. She points out that this understanding of academic literacies as ‘skills’ has led to the teaching of such skills through generic academic literacy courses separate from the mainstream disciplinary curricula. Yet, the same term, ‘academic literacies’ is used as descriptor of rhetorical practices, discourses, genres in academia linked to specific disciplines (Lillis and Scott, 2007) so we might refer to the academic literacies required for economics or mathematics. Academic literacies has also been understood as a pedagogic approach to teaching2 conceptualized by Lea and Street (1998) as the academic literacies approach which has developed over the last fifteen years in recognition of a growing mismatch between students’ needs and experiences and the curriculum and the academic institution (Lea and Street, 1998; Lea and Street, 2000). The academic literacies approach understands literacies as social practices concerned with meaning making and contestation around meaning. Perhaps the key contribution of the academic literacies approach has been that it has challenged assumptions of student deficit and called for higher education institutions to be made more accessible to a diverse student body. 2 Lea and Street (1998) refer to three different but overlapping models or approaches to the teaching of academic literacies: the study skills model which tends to focus on the surface features of language and understands literacy as a set of skills that have to be learned and can then be transferred to other contexts; the socialization model sees students as having to be inducted into the new ‘culture’ of academia; the academic literacies model which is described in more detail above.

36

Lillis and Scott (2007) offer a further way of understanding academic literacies, describing it as a critical field of inquiry with a specific theoretical and ideological standpoint. In their paper they have attempted to define the field of academic literacies research, identifying literacy as social practice as the specific epistemology of academic literacies research and transformation as the ideology. What distinguishes an academic literacies research approach from other socially oriented approaches to writing research is the shift in emphasis from a focus on text to a focus on text as social practice (Lillis and Scott, 2007), drawing on a number of different traditions such as the New Literacy Studies, critical discourse studies and sociolinguistics. The New Literacy Studies, to which academic literacies research is closely aligned, challenges the belief that literacy and numeracy is concerned with the acquisition of a set of cognitive skills which can be learned and used in any new context. Instead, the idea of literacy as a social practice recognises that literacies are socially and culturally embedded practices that vary from one context to another and that there are power discrepancies in any literacy related activity (Street, 1984; Gee, 1996). Academic literacies research has built on these theoretical frameworks to develop a field of research which seeks to understand language, literacy and numeracy as social practices within higher education. The idea of literacy as a social practice points to ethnography as the appropriate methodology to characterise an academic literacies approach. Typically, academic literacies involves observation of practices surrounding the production of texts, collection of data from multiple sources so as to enable thick description (Geertz, 1973) as well as interviewing participants to understand their perspectives on their texts, an approach which has become known as “talk around text” (Lillis, 2001). Academic literacies scholars indicate that the relationship of students to the dominant literacy practices and discourses of the academy is more complex than other work in student learning has indicated (Lea, 2004; Lillis and Scott, 2007). Academic literacies research recognises that the construction of knowledge and contestation around meaning (knowledge making) is a dialogic process as students mediate the texts through their own personal readings and understanding of the materials they encounter during their studies (Ivanic, 1998, Lillis, 2001 and Paxton, 2006, 2007). This is described by Lillis and Scott (2007) as the ideological stance in academic literacies research because it plays a transformative role, not only identifying academic conventions but in understanding how these conventions may conflict or contrast with social practices and positions of other discourses (to which many non-traditional students belong). They argue that this approach is interested in the ways in which such traditional conventions may impact on meaning-making and in discovering alternative ways of meaning making by considering the resources that students bring as legitimate meaning making tools.

37

Academic literacies as ideological If we understand literacies as social practices embedded in social contexts (the ideological stance), then it follows logically that the teaching of academic reading and writing should be embedded in specific discourses, so that students learn the discourse practices and forms of expression in particular disciplines. As Gee (1990: xviii) says,

There is no such thing as ‘reading’ or ‘writing’, only reading or writing something (a text of a certain type) in a certain way with certain values, while at least appearing to think and feel in certain ways.

Ensuring that the academic literacies are embedded in disciplinary teaching is important because students learn through reading and writing the texts of the discipline. The importance of reading and writing for shaping students’ cognitive processes is now well established after extensive research in this area over the last four decades (Bazerman, 1988; Kelly and Bazerman, 2003) and yet, as Lea (2004) has pointed out, discipline specialists seldom take this into consideration when planning their courses. This means that the reading and writing components of curricula are often added on after the course design process is completed with no thought given to curriculum alignment or to conceptualising the writing assignment as part of the content of the course so that students can learn from writing about this content. Academic literacies teaching should be about making explicit to students the ways of knowing in the discipline as well as teaching the specific disciplinary forms of expression and conventions for writing. Those of us who have worked in embedding the academic literacies in the disciplines have learned that this involves very close collaboration with the disciplinary specialists who may sometimes fail to make explicit the values, practices and conventions of their disciplines (Jacobs, 2007, 2014; Paxton, 2007, 2011; Nomdo, 2013). At first year level this involves working in partnerships so that the discipline specialist and the academic literacy specialist collaborate closely and might, in some cases, team teach. However the need for discipline embedded support with academic literacy and numeracy does not stop at first year because the literacy demands become more complex as students move through their undergraduate years. This is particularly true for students for whom English is not a first language. Undergraduate throughput figures for the 2007 cohort at the University of Cape Town show that language is still an important variable for success. 27% of students who reported English as an additional language were excluded (compared with 8% of English home language students) (UCT Language Policy and Implementation Plan 2013). This means we need to continue to build language and literacy expertise among discipline specialists in the faculties by means of staff development initiatives such as courses in academic literacies teaching.

38

The role of academic literacies research in informing curriculum As I have indicated, understanding literacy as a social practice means that reading and writing are linked to what people do in the material and social world. This foregrounds, not only the material and social world of the academic discipline to which our students need to gain access but it also means we need to have a clearer understanding of the worlds from which the students have come. Therefore, we have had to develop a reflective approach to our teaching and our research has focused on trying to understand the values, beliefs and practices of students from rural and ‘township’ backgrounds in South Africa. We have had to identify the gaps and the connections between the students’ literacy practices and the range of academic literacy practices in our institutions. For instance, studies that probe the hybridity in student writing allow us as educators to understand more about the learning and meaning-making processes (Paxton, 2007). Insights into students’ developing schemata allow us not only to bridge the gaps between institutional expectations and students’ models and practices, but also to explore alternative ways of meaning making in academia. These studies have also indicated that many of the practices and discourses that students bring with them from other contexts may conflict with the requirements of academic discourse. For instance, drawing on situated meanings to make sense of new concepts can often complicate, rather than assist, the process of discourse acquisition (Paxton, 2007). Ndlangamandla’s study (2013) of postgraduate proposal writing in the MTech in Policing at UNISA highlights the fascinating ways in which the discourses of the academy clash with policing discourses. I will illustrate the role played by this kind of research in more detail by summarising the findings from a recent academic literacies research project in a foundation course in the biological, earth and environmental science and point to the ways in which it has informed curriculum development and has led to curriculum changes.

Findings from an academic literacies research project in the biological, earth and environmental sciences In 2011–2012, we conducted an academic literacies research project in a component of a foundation course in the natural sciences. This component of the course which was taught by the discipline specialist, academic literacy and numeracy specialists, led to the students writing a ‘scientific report’ on waste management which was the major formative assessment task in the course. In the research study we conducted a linguistic and intertextual analysis of students’ written assignments and then engaged in dialogue with students around their writing. The findings from this research have provided in-depth insights into important issues that have led to

39

changes in the curriculum and the pedagogy of the course. I will briefly describe some of our findings and their implications for curriculum design.

Curriculum alignment A central principle in designing a course according to the model based on an academic literacies framework (Lea, 2004: 744) is recognising that there are gaps between teacher’s expectations and the understanding of the texts involved in learning. In contexts such as ours, where students come from very diverse backgrounds which differ from those of the teaching staff, research and ongoing dialogue is needed in order to identify what these gaps are. The course was an interdisciplinary one in which foundational concepts from the biological, earth and environmental sciences were taught. The sections of the course were embedded within an earth systems science framework and aimed at providing students with an understanding of the processes that shape the earth, the connections between these processes and their impact on the environment. In our discussions with students about their reports we were surprised to find that they could not see how the scientific report on waste management was relevant to their course content. Waste management had seemed a central issue in any course with an environmental focus and the relevance of the scientific report to the course material had seemed obvious to the teaching team and the discipline specialist (the course convenor) who had designed the scientific report as a real world application of what the course was about. However, students had clearly not made this link and it made us realise that the link needed to be made much more explicit. We also realised that the course convenor might need to work on curriculum alignment to ensure that the aims of her course were made very clear to the students from the start and were carefully aligned to the major assessment task.

Quantitative literacies Students were given lectures and Excel-based tutorials to prepare them for answering a series of directed questions which guided them through the analysis of a set of data on waste management in a fictitious third world city. These were presented in the form of a structured Excel spreadsheet, on which the students could perform the statistical analysis, create the charts and graphs and write the descriptions of the results. The students were then expected to draw on these analytical results to support any arguments they made in their ‘scientific report’, which was the major formative assessment task in the course.

40

Learning to use terms and phrases to describe quantitative concepts is fundamental to quantitative literacy for a science student. However, in our analysis of the scientific reports, we found that many of these students used quantitative terms and phrases inappropriately, often in a manner that was grammatically correct, but conceptually incorrect, and our “talk around text” revealed that the students either did not understand the specific contextual meanings of the terms they were using or that they did not understand the concepts the terms refer to, or both. For example many students used the phrase 'increasing at an increasing rate' to describe a population growth chart, when in fact the rate of increase on the graph they were describing was approximately constant. We realised therefore that students had not understood the way the phrase “at an increasing rate’ was conceptualised in the language of quantitative literacy. This has meant that the quantitative literacy specialists in the team have had to find new way teach the concept of “increasing at an increasing rate”. Another finding relating to the language of quantitative literacy (in the natural sciences) which has led us to build further changes into the curriculum had to do with the students' use of the phrase ‘is proportional to’. From interviews we established that school physics teaching practices (and the kinds of symbolic representations used to represent relationships in physics) had led students to conclude that whenever an increase in one variable leads to an increase in another variable, the relationship can be described as proportional. (This is in fact not true, as only relationships in which the values of the two variables are in a constant ratio can be described using this term). Students were drawing on discourse practices developed in school physics lessons which led to a misconceptualisation of the concept of “is proportional to” and which was likely to interfere with knowledge building in the quantitative literacies and therefore in the natural sciences. These findings have shown that we cannot afford to design a curriculum without being clear about what prior discourses students may be drawing on and that it may only be through dialogic methods, typical of academic literacies research, that we can really understand the gaps or misconceptions that arise from these prior discourses. Finally we found that students had been challenged in learning the academic conventions for writing a scientific report. What we had not realised until we interviewed the students was that schools were now teaching referencing but they were teaching referencing practices in ways that conflicted with referencing practices in the academy. For instance, students told us that at school they had simply cut and pasted from the web and then drawn up a list of references at the end of the school assignment. They said that the first time that they had encountered “in text” referencing was at university when they had to write this scientific report.

41

These illustrations from our data emphasise, firstly, the importance of embedding language and literacy in course design so that the curriculum is aligned very carefully with the assessments and the activities around those assessments. This requires making the ways of knowing of the discipline, the aims of the course and the links between theory and real world application explicit, particularly if the major assessment project involves real world application of the theory. Secondly, the illustrations of the way students engage with the quantitative literacy texts indicate that knowledge making needs to be a dialogic process which draws on a range of semiotic modes. In contexts where educational resources have not been equally distributed we need a more complex understanding of the way students are constructing knowledge from texts, so that we gain a better understanding of discourses that students bring from a diverse range of schooling and home backgrounds. It is only then that we can build additional steps into course design and pedagogy to scaffold learning and thus avoid conceptual breakdown. Finally, the students’ difficulties with the genre and conventions of scientific writing illustrate that referencing needs to be seen as a knowledge making practice, rather than a technical skill. Course design needs to include the teaching of the specific textual functions and generic conventions and practices of the discourse of science and of mathematics.

Conclusion These research findings developed from ethnographic studies based on dialogue with students around their assignments are quite critical for bridging the gap between teachers’ expectations and the understandings that students from very diverse backgrounds bring to the academy. They can also play a significant role in informing the design of new curricula at a time when curricula seem outdated and in need of reform. Furthermore they add weight to the argument for embedding the teaching of the academic literacies in the disciplines so that students learn a wide range of social practices appropriate to the discipline.

42

References

Angelil-Carter, S. (ed.) 1998. Access to Success: Literacy in Academic Contexts. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press.

A Proposal for Undergraduate Curriculum Reform in South Africa: The Case for a Flexible Curriculum Structure. 2013. Council of Higher Education: Pretoria.

Bazerman, C. 1988. Shaping Written Knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in Science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Bernstein, B. 2000. Class, Codes and Control., Volume V: Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.

Frith V & Prince RN 2009. A framework for understanding the quantitative literacy demands of higher education. South African Journal of Higher Education, 23(1): 83–97

Gee, J. 1990. Social linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. . London: Routledge/Falmer.

Geertz, C. 1973, The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Ivanič, R. 1998. Writing and identity: The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing (Vol. 5). John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Jacobs, C. 2007. Mainstreaming academic literacy teaching: Implications for how AD understands its work in HE. South African Journal of Higher Education. 21 (7) 868–879.

Jacobs, C. 2014. Academic Literacies and the Question of Knowledge. South African Association of Language Teaching (SAALT). 19 (3).

Kelly, G. and Bazerman, C. 2003. How Students Argue Scientific Claims: A Rhetorical-Semantic Analysis. Applied Linguistics. 28 (1) 28–55.

Lea, M. and Street, B. 1998. Student writing in higher education: an academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education. 11 (3) 182–189.

Lea, M. and Street, B. 2000. Student Writing and Staff Feedback in Higher Education: An Academic Literacies Approach. In M. Lea and B. Stierer (eds.) Student Writing in Higher Education: New Contexts. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Lea, M. 2004. Academic literacies: a pedagogy for course design. Studies in Higher Education. 29 (6) 739–756.

Leibowitz, B and Mohamed, Y. (eds.) 2000. Routes to writing in Southern Africa. Cape Town: Silk Road International Publishers.

43

Lillis, T. 2001. Student writing: Access, regulation, desire. London/New York: Routledge.

Lillis, T. and Scott, M. 2007. Defining academic literacies research: issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy. Journal of Applied Linguistics. 4 (1) 5–32.

Ndlangamandla, S. 2013. Recontextualisation of professional discourses in academic writing: A case study of police professional writing. Proceedings of the HELTASA conference 2012 at Stellenbosch University. 55–61

Nomdo, G. 2013. Collaborating by Design: Language Embedded in an Economics Course. In J. Pym and M. Paxton (eds.) Surfacing Possibilities: What it Means to Work with First-generation Higher Education Students. Champaign, ILL: Common Ground Publishing as part of the World Universities Forum. 100–122.

Paxton, M. 2006. lntertextual analysis: a research tool for uncovering the writer's emerging. Academic literacy and the languages of change, 84. London: Continuum.

Paxton, M. 2007. Students’ interim literacies as a dynamic resource for teaching and transformation. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 25 (1): 45–55.

Paxton, M. 2011. Research and development in an ICL project: A methodology for understanding meaning making in economics. Across the Disciplines, 8 (3). Retrieved October 10, 2011, from http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/clil/paxton.cfm

Scott, I. (2012). Curriculum structure as a key variable affecting performance in higher education. In Blackmore, P. and Kandiko, C. (eds) Strategic Curriculum Change: Global Trends in Universities. Oxford: Routledge, with the Society for Research into Higher Education.

Scott, I. 2013 Paving the way for systemic change: Curriculum innovation for development and equity. In Surfacing Possibilities: Experiences of working with first generation university students. edited by June Pym and Moragh Paxton, Common Ground Publishing (forthcoming)

Scott, I., Yeld, N. and Hendry, J. 2007. A case for improving teaching and learning in South African higher education. Higher Education Monitor No. 6. Pretoria: Council on Higher Education. http://www.che.ac.za/documents/d000155/index.php

Street, B. 1984. Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thesen, L. and van Pletzen, E. 2006. Academic Literacy and Languages of Change. London: Continuum.

University of Cape Town Language Policy and Implementation Plan. 2013. University of Cape Town.

44

Yeld N 2009. The National Benchmark Tests Project: Addressing student educational needs in the tertiary education system. In: J Hofmeyer (ed), Recession and recovery. Cape Town: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. Retrieved on 11 May 2011 from: http://www.ijr.org.za/publications/pdfs/IJR_TA_Chapter3.pdf. University of Cape Town.

45

Quality practices in teaching by academics in higher education

CK Dongwe

Durban University of Technology

cynthiaz@dut.ac.za

Abstract

Higher education institutions are challenged to offer quality teaching to help address societal challenges. Different stakeholders within higher education institutions have different roles to play in ensuring that the teaching provided is of high quality. These stakeholders include academic staff, facilities departments, university senior management as well as the students themselves. Academics are one of the important stakeholders, who need to ensure that there is quality teaching taking place. The aim of this study was to explore how academic staff enact and embrace quality in higher education and how they attribute their quality practices.

This was a qualitative study in nature, as it seeks to obtain detailed explanations from the academics themselves on what quality practices they enact. Working within an interpretive paradigm, I wanted to understand how academic staff enacts quality and what informs these enactments. Attribution theory was used to understand whether the enactments were as a result of institutional and national factors or resulted from individual factors where academics within themselves enacted the quality practices as a result of wanting to provide quality teaching. A South African University of Technology was used as a case study. Qualitative data was generated, using semi-structured in depth interviews. Respondents were purposively sampled to participate in this study. The study found that academics had various quality practices which can be attributed to institutional factors rather than individual factors.

46

Introduction

Higher Education institutions are faced with a challenge of producing quality graduates who can meet the needs of the country. The consequence of producing quality graduates will be the growth in the economy and development in society. In order for institutions to produce quality graduates, quality teaching needs to take place. Academic staff members are at the core of ensuring that higher education Institutions offer teaching which is of high quality. Academics worldwide are also normally confronted with a range of national and institutional quality assurance and promotion systems. Teaching and Learning quality assurance processes are as important for staff as they are for students. For students they ensure quality education, for staff they pinpoint all the milestones that need to be passed to ensure a quality education is delivered (O’Rourke & Bulushi, 2010: 206). In addition to my own personal interest in this area, I am responsible for ‘driving’ quality in my department. In enacting this quality champion role, I noticed that there were different quality practices enacted by academics in their teaching. There were also different reactions by academics to quality initiatives introduced by the University Quality Unit. These different reactions towards quality mechanisms made me realize that some academics view quality processes as too administrative and time consuming. Whilst others saw it as an opportunity to obtain feedback from students. On the other hand, others do not trust the institutional and national processes. They see these processes as paper chase exercises (Cheng, 2009). “These interpretations are indicative that within academic communities in that the concepts of quality management have been variously welcomed, ignored, and strongly resisted” (Houston, 2007: 8 and Borden, 2011) explain that one answer we often hear from members of the academy when discussing quality issues is ‘because we have to’. In this paper I argue that this compliance approach is not suitable for promoting quality teaching and learning in higher education as it mainly prioritizes organizational factors over individual factors. The study was thus aimed to explore how academics’ embrace quality in their teaching and how they respond to the university quality initiatives. Houston and Paewai (2013) noted that there is little information regarding the impact of quality assurance on teaching, learning and research. Saarinen, (2010) states that quality has moved from being a controversial concept to being an everyday language. However in this paper I explore whether academics view quality as being a controversial concept or they have embraced quality in their teaching.

Krause (2012) states that interested parties in this issue of quality could be students, academic staff, university managers, community groups, government, employers,

47

research sponsors and the media. Parents could also be interested in knowing about the quality of teaching at a particular institution. Previous studies which have been conducted in this area include Jones and Saram (2005); Brunetto & Wharton (2005); Cheng (2009); O’Mahony & Garavan (2012); Jibladze (2013) and Anderson (2006). In these studies, academics felt that they did not identify well with the quality processes. Normally there are questions regarding the intentions of these teaching and learning quality initiatives, Mertova & Webster (2009). The questions could be about whether the quality initiatives are for accountability and control purposes or they are intended for enhancing quality. Mertova & Webster (2009) further highlighted that most quality assurance systems are mostly management driven, not taking into account the human-centred aspects. Institutional teaching and learning quality processes are to help academics reflect on their teaching. “Reflection means looking back at something and thinking about what happened and why it happened” (Killen, 2010: 109). To further understand quality issues in higher education, Watty (2006) states that if you want to find out more about quality matters in a higher education institution, then you must ask those closest to the student academic interface – the academics or the students. However Saarined (2010: 56) states that “the voice of academic community has become subdued consequently, its values less clearly presented”. Equally in South African schools, there have been various studies regarding the Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) where it has been found that educators do not identify with the process (Biputh, 2008; De Clerq, 2008 and Hibbers, 2006). This paper draws on an ongoing PhD study, the main aim of this paper was to explore academics’ quality practices in higher education at a particular university of technology. I wanted to ascertain whether the practices were informed by internal factors or external factors. In this paper Internal factors will be categorized as individual factors (lecturer’s background, motivation, attitude, understanding of quality and personal teaching philosophy) external factors will be categorized as institutional and national factors (national policy, institutional policy, faculty and departmental structures, discipline and students). Currently there is a strong focus on quality in the entire higher education sector. A number of factors have been associated with the focus on quality education. These factors include concern for a potential decline in academic standards as well as loss of confidence in academic quality management (Njoku, 2012). In the South African context; quality is seen as a mechanism for promoting transformation in higher education (CHE, 2008). Quality improvement has also been emphasized in the Green Paper for Post-School Education and Training (2012) in that the DHET’s main focus will be on promoting the improvement of quality because

48

a large section of the post-school system offer a less than satisfactory quality of education (DHET, 2012). South Africa has a strong policy framework that supports the enactment of quality at all levels of Higher Education and it is important for academics to pay attention to quality assurance and promotion practices. Another importance of this study in the South African context is that the second cycle of institutional audits (2012–2017) was aimed at putting emphasis on quality teaching and learning (CHE, 2011). Furthermore the Quality Enhancement Project has also been recently introduced. In this project, university teachers have been identified as focus area number one on the Draft Framework for the Quality Enhancement Project (CHE, 2013). Equally on an institutional level, Cheung and Tsui (2010) state that quality is the responsibility of the institution and it should be embedded within the institution’s culture, mission, strategy, organizational structure, learning and teaching, student support and operational activities. Therefore it is important that quality culture is promoted at institutional level (Ehlers, 2009). The research questions in this study were: What are the quality practices enacted by academics in teaching? What informs these quality practices?

The concept of quality Quality is a concept that is not always easy to define as it means different things to different people. It is also difficult to identify the absence of quality since you cannot touch it, but if quality is lacking at a particular institution there are usually complaints from different education stakeholders including students. There are different explanations and interpretations of the concept of quality in higher education. For example, there are five approaches to quality as defined by Garvin (1984); product orientated approach, customer oriented approach, manufacturing orientated approach and the value for money approach. Harvey and Williams, (2010, 7) described the notion of quality in higher education as “having many facets and different perspectives and as a multi-faceted notion which must be interpreted in terms of purpose and context”. Furthermore Newton (2002) highlighted that academics at departmental levels defined quality as a ritual, a token, for impression management and quality as a lack of mutual trust. Maguire & Gibbs (2013) also highlight that quality is defined differently by different stakeholders in higher education. Lim (2001) similarly highlighted that definitions of quality in higher education, are as many as the stakeholders. Lim (2001: 14) further provides five definitions of quality; quality as a way of producing perfection through continuous improvement, quality as performance, quality as the ability to transform students and as the ability to provide value for money. From the above definitions, the fitness for purpose is the definition which is mostly adopted in higher education, as it accepts that quality has no meaning it depends on

49

the purpose of which a particular process is designed for. Other definitions of customer oriented and value for money, seem to portray higher education as strictly for business purposes which should not be the case as institutions have societal roles to fulfil. In this paper, the notion of quality in teaching will be defined as the ability to transform students on an on-going basis and add value to their knowledge and personal development (Lim, 2001). This definition was also interrogated by Luckett, (2010) in that quality assurance in South Africa is also a mechanism to transform the higher education system. Universities engage with transformation in a variety of ways. Transformation can be seen as a way of fully adding value to students throughout their learning. This definition is also in line with one of the three HEQC’ approaches to quality in that: transformation in the sense of developing the capabilities of individual learners for personal enrichment, as well as the requirements of social development and economic and employment growth (CHE, 2004). In this study, quality will also be conceptualized as the ability to develop appropriate graduate attributes.

Theoretical framework Using attribution theory as a theoretical framework, I wanted to ascertain academic’s quality practices and also ascertain what informs these practices. “Attribution theory tries to explain whether the behaviour is internally or externally caused” (Robbins, Judge, Odendaal & Roodt, 2009, 119). This theory was originated by Fritz Heider, (1958) adopted by Kelly (1967), then by Weiner, (1972; 2000). Attribution theory tries to find reasons for people’s behaviour (Werner, 2007). It tries to determine why people do what they do (Oghojafor et al., 2012). Oghojafor further states that attribution theory has been used in education, law, clinical psychology, and in the mental health domain. In this study, attribution theory was used to attribute academics’ quality practices. “Looking for understanding is the basic motive of attribution theory” (Pan, Zhu & Zhu, 2008). The aim of the study was to explore whether these quality practices can be attributed to internal factors or external factors. Internal factors refer to one’s personality. These are factors that originate from within, they are personal reasons to practice quality for example this could be an academic’s teaching philosophy, motivation, attitude, educational qualification and personal understanding of quality. The internal factors could determine how an academic enacts quality. External factors refer to environmental, institutional and national factors; these could be institutional peer reviews, student evaluations, programme reviews, institutional quality processes and national quality processes. The external factors could determine how quality is enacted in a particular institution. Both the external and internal factors are relevant and significant in ensuring quality teaching. One should not dominate the other. The internal and external factors as constructs of attribution theory were used to

50

understand the quality practices. Quality practices referred to what academics identify as acts of enhancing quality in their teaching.

Research method This was a qualitative study in nature, as it seeks to obtain detailed explanations from the academics themselves on what quality practices they enact and how they adopted quality in their teaching. Working within an interpretive paradigm, the study aimed to arrive at a descriptive understanding of the quality practices. Thomas (2009) explains the main point of an interpretive paradigm as being more interested in people and the way they interrelate. Researchers working within this paradigm seek to understand how people create and maintain their social situations (Burton and Bartlett, 2009). A South African University of Technology was used as a case study. The use of a University of Technology as a case study, was generated by the mandate these institutions have in providing career focused qualifications (Du Pre, 2009). It is therefore important that students studying at these Universities of Technology are exposed to quality teaching so that employers can receive quality graduates. As Wynona Latham noted in the Sunday World newspaper article on 23 February 2014 that currently there is an assumption that traditional Universities offer superior qualifications as compared to other institutions. Qualitative data was generated, using semi-structured in depth interviews. Nine respondents were purposively sampled to participate in this study. Interview questions were firstly piloted with academics who were not respondents in the study. After piloting the questions, interview questions were then adjusted to ask more direct questions. The questions asked in this study were open questions with probes used to elicit more information from the respondents. Interviews of 30 – 45 minutes were conducted by the author between June and August 2013. Before the interview and during the interview respondents were assured that they will remain unanimous throughout the study, their real names will not be used. Trustworthiness of the data was ensured by making sure that I conducted the interviews myself, tape recorded them and transcribed each interview on the day the interview was conducted before moving on to the same interview. This allowed me to improve my interviewing skills as a researcher before moving on to the next interview (Rubin and Rubin, 2012). Semi-structured interviews were transcribed then the content obtained from the interviewees was analysed in order to construct themes which emerged from the data (Turner, 2010). The quality practices identified by academics were also documented.

51

Findings After the interviews were transcribed, key themes were identified from the interview transcripts. These themes were then categorised according to internal factors and external factors. The study found that academic staff primarily attributed their quality practices to external factors than internal factors. Academics attributed their quality practices to external factors such as having to adhere to the outcomes of the subject; being scared by e-mails from the quality unit; having to conform to the institutional requirements for example organising files in preparation of programme reviews and having to make the subject content and the assessments more understandable to the type of students who enter higher education. Others attributed their quality practices to internal factors such as personality and a personal desire to provide quality education. The next phase of analysing the interviews, involved identifying the quality practices identified by the respondents. The quality practices identified by academics were:

• Internal and external moderation of assessments

• Writing reflective notes

• Studying for Masters and PhDs

• Obtaining verbal feedback from students

• Writing memos to HoDs regarding non-attendance

• Preparation of lectures

• Preparation of the subject content

• Formal and Informal communication with colleagues

• Administering of lecturer and subject evaluations

• Liaison with professional bodies

• Student placements during Work Integrated Learning

• Preparing documents for programme reviews

From the above quality practices, it can be noted that academics have a wide range of quality practices. Some of these practices are national and institutional practices whereas some are initiated by the academics themselves. The writer has grouped these practices into feedback practices (evaluation forms, verbal feedback from students, programme reviews). The second group of practices were organizing practices (preparation of lectures, preparing teaching materials, moderation of

52

assessments). The third group of practices were communication practices (liaison with colleagues, professional bodies and other institutions). The fourth group of practices were reflective practices (reflective reports).

Feedback practices The common practices amongst academics interviewed were feedback practices which mainly involved administering of subject evaluations and lecturer evaluations. These are institutional evaluation forms, which are to be administered by each academic staff in order to obtain feedback from students regarding quality of education being offered. Respondents voiced their unwillingness to administer these evaluation forms. Academics also expressed their concerns on whether students really understand the questions asked in the institutional evaluation forms. Respondent J stated that: The responses from those evaluations are not good in a sense that students think it’s just a questionnaire we gonna (sic) lie. And you know I got things like; I like her hair, I like her eyes, I like the way she speaks. Which is not what you actually looking for. …So students are not being serious. Zerihun, Beishuizen and OS (2011) also questioned the implications of the use of evaluation questionnaires to evaluate effective teaching. They ask whether students and teachers have different understandings of teaching and learning.

Organising practices Respondents also revealed organising practices which involved mainly internal and external moderation of assessments as well as preparing the subject material and preparing for lectures. Academics interviewed felt that moderation was an important institutional quality process used for ensuring quality. Respondent H pointed out that: Obviously we do the moderation of the tests as well he he. They also cited preparation of lectures as important for enhancing quality.

Communication practices

Communication practice was another group of practices which was identified by academics. This mainly involved informal communication with colleagues, liaison with professional bodies and writing memos to HoDs regarding student attendance.

53

Reflective practices The minor practices identified by respondents were reflective practices. These involved writing reflective reports at the end of the year or semester in order to improve one’s practice for the following year or semester. Respondents were then asked to state the reasons for these quality practices mentioned above. This was to ascertain whether these practices were informed by external factors or internal factors. It became evident that the reasons were more externally informed (institutionally informed) rather than internally informed (individually informed). Academic staff interviewed felt that they had to ensure quality teaching because the institution required them to do so. “I do all this because the institution requires me to do so, it’s policy I am being honest you know” (Respondent C).

Respondents that were interviewed also pointed out that because of the workload they have, they were restricted to certain quality practices. They stated that in some instances they cannot even think about the quality of their teaching as they are always rushing to the next lecture. This was also evident in the data whereby those academic staff members who were responsible for one subject only had a variety of quality practices in teaching as compared to those who had three subjects and more. There were also concerns regarding the main emphasis being placed on programme reviews rather than the actual act of improving the quality of teaching. Respondent A succinctly pointed out that:

I do not think I am alone in saying the ideas generated and the requirements of the quality unit in preparation for reviews is time consuming paper pushing filing. Time that could be better used more productively for students purposes. Quality does not exist in a document somewhere, quality exists in the classroom. Quality ultimately what we should be looking for we should be looking for those attributes of our graduates. What are students taking away from the institution? They are not taking away how lecturer … kept well his/her subject file.

This finding is in line with Krause (2012), who states that a wicked problem such as quality, for instance institutional audits are for accountability purposes rather than quality enhancement purposes.

The matter of improving lecturer’s qualifications proved to be significant as respondents cited their previous educational background, as one of the reasons for their quality practices. This was explained by Respondent H:

54

When I did Honours and Masters as well, we were encouraged to reflect. We wrote reflection papers.

Finally the issue of the type of students who are coming to higher education institutions proved to be a challenge to academics as well as the growing numbers. One respondent pointed out that

“We are having to compromise a lot on quality, to accommodate the type of students we are getting” (Respondent G).

The issue of mergers also seemed to have had an impact on the quality of teaching provided as some academics felt that the issue of institutional mergers negatively impacted the quality of teaching. Van der Westhuizen (2011) also found that university mergers had negative implications for staff and the institutions.

The findings in this study have implications for quality management structures, policy development, academics attitudes and motivation as well as staff development initiatives as it showed that there is a disconnection between academic staff and quality processes. This concurs with findings by Jones and Saram (2005) where academics did not identify with the quality processes. The structure and culture in higher education institutions will also have to be looked at and be adapted to promote academic centred quality enhancement which should be a bottom up approach instead of the current top down approach. Issues of workload, number of students and appropriate teaching resources will also have to be looked at across the different campuses. The study showed that academics’ quality practices are mainly informed by external factors which are not sufficient, as quality enhancement need to emanate from the individual academics themselves.

Conclusion In this research the exploration of quality practices by academics was undertaken. The main aim was to identify the quality practices and understand the reasons behind the practices. The findings showed that academics practice quality in their teaching mainly because of external factors rather than internal factors. This can mean that academic staff practices quality for compliance purposes rather than for a genuine interest to offer quality teaching. The interviews revealed different attitudes towards the institution, attitudes towards students and towards the institutional quality processes. From the study it is evident higher education institutions need to pay attention to encouraging quality teaching to emanate from internal factors by putting more emphasis on staff development programmes which can help university teachers to gain different skills and attributes required for ensuring quality teaching.

55

References Anderson, Gina. “Assuring Quality/Resisting Quality Assurance: Academics’ Responses to Some Australian Universities”. Quality in Higher Education, 12 no. 2: (2006) 161–173. Accessed 5 February 2012.

Biputh Barathwanth. “An Investigation of Educator’s Perceptions Of The Integrated Quality Management System in South African Schools”. (DTech Thesis. Durban University of Technology, 2008).

Borden, Victor. “Accountability for Student Learning. Views from the Inside Out and the Outside In”. Alternation. Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of the Arts and Humanities in Southern Africa, 18 no. 2 (2011): 317–342.

Burton Diana, and Steve, Bartlett. Key Issues for Education Researchers. London: SAGE Publications, 2009.

Brunetto, Yvonne and Rod Wharton. “Academics Responses To The Implementation of a Quality Agenda”. Quality in Higher Education, 11 no. 2 (2005): 161–180. Accessed 13 June 2012.

Cheng, Ming. (2009) “Academics’ Professionalism and Quality Mechanisms: Challenges and Tensions”. Quality in Higher Education, 15 no. 3: (2009). 193–205. Accessed 23 September 2013.

Cheung, Peter and Tsui, Cecilia. “Quality Assurance for All”. Quality in Higher Education. 16 No. 2 (2010): 169-171. Accessed May 26 2012.

Council on Higher Education. “Coordinating Quality Assurance In Higher Education”. Pretoria. Council on Higher Education. (2008). www.che.ac.za Accessed 15 October 2012

Council on Higher Education. “Framework for the Second Cycle of Quality Assurance. 2012–2017. Consultation Document”. (2011). www.che.ac.za Accessed 15 October 2012.

Council on Higher Education. (2013). “Quality Enhancement Project Draft” . Council on Higher Education. www.che.ac.za (2013) Accessed 22 November 2013.

Dew, John. “Quality Issues in Higher Education”. The Journal for Quality and Participation. 32 no. 1(2009): 4–9. Accessed 9 February 2012.

De Clerq, Francine. (2008). “Teacher Quality, Appraisal and Development: The Flaws in the IQMS”. Perspectives in Education, 26 no. 1 (2008): 7–18. Accessed 8 June 2013.

56

Department of Higher Education and Training. “Green Paper for Post-School Education and Training. The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall Be Opened”, (2012). Pretoria.

DU PRE, Roy. The Place and Role of Universities of Technology in South Africa. (Bloemfontein: South African Technology Network, 2009)

Ehlers, Ulf. “Understanding Quality Culture”. Quality Assurance in Education. 17 no. 4 (2009): 343–363. Accessed 5 February 2012.

Garvin, David. “What does product quality mean? Sloan Management Revalue System”. MIT Sloan Management Review 26. October 15 1984, 25–43. Accessed 19 February 2014.

Harvey, Lee, and James Williams. “Fifteen Years of Quality in Higher Education”. Quality in Higher Education, 16 no. 1 (2010): 3–36. Accessed 18 June 2012.

Thomas, Hibbers, “The Intergrated Quality Management System in Education”. MBA Thesis, University of KwaZulu Natal, 2006.

Houston, Don and Shelley Paewai. “Knowledge Power and Meanings Shaping Quality Assurance in Higher Education: A Systematic Critique”. Quality in Higher Education, 19 no. 3 (2013): 261–282. Accessed 19 February 2014.

Houston, Don. “TQM and Higher Education: A Critical Systems Perspective on Fitness for Purpose”. Quality in Higher Education, 13 no.1 (2007): 3–17. Accessed 17 July 2012.

Jibladze, Elene. “Running around in circles: quality assurance reforms in Georgia”. Quality in Higher Education, 19 no.3 (2013): 343–357. DOI: 10.1080/13538322.2013.850859. Accessed 3 March 2014.

Jones, John and Don, Saram, D. “Academic Staff Views of Quality Systems for Teaching and Learning: a Hong Kong Case Study”. Quality in Higher Education, 11 no. 1 (2005): 47–58. Accessed 9 March 2013.

Roy Killen. (2010). Teaching Strategies for Quality Teaching and Learning. (Claremont: Juta).Krause, Kerri-Lee. “Addressing the Wicked Problem of Quality in Higher Education: Theoretical Approaches and Implications. Higher Education Research and Development”. 31 no. 3 (2012): 285–297. Accessed 25 August 2012. Lim, David. Quality Assurance in Higher Education: A Study of Developing Countries. England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2001.

57

Luckett, Kathy. “A Quality Revolution Constrained? A Critical Reflection on Quality Assurance Methodology from the South African Higher Education Context”. Quality in Higher Education, 16, no. 1 (2010): 71–75. Accessed 14 July 2013. Maguire, Kate and Paul Gibbs. “Exploring the Notion of Quality in Quality Higher Education Assessment in a Collaborative Future”. Quality in Higher Education, 19 no.1 (2013): 41–55. DOI 10.10 80/1353822.2013.774220. Accessed 19 September 2013. Mertova, Patricie and Len Webster. “The Academic Voice in English and Czeh Higher Education Quality”. Quality Assurance in Education. 17 no. 2 (2009): 140–155. Accessed March, 5 2014. Newton, Jethro (2002). “Views from below: Academics coping with quality”. Quality in Higher Education. 8 no.1 (2002): 39–61. Accessed 17 June 2012. Njoku, Placid, C. “The Quality Assurance Situation and Capacity- Building Needs in Anglophone West African Countries”. In The Quality Assurance Situation and Capacity Building Needs of Higher Education in Africa, edited by Goski, Alabi, and Jonathan, Mba, 17–56. Ghana: Association of African Universities, 2012. Oghojafor, Ben, Olufemi Olayemi, Olukunle Oluwatula, and Patrick Okonji. “Attribution Theory and Strategic Decisions on Organizational Success Factors”. Journal of Management and Strategy, no 3 (2010): 32–39.

O’Mahony, Kim and Thomas Garavan. “Implementing a Quality Management Framework in a Higher Education Organization: A case study”. Quality Assurance in Education, 20 no. 2 (2012): 184–200. Accessed 28 May 2013.

O’Rourke, Susan and Bulushi H, A, AL. “Managing Quality from Distance: A Case Study of Collaboration Between Oman and New Zealand”. Quality in Higher Education, 16 no.3 (2010): 197–210. Accessed 19 August 2012.

Pan, Qiaoming, Yongqiang Zhu, and Wei Zhu. “Application of the Attribution Theory In Improving Computer Study Effects of University Students”. The 9th Conference for Young Computer Scientists. (2008) DOI 10.1109/ICYCS.2008.130. Accessed 5 November 2013.

Robbins, Stephen, Timothy, Judge, Aletta, Odendaal and Gert, Roodt. Organisational Behaviour. Global and Southern African Perspectives. Second Edition. (South Africa: Pearson, 2009).

Rubin, Herbert, and Irene, Rubin. Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data. Third Edition. London: SAGE Publications, 2012.

58

Saarinen, Taina. “What I talk About When I Talk About Quality in Higher Education?” Quality in Higher Education, 16 no.1 (2010): 55–57. Accessed 5 April 2013.

Thomas, Gary. How To Do Your Research Project: A Guide for Students in Education and Applied Social Sciences (London: SAGE, 2009).

Turner, Daniel. “Qualitative Interview Design: A Practical Guide for Novice Investigators”. The Qualitative Report. 15 no. 3 (2010): 754–760. Accessed 12 November 2012. http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR15-3/qid.pdf

Van der Westhuizen, Ernst. “Influence of a University Merger on Personnel at the University of South Africa”. Progressio 33 no.2 (2011): 189–204.

Watty, Kim. “Want to Know About Quality in Higher Education? Ask an Academic”. Quality in Higher Education, 12 no. 3 (2006): 291–301. Accessed 15 November 2012.

Wynona, Latham, “Study to Suit your Needs”, Sunday World Newspaper 23 Feb 2014.

Zerihun, Zenawi, Jos, Beishuizen, and Willem, OS. “Conceptions and Practices in Teaching and Learning: Implications for The Evaluation of Teaching Quality”. Quality in Higher Education 17 no. 2 (2011): 151–161. Accessed August 11. 2013.

59

Struggling with Postgraduate Studies: Bachelor of Technology Students Writing Academic Genres

Kabinga Jack Shabanza

University of Johannesburg

kjshabanza@uj.ac.za

Abstract This article explores the academic writing difficulties of Bachelor of Technology (B-Tech) students with a focus on academic genres. Though B-Tech students should demonstrate the ability to “communicate effectively both orally and in writing with a variety of audiences, and be able to read and retrieve the essential information from a variety of sources” (FEBE Handbook 2013), B-Techs in the South African context often fail to produce texts of an academic standard. This appears to be the case despite the Communication 1A, Communication 1B and Fundamental Research Practice modules taught to the 1st and 2nd year National Diploma (NDip) students in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment (FEBE). This paper focuses not on remedial measures aimed at addressing the insufficiencies of the NDip programme, but on the difficulties experienced by B-Tech students in relation to academic writing. The data, which was analysed by means of a qualitative content analysis, included observation records of writing consultations and the students’ responses to a survey. The results pointed to challenges such as reading and understanding journal articles, the writing of scientific research reports as well as academic writing skills such as summarising, paraphrasing and referencing. It is important to explore the academic writing challenges of B-Tech students in order to better orientate the collaborative work between writing centres and the disciplines in science and engineering. Key words: Academic literacies, genre stability and genre change, discourse communities, academic writing, academic reading, and English second language postgraduate students

60

Introduction Bachelor of Technology (B-Tech) programmes in South Africa intend to produce graduates that specialise both in the technical and research aspects of their qualifications (Green Paper 2011), with a focus on the transferability of the acquired skills into as many sectors as possible. Increasingly in emerging countries, B-Tech graduates are sought after due to the diminished gap between their qualifications and the skill requirements of the workplace (Durban University of Technology 2014). The market-ready skills are attributed to months of mandatory experiential learning or work-integrated learning undergone by the students as part of their academic curriculum (Ibid). In South Africa, particularly at the University of Johannesburg, formerly Technikon qualifications may lead to a B-Tech qualification, a threshold to regular Honours, Masters and Doctorate degrees. Moreover, it has become apparent in the South African labour market that graduates with above-average technical, managerial and research skills are preferred to those with a National Diploma only. As a result, students completing the three-year national diploma programme and experienced employees in the science and engineering fields increasingly choose to enroll and complete the B-Tech programme (Annual Report of the Department of Town and Regional Planning, 2011). Since the merger of the former Rand Afrikaans University, Vista University and Wits Technikon in 2005 and as the transition from essentially offering national diplomas to B-Tech diplomas simultaneously has not yet been completed at the University of Johannesburg, faculty and academic development support staff embarked on various initiatives to assist students with their academic development needs throughout the one-year B-Tech programme in spite of the flagrant deficiencies in academic writing demonstrated by students. This article reports on the results of a study that investigated the academic writing challenges facing B-tech students in order to inform future collaboration between the writing centre and the departments in the sciences and engineering faculties. It is not the intention of the researcher to delve profoundly into curriculum issues, but to explore the challenges facing the students and the root causes of the problems. In practice, these problems could be said to have stemmed either from deficiencies in the curriculum, or from a lack of academic literacies learning and practice opportunities in the form of writing intensive activities, or from a lack of deliberate integration of academic literacies into the curriculum across the national diploma programme, or even from these postgraduate students’ situation as speakers of English as a second language (L2) and as students from previously disadvantaged backgrounds.

61

Academic writing development and the National Diploma Programme On completion of a National Diploma, that is, three or four years of undergraduate study, candidates may apply for the Bachelor of Technology (B-Tech) , a further one year period of study (The Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment [FEBE] Handbook 2013: 71). The Faculty Handbook Faculty of EBE Handbook describes two types of programmes; the National Diploma (three years of study) and the Extended National Diploma (four years). It is problematic that academic writing is taught in a fragmented manner across the curriculum with no real emphasis on the adequate learning or transferability of the skills to other subjects, resulting in the students’ academic reading and writing skills remaining rudimentary and ineffective (Kane, 2012). An examination of the Handbook reveals that communications studies is only taught in the National Diploma to first-year students, without subsequent substantial follow-up in the form of opportunities to practise the taught skills. The Extended National Diplomas are taught Fundamental Research Practice and Work Preparation modules, both of which introduce students to ‘Basic Writing’, a deficit model of academic development. Moreover, there are no proper and consistent academic development interventions in the form of academic literacies components integrated into disciplinary content (Lea, 2004; Lea and Street, 2006; Odell, 1995). This gap in academic literacies preparation is worsened by the fact that predominantly L2 South African secondary school graduates entering university demonstrate below average academic literacy levels (Clarence-Fincham and De Kadt, 2011). It then becomes necessary to devise academic literacies development interventions that could assist in facilitating the B-Tech students’ learning and practice of relevant writing skills as efficiently as possible through disciplinary content and in the appropriate context (Archer and Richards, 2011: 357). To be considered competent for postgraduate studies, B-Tech students must “do the things” postgraduate students such as Honours and Masters Students do, including writing and reading academic genres and scientific publications.

Academic writing challenges of Post-Graduate Studies The academic literacies development of post graduate students is mainly impeded by issues of adjustment to complex academic conventions, genres and discourses (Canagarajah, 2002; Ismael, 2011), lack of English language proficiency stemming from their L2 situation (Clarence-Fincham and de Kadt, 2011; Ramanathan and Kaplan, 2000), poor academic reading skills (Horning, 2007), and even hindrances arising from the students’ negative attitude and dispositions towards academic writing (Ismail, 2011: 80).

62

The negative attitudes and dispositions of students towards academic writing, and by implication reading, and even towards their coursework (Ismail, 2011: 80), are thought to play a detrimental role in their academic development. The tendency of postgraduate students to consider writing as linked solely to language structures, spelling and punctuation (Assis-Brasil and Marcuszzo, 2009 in Motta-Roth, 2012: 110) undermines the development of academic writing proficiency. Research has shown that students who approach academic writing support services often “want to have someone ‘fix’ or ‘edit’ their work”, rather than seek their holistic academic development. This confirms the assertion that students and departments often ignore the true mission of the writing centre which aims to develop the writer and not just the text (Archer, 2008; Kane, 2012). This is exacerbated by the belief that academic writing should not be taught to engineering and technology students whose aim is not to study language per se (Motta-Roth, 2012). The repercussions of these erroneous attitudes are acute for postgraduate students, who often struggle with genres that require familiarity with the conventions of academic writing, register and style. Some of these include scientific research reports, long papers and articles (Motta-Roth, 2012; Crème, 2000 in Cabral and Tavares, 2002). The literature in this article implies two concurrent trends in writing centre philosophy. On the one hand, genre instruction is conceived as a way of socialising all students including those from historically marginalised groups into how academic texts function and why they cause specific social effects (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000; Ramanathan and Kaplan, 2000: 171). On the other hand, the importance of the writer and the writing process is foregrounded as an all-encompassing approach that also addresses genre and organisation among other concerns (Raimes, 1991). The emergence and development of genres is underpinned by various social conventions and practices that change over time as new genres emerge (Ramanathan and Kaplan, 2000; Russel, Lea, Parker, Street and Donahue, 2009). Nonetheless, several generic forms present a multiplicity of features co-opted from other genres by way of borrowing and recombining the conventions (Devitt, 2004). Devitt states that genres initially emerged as a strict classification system in ancient Greek literature and served in the categorisation of poetry, prose and performance as different generic forms. Each genre assumed specific characteristics and its ‘performers’ were restricted to that particular genre such that it was believed that certain individuals could only perform within one type of genre alone (Ibid). Bakhtin (1983) posits that genres are socially specified, recognised and defined informally by a specific culture or community. Fairclough (2003: 26) offers a similar concept of genre that stresses the social context of the text, stating that genres are "different ways of (inter)acting discoursally". Academic socialisation ensures that historically marginalised students are exposed to the “ways in which the ‘hows’ of textual structure produce the ‘whys’ of social effect,” enabling them thereby to gain access to “a variety of realms of social power” (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000: 8).

63

Because genre theory is a branch of critical theory, it is equally concerned with the specificities of particular social contexts. Raimes (1991) and Zamel (1984) advocate focusing on the writer and actual process of writing rather than on the features and organisation of genre, which are addressed in the writing process, in any case. As a result of not having been trained to understand how academic texts function differently in various contexts or fields depending on the nature of the activities (Motta-Roth, 2012: 113), the students feel left out of their intended “disciplinary communities” (Ibid: 107). To access an ‘insider’ position, students need to engage in academic literacies and become authors or assume a voice through some deliberate process (Ibid: 112). Canagarajah (2002: 31) stresses that this can be solved through apprenticeship or under the mentorship of disciplinary specialists, an arrangement whereby students can learn to produce texts that a make valid contributions to knowledge. Research shows that a student’s ability to write is preconditioned by the acquisition of above-average reading skills (Kane, 2012). Students’ ability to read and write academic texts effectively is concomitant to their ability to deconstruct and reconstruct texts that are often complex and sophisticated (Odell, 1995: 46; Cabral and Tavares, 2002). Horning (2007: 9) emphasises the fact that the absence of reading proficiency may negatively impact on students’ writing abilities. This is because through reading, students are exposed to institutional and disciplinary genres, writing practices and conventions. Research has found that better writers tend to produce more syntactically mature writing than poor writers (Horning, 2007: 9). Cabral and Tavares (2002: 2) insist that successful writing skills at university are often associated with effective reading comprehension skills and experience. This means that the student is in a position to understand the requirements and implications of thoroughly and effectively completing assignments and projects (Vardi, 2000). Without reading comprehension, students cannot read analytically, distinguish between essential and non-essential ideas, adjust their reading to the different genres or even find reading interesting. Another reason for the importance of reading is that the critical reading skills developed through reading may foster and sharpen critical thinking skills, which may be seen as valuable to the writing process. The University of Johannesburg Doornfontein Campus Writing Centre The data used in this study was collected mainly on the Doornfontein Campus. The University of Johannesburg currently has four Writing Centres, located respectively on the Auckland Park-Kingsway, Bunting Road, Doornfontein and Soweto Campus, to cater for the academic literacies needs of approximately 50,000 students. The Doornfontein Campus Writing Centre was opened in February 2011 to assist both undergraduate and postgraduate students on the campus, which has a total student

64

population of approximately 5,000 students. In 2012, it seemed awareness of the Centre and its services steadily increased among subject lecturers and students. This resulted in a noticeable increase in the number of consultations at the Centre. In spite of the numerous challenges related to issues of capacity and full lecture timetables which left students little time to visit the Centre, consultation numbers doubled to almost 1000 consultations per year respectively for 2012 and 2013, against nearly 400 consultations in 2011. The centre is headed by a coordinator and staffed by postgraduate students who have been trained in academic literacies and writing centre philosophy and practice. Writing centre research in the South African context has mainly examined the institutional mandates, locations, challenges and achievements of writing centres without paying attention to specific writing centre pedagogies and instruments. This paper will to some extent zoom in on specific academic writing problems, with which B-Tech students approach the writing centre, in order to better inform its services and interventions.

Methods A mixed methods approach was used to investigate the academic writing difficulties of B-Tech students with a focus on the writing of academic genres. Firstly, a textual analysis of 200 writing consultation observation sheets filled out by records B-Tech students who had visited the writing centre between February and July 2013 was conducted. The observation sheets were chosen based on the amount of information they could provide on the difficulties of B-Tech students and analysed for writing areas that students requested assistance with. Secondly, questionnaires were administered to fifty B-Tech students from the Chemical Engineering, Mining Engineering, Electrical students from chemical, mining, electrical and Mechanical Engineering electrical and mechanical engineering, as well as Biomedical Technology and Civil Engineering Technology departments. These were selected randomly, and students were requested to provide information on the difficulties they encountered in relation to academic writing. The questionnaires consisted of four open-ended questions on the students’ academic writing difficulties, the genres they found difficult, the reasons why they struggled with these genres and the type of assistance they required in this regard. The collected data was analysed using the qualitative content analysis method to enable a detailed and systematic examination of the participants’ responses for the purpose of identifying themes (Leedy and Ormrod, 2010: 144). The results highlighted not only the challenges, but also the remedial courses of action that the students thought should be taken to redress the situation.

65

Results and discussion Fifty-two questionnaires were returned, of which two were unusable. The four questionnaire questions foregrounded academic writing difficulties as pointed out in the participants’ responses. The latter could be categorised into difficulties associated with scientific report writing and the reading of scientific journal articles. In view of the writing areas that are covered, the survey results corroborated the textual analysis observations and what this means is that the requirements of the B-Tech programme are similar to those of the conventional postgraduate programmes (Motta-Roth, 2012).

Figure 1: Academic writing difficulties encountered by the B-Tech students

In the questionnaire analysis, referencing was cited as one of the academic writing difficulties faced by 33% of the participants. Participant 14 (P14) recommended that lecturers should offer “workshops before the beginning of research to train students on referencing”; alluding to the fact that often students are given written tasks without prior instruction on specific genres (Canagarajah, 2002; Lea and Street, 2006). This confirms the importance of genre instruction done in context through integration into disciplinary content. As part of academic socialisation, it contributes to efforts to widen access to higher education by introducing and reinforcing academic conventions, discourses and genres (Archer, 2008). The latter should however be taught collaboratively by departmental and academic literacies staff, especially because genres vary according to the context of the literacies communities in which they are used (Ramanathan and Kaplan, 2000). Referring to the divergence in instructional guidelines on specific genres, Participant 30 emphasised “university standards should be specified. Use one type of referencing style”. There seems to be consensus among participants that prior genre instruction could facilitate their writing of research reports. The complexity of academic generic forms requires instruction, practice and time:

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Abstract

Literature review

Paraphrasing

Summarising journal articles

Scientific report writing

Referencing/ avoiding plagiarism

Number of Participants

66

It requires time and skills. No lecture is given on it, it is not English subject from high school. It is very different. Due to confusion one uses every format they get. (P32)

Mention is made of the lack of undergraduate interventions aimed at developing academic writing. Other participants indicated that they had no prior exposure to academic writing (P33 and P29), no training whatsoever (P46), and no solid foundation (P20 and P16). A participant stated “I have not had enough practice and guidance on the matter” (P21). Another remarked:

In spite of the communication module we did, I think it’s not enough because that is the only module it is done and after that it’s the end of such as most of our courses do not require reports until we get to the B-Tech level where we are required to write reports and proposals. (P10)

Behind most of these statements however is reluctance on the part of participants to accept responsibility for their own learning. The blame seems to be placed solely on the departments for the lack of academic writing skills. Motta-Roth (2012: 107) argues that these students feel left out of their intended “disciplinary communities” because they have not been trained to understand how academic texts function differently in various contexts depending on the nature of the activities involved. However, Motta-Roth (2012: 108) also emphasises that undergraduate students who participate fully in their departmental activities reinforce their perception of writing as ‘social participation’. Cabral and Tavares (2002) stress that participation in academic support programmes should be mandatory as they provide students with the transitional experiences needed for the development of writing, reading and study skills. Other texts or genres that were seen as challenging by participants were journal articles, research reports, assignments, articles originating in course papers and book reviews (Cabral and Tavares, 2002: 110). The second question in the questionnaire further explored these genres or texts.

Figure 2: Texts or genres with which B-Tech struggled

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

Language

Journal articles

Report writing

Different types of academic texts

Number of Participants

67

Research reports and journal articles were cited as the most difficult genres by close to 30% of the participants. This perhaps confirms Canagarajah’s (2002) argument that academic genres, which consist of the practices and discourses of ‘gated’ or closed academic communities, almost deliberately aim to keep students out, particularly those from previously ‘disadvantaged groups’, who are often L2. One could affirm that as outsiders to these institutional and disciplinary communities, the students would not be able to access these genres without ‘guidance’ from the ‘gatekeepers’, that is, tutors, lecturers and designers of study materials (Lea 2004: 743). Canagarajah (2002: 30) makes the point that because learning is a situated activity, any type of learning is a community activity, carried out in engagement with the communities that practice that knowledge. Bawarshi and Pelkowski (1999: 49) argued that writing centre serve as institutional spaces “offering training to marginalized students in how to operate as academic citizens”. This implies that both disciplinary staff and students ascribe to the deficit model of academic literacies that consider the purpose of the writing centre as ‘fixing’ “marginalized basic writers” (ibid) for access to university. Referring to the complexity of the language and content of journal articles, a participant stated that certain scientific articles use referencing styles that students are unfamiliar with (P40). Several other participants also indicated that the reason they struggled with the writing of a scientific research report is primarily because it was new to them (P2, P11, P17). As stated earlier, the failure to teach report writing gradually from first to third year could be equated with obscuring the genre and rendering it difficult for students to understand and produce. As L2, the participants indicated that they struggled with language. The problem of language compounds the difficulties associated with academic writing. This aspect of the participants’ responses was more accentuated in their responses to the third question:

Figure 3: Reasons why B-Techs struggled with academic writing

Figure 3 shows that several participants pointed to English L2 difficulties and below average academic reading skills as the reasons why they struggled with writing academic texts. Participant 13 said “It is basically because I cannot put everything in

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Grammar

Difficulty understanding questions

Insufficient reading

English L2 difficulties

Number of Participants

68

my own words. I normally will have to copy the first before I put it in my own words”. Participant 17 stated “English is my second language and expressing some of the ideas is sometimes challenging”. Other participants explicitly attributed their difficulties with academic genres to their inability to understand or interpret academic texts or assignment questions correctly. Research has demonstrated that there is a correlation between reading and writing academically as reading allows students to deconstruct texts (Horning, 2007: 9; Canagarajah, 2002: 34) and understand how texts work (Bawarshi and Pelkowski, 1999: 54; Canagarajah, 2002: 34; Ramanathan and Kaplan, 2000: 172, 175). It also allows them to use internalised structures and workings of texts to produce new texts in which their own voices could be integrated (Canagarajah, 2002: 40). Participant 9 stated that his difficulties with reading included:

…the extraction of information from journals, capturing the relevant information and not all information relating to the subject matter… Just key points... How to critique the information gathered and make an argument… Incorporating my own views… How to make recommendations where necessary or summarising over all key points...

It further emerged that the students’ voice is hampered by language barriers. Cabral and Tavares (2000: 3) argue that success at university is associated with the understanding of what the expectations and requirements of assignments are. It is therefore crucial for students to gain exposure to disciplinary discourses taking advantage of any single opportunity to engage such discourses (Bawarshi and Pelkowski, 1999; Canagarajah, 2002: 34). They should not be excluded from the academic communities, which should be seen as the breeding grounds of upcoming academics and thinkers. This participation is of the essence as academic language, like academic writing, is better learnt in context.

Figure 4: Suggestions on how the academic writing of B-Techs can be improved

Responses to the fourth question highlighted four main recommendations from students as to how their academic writing could be improved: academic writing workshops; integrating writing into disciplinary content; teaching early at

0 5 10 15 20 25

More writing practice

More reading practice

Start with academic writing at UG level

More workshops on academic writing

Number of Participants

69

undergraduate level and more opportunities to practice academic reading and writing.

Having workshops before beginning with research to train students on writing references and good academic writing skills… liaison of departments with the writing centre to mark papers and help professors and supervisors to teach students how to write proper papers. (P14)

Participants’ recommendations suggest three things, the first of which is the importance of being coached or mentored into disciplinary discourses (Bawarshi and Pelkowski, 1999: 55; Lea, 2004: 747). Participants emphasised the need for explicit instruction in, as well as intensive practice of, academic writing from the first year of the NDip programme as a way of assisting them in improving their academic writing skills. Purser et al. (2008) advocate a curriculum-integrated teaching of writing informed by prior analysis of the context-specific literacy demands for a more efficient collaborative interdisciplinary design of learning activities. This will equally improve the development of teaching resources and assessment. Sporadic interventionist sessions on academic writing and communication in general may not achieve the intended outcomes of preparing NDip students for the B-Tech writing-intensive programme. A participant made the following recommendation:

Early start during undergrad we did more practical assessments and hardly concentrated on compiling comprehensive essays. Suddenly at B-Tech level, we are expected to write like academics… surely the incremental introduction of academic writing skills and styles at freshman level will contribute to improving the students’ skills at a later stage. (P1)

Secondly, participants expressed the need to not only learn, but also to be afforded ample time to practice and experiment with academic writing conventions and discourses. Canagarajah refers to the provision of a platform where the L2 students’ primary discourses can interact with academic discourses (Canagarajah, 2002: 30-31; Ramanathan and Kaplan, 2000). This need to practice the discourses almost represents a process by which academic genres may be demystified (Bawarshi and Pelkowski, 1999). Such a process would serve as a response to the reinforcement of genre stability by ‘gatekeepers’ (Ramanathan and Kaplan, 2000). One participant stated that

There should be more exercises and assessments that will require students to research and write so they can be familiar with report writing, proposals and anything of that sort. (P10)

Thirdly, there seems to be a need in the participants to dispel a great deal of uncertainty or inadequacy about their ability to write academic genres. The students no doubt require some form of reassurance in order to gain the confidence that will

70

lead to better dispositions towards academic writing (Canagarajah, 2002: 31). A change in attitude is preconditioned by the disciplinary staff’s ‘act of good faith’, a desire to have these students as part of the community, and not hostility. Failing to teach academic writing and then going on to expose students to complex materials without proper ‘initiation’ may represent an unwillingness on the part of the disciplinary staff to accept new members in the academic community.

Conclusion A study was conducted at the Doornfontein Campus of the University of Johannesburg to find out the academic writing difficulties of B-Tech students. The number of students approaching the writing centre was an indication that interventions aimed at addressing the students’ academic writing problems needed to be revisited. Fifty-two questionnaires, of which fifty were returned, were randomly administered to science and engineering B-Tech students on the campus to investigate their academic writing difficulties, the genres they struggled with, the reasons for their struggle and their suggested solutions. The findings showed that students struggle with academic genres such as research reports and journal articles because the genres had not been introduced early enough and gradually in their studies and for lack of correct, deliberate and systematic mentorship into the disciplinary standards, discourses and practices. They also pointed to their limited command of the language of instruction, English, and lack of workshop sessions intended to train them into and allow them to practice the academic genres. Taken into consideration, these findings could contribute to the current debate on how to prepare National Diploma undergraduates students for the B-Tech programme, and on how to maximise students’ learning development during the B-Tech year.

Sources: Archer, A. 2008. Investigating the effect of Writing Centre Interventions on Student Writing. South African Journal of Higher Education, 22 (2): 2010–2026. Archer, A. and R. Richards, eds. 2011. Changing Spaces: Writing Centres and Access to Higher Education. Stellenbosch: Sun Press. Bakhtin, M.M. 1983. Epic and Novel. In: The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Holquist, Michael, ed. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bawarshi, A. and S. Pelowski, 1999. Post-Colonialism and the Idea of the Writing Centre. The Writing Centre Journal, 19 (2): 41–58.

71

Bean, J. 2011. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning. San-Francisco: Jossey-bass. Cabral, A.P. and J. Tavares, 2002. Reading and Writing Skills in Higher Education: Lecturers’ Opinions and Perceptions. In proceedings of the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Lisbon, September 11 – 14. Canagarajah, S. 2002. Multilingual Writers and the Academic Community: Towards a Critical Relationship. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 1 (2002): 29–44. Clarence-Fincham, J. and E. de Kadt, 2011. Language Competency of Undergraduate Students. Unpublished raw data. Cope, B. and M. Kalantzis, 2000. Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London: Macmillan. Devitt, A.J. 2004. A Theory of Genre. Writing Genres. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1–32. Durban University of Technology 2014. B-Tech in Electronic Engineering. Available from: http://www.dut.ac.za/faculty/engineering/electronic_engineering (Accessed 25 January 2014) Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment Handbook 2013. Rules and Regulations. Fairclough, N. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. Routledge. Horning, A. 2007. “Reading across the Curriculum as the Key to Success”. Across the disciplines, 4. From: http://www.wac.colostate.edu/edatd/articles/horning2007. Ismail, S.A.A. 2011. Exploring Students’ Perceptions of ESL Writing. English Language Teaching, 4 (2): 73–83. Kane, S. 2012. Reading and Writing in the Writing Centre: An Integrative Approach. Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of South Africa, Proceedings of the Heltasa 2012 Conference, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, 46–54. Lea, R.M. 2004. Academic Literacies: A Pedagogy for Course Design. Studies in Higher Education, 29 (6): 739–756. Lea, R.M. and B. Street, 2006. The Academic Literacies Model: Theory and Applications. Theory into Practice, 45 (4): 368–377.

72

Leedy, P.D. and J.E. Ormrod, 2010. Practical Research: Planning and Design. 9th ed. London: Pearson. Motta-Roth, D. 2012. Academic literacies in the South: Writing practices in a Brazilian university. Writing programs worldwide: Profiles of academic writing in many places, 105–116. Odell, L. 1995. Basic Writing in Context: Rethinking Academic Literacy. Journal of Basic writing, 14 (1): 43–55. Purser, E. R., Skillen, J., Deane, M., Donohue, J., & Peake, K. 2008. Developing academic literacy in context. Zeitschrift-schreiben. Available from: http://www.zeitschrift-schreiben.eu/Beitraege/Purser_Academic_Literacy.pdf. Raimes, A. 1991. Out of the woods: Emerging traditions in the teaching of writing. TESOL Quarterly 25: 407–430 Ramanathan, V. and R.B. Kaplan, 2000. Genres, Authors, Discourse communities: Theory and Application for (L1 and) L2 Writing Instructors. Journal of Second Language Writing, 9 (2): 171–191. Russell, D.R., L. Lea, J. Parker, B. Street, and T. Donahue, 2009. Exploring Notions of Genre in “Academic Literacies” and “Writing across the Curriculum”: Approaches across Countries and Contexts. In: Bazerman, Charles; Bonini, Adair and Figueiredo, D´ebora (eds.) Genre in a Changing World. Perspectives on Writing, 459–491. South Africa Department of Higher Education and Training 2012. Green Paper for Post-School Education and Training. Zamel, V. 1984. The author responds. TESOL Quarterly, 18: 154–157.

73

Teaching the students we have: Two perspectives on first year students at the University of Johannesburg and the UJ First Year

Experience initiative

Dr. André van Zyl

University of Johannesburg

andrevz@uj.ac.za

Abstract

Over the past decade it has become clear that the South African Higher Education sector is marked by low participation rates coupled with low levels of student success. Although a lot of money, time and effort have been spent in trying to improve student success rates, no real systemic improvement has taken place. This paper argues that key elements of any strategy aimed at improving student success should include that it should “reach the classroom” (Tinto, 2012); it should be systemic in nature and it should be based on a thorough knowledge of the student population the institution serves. The paper then reports back on the results of research undertaken at the University of Johannesburg as well as on the First Year Experience that has been implemented at the institution since 2010. Results reported in the paper includes data from the Student Profile Questionnaire (SPQ) (used since 2006 and containing more than 30 000 records) and the Initial Student Experience Survey (ISES) (used since 2010 and containing about 20 000 records). Some of the findings from these questionnaires confirmed previously held beliefs while others were completely surprising. The data were used to inform the planning and implementation of the University of Johannesburg’s First Year Experience initiative which is aimed at assisting the institution to more effectively “teach the students it has”.

74

Teaching the students we have: Two perspectives on first year students at the University of Johannesburg and the UJ First Year Experience initiative

As part of the broader transformation agenda in South Africa, higher education institutions have made good progress in terms of equity of access, but the success levels of the various groups still differ widely (CHE, 2012). This shows the practical implications of what Morrow contended in 1994, that formal access does not necessarily imply epistemological access. As a result, over the past decade, student academic success and more specifically the transition between school and university have become subject to increased academic scrutiny in South Africa. Universities have also all increased their efforts aimed at improving student success. In the United States however, it was found that despite significant resources being invested into efforts at improving student success over the past 20 years, very little real progress has thus far been made (Tinto, 2012). Effort in itself therefore does not improve student success.

Many institutions and academics have historically held the view that students who do not succeed, were just not “good enough” and they “shouldn’t have been there in the first place”. The low participation rate of 18 – 24 (18% in 2010) year olds in South Africa in conjunction with the low 5-year graduation rates (52% by 2010 for the 2005 cohort) (CHE, 2012) implies that less than 10% of 18 to 24 year olds ever achieve a tertiary qualification in South Africa. In light of the above statistics, the CHE (2013) typifies the South African Higher Education system as a “low participation, high attrition system”. This creates such a wasteful situation (of both money and talent) that it becomes clear that the historical approach of academic Darwinism (survival of the fittest, i.e. students who don’t pass were not “fit enough”) is no longer tenable in South African higher education. Lewin and Mawoyo (2014) call this situation the “single biggest challenge facing the South African public higher education system”.

Any realistic solution to the systemic problems described above will have to involve all role players such as students, schools and higher education institutions. In this paper the focus is on the role institutions can play in improving student success. Thomas (2012) states that higher education institutions have a moral responsibility to take “reasonable steps” to enable the success of the students they have admitted to their institutions. Tinto (2012) argues that one of the key elements needed for enhancing classroom effectiveness is “contextualised academic support”. He subsequently adds that interventions should be relevant to the students’ needs and goals. For many years institutions have tried a variety of approaches and activities, with varying degrees of success. The “complex and multi-dimensional” (Lewin and Mawoyo, 2014) factors influencing student success however results in a situation where fragmented and ad-hoc solutions are not likely to succeed.

For higher education institutions to be able to effectively teach the students they have, it is imperative that they develop a more in-depth understanding of who the

75

students they selected and enrolled actually are. By understanding better who their students are, they would be able to do what Thomas (2012) suggests, by providing for a variety of “ways of belonging” in their institutions to accommodate the diversity of students they accept. This is because a student’s success at university depends, at least in part, on their ability to develop a “sense of belonging” at the institution they are enrolling at. Many students from cultures other than the dominant culture at an institution often feel intimidated and they tend to worry about their ability to adjust to the institution that is perceived to be so different from themselves. Many institutions expect the students to be the only ones who adapt to their new environment and its entrenched ways of being and doing.

Keup (2013) however contends that universities have a social contract and social responsibility towards the societies they serve. This means institutions must effectively teach the students they have (the ones entering from their societies), not the ones they thought they had (based on perception, expectation or past experience). The demographic makeup of the South African student population has changed radically (in terms of aspects such as gender and race) over the past two decades and institutions must appropriately respond to these changes and their educational implications. Currently, institutions have, as the CHE (2013) found, “not yet come to terms with the learning needs of the majority of the student body.”

Vincent Tinto’s thinking played a major role in the international academic endeavour of understanding and improving student success. His Longitudinal interactionist approach to student persistence includes aspects such as student pre-entry attributes as well as institutional integration over time (Van Zyl, Gravett and de Bruin, 2012). Tinto specifically postulated that students have to integrate socially and academically for them to effectively persist at university. Both the level of complexity and the sociological nature of Tinto’s theory supports the concept of an institutional response to effectively improve student success.

Institutional context In the rest of this paper the data used and the institutional response to the issues described in the introduction at the University of Johannesburg is described in more detail. The University of Johannesburg, a comprehensive African-city university consisting almost 50 000 students, was created in 2005 by way of a series of incorporations and mergers of institutions from the country’s racially divided past. The institution has an annual first year intake of about 10 000 students. These students enrol for a variety of degrees, extended degrees, diplomas and extended diplomas. A basic breakdown of UJ enrolments since 2009 can be seen in Table 1 below:

76

Table 1: UJ enrollment details

Year Headcount African Female

2009 49 315 80% 54%

2010 48 374 82% 55%

2011 50 028 84% 55%

2012 48 257 86% 53%

2013 47 743 87% 54%

Source: UJ HEDA downloaded from https://mis.uj.ac.za/heda/fsmain.htm on 9 June 2013

As is the case in the South African system, many of these newly arriving UJ students find it very difficult to adapt to the higher educational environment. Within the context of low levels of student success as well as the direction taken in the UJ Teaching and Learning strategy, it was decided that UJ would design and implement a holistic approach to all aspects of the first year experience of incoming students, with the overall goals of improving the quality of the student experience at UJ, and of enhancing the retention and ultimate graduation rate of school-leavers who commence their studies at UJ.

Who are the UJ students? The approach taken at UJ was that in order to implement a contextualised initiative aimed at improving student success, accurate student data were required. It is essential that the starting point for an investigation into the issue of student success should include creating a profile of incoming students. As Keup (2013) and Laskey and Hetzel (2011) contend, a profile of an incoming cohort is essential to be able to be able to identify students at risk of failure, as well as those with a reasonable chance of success. This is also in line with the research based approach favored by the UJ First Year Experience (FYE). As part of the UJ FYE, investigations were launched into the profile of the newly entering UJ students about their initial experiences and actions. This article reports back on some of the most interesting findings of two areas of research on who the students entering UJ actually are and what they experience during the first months of being tertiary students. The two research projects were:

• The Student Profile Questionnaire (SPQ) was first used in 2006 and has since been refined to provide the institution and its Faculties with a “snap-shot” picture of each entering cohort of students. The SPQ is completed during the

77

orientation period and the first week of class. A full account of the development and validity of the SPQ can be found in Van Zyl, Gravett and de Bruin (2012). The results reported here are based on a database containing in excess of 25 000 records collected over the 8 year period.

• The Initial Student Experience Survey (ISES) is a one page questionnaire distributed during the sixth week of class to investigate various aspects of the student experience and interaction with the institution during their initial entry into the institution. The ISES has been in use since 2010 and consists of a database currently containing in excess of 20 000 records.

Some of the findings and trends that emerged from these questionnaires confirmed previously held beliefs while others were surprising. The data gathered from the two research projects mentioned above have been used to guide the process of re-thinking the way scholarly teaching and learning at UJ is approach. It also informs the planning and implementation of the initiatives and is being used by academics and institutional management in data driven decision-making and planning processes at UJ.

Findings about UJ students The complex databases that resulted from the research described above yielded massive amounts of data. In this article a small but important selection of data is presented. The findings reported below about newly entering first year students which influenced the UJ response emerged from the analyses of the data described above. The findings have been categorised into demographic, family background, academic, language/literacies, financial and life experience aspects to enable coherent reporting.

Demographic findings The samples of both the SPQ and the ISES were found to be representative of the UJ student population (see Table 1). For example the 2012 and 2013 samples indicated that 54.5% and 56.6% of participants were female whilst 82.2% and 79.9% were black Africans. Not only the sample representative of the UJ student population, it was also a good representation of the South African population makeup. As a result, the UJ context provides a particularly useful lens through which the South African higher educational landscape can be better understood. It also makes the findings in the UJ context more generalizable to other institutions in the country.

78

Family educational background Smith and Zhang (2010) identify First Generation (FG) university entrants as being at a higher than usual risk of not completing their studies. The proportion of students in this sample indicating that they were a part of the first generation in their respective families to attend university was always above 50% except during 2010 when it dropped to 48.5%. However, during 2012 the proportion of FG students rose to 64.9% and it continued to be very high with 59.6% of students indicating FG status in 2013. First generation students could be further sub-divided into those who had a sibling attend university before them and those who were the very first in their families to attend university (first in family). During 2012, the “first in family” students represented 49.2% of the sample and in 2013, 44.3%. These students are less likely to have background experiences and developed practices that are congruent with ways of being and doing at a higher educational institution. They would also not have access to close family who would be able to provide them with appropriate academic and/or social support or examples. The cultural and social capital resources of the 35% of students who reported that “many members of their families had attended university” and the 30% who reported that “neither of their parents completed grade 12” is likely differ widely. This finding concurs with Vosloo and Blignaut (2010) who stated that “the gap [between previous life experiences and the challenges posed by higher education] is deeper and wider” for these students than for traditional university entrants.

Academic practices One of the basic requirements of completing a difficult task (such as university studies) is that sufficient time is spent on the task to have a realistic chance of success. The SPQ investigations started by enquiring about students’ study practices (in terms of time spent outside class time on academic work) while in grade 12. Their responses gave an indication of the existing practices of newly entering students. In 2007, 41.1% of students entering university reported that they had spent 10 or less hours a week, outside of class time, on academic work. The proportion of students reporting poor study practices has steadily increased with 47.7% reporting the same degree of effort in 2013. On the other hand only between 11.3 and 16.9% of students reported spending more than 20 hours a week (outside class time) on academic activities whilst at school. This trend has constantly remained between 10 and 20% of respondents. The vast majority of students therefore arrive at university having not worked very hard whilst still having done well enough to meet the entry requirements.

79

In an effort to investigate if student behaviour changed once they have arrived at university, the ISES questionnaire was used to investigate the same construct as above during their first 6 weeks at university. The same question that was used in the SPQ was included in the ISES from 2011. The results are shown in Table 2 below.

Table 2: Percentage of students reporting hours studied outside of class at week 6 at university

2011 2012 2013 Less than 15 hours per week

48.8% 56.1% 59.2%

Between 15 and 25 hours per week

36% 24.9% 25.1%

More than 25 hours per week

15.2% 19% 15.7%

Although there was a significant improvement in the proportion of students reporting less than 10 hours of academic work per week (approximately 26%), the improvement is very limited as can be seen in Table 2 above. At this point, between 50 and 60% of students reported spending fewer than 15 hours per week on academic activities outside class time during their first six weeks at university. From the results above it is clear that students arrive with inadequate study habits already well entrenched and these practices (in terms of time on task) seem to persist after entry into university.

Language and literacies South Africa’s rich diversity in terms of language groups is illustrated by the fact that the country has 11 official languages. At the institution where this research was conducted, English has been selected as the main language of instruction and as a result the highly complex academic material is presented mostly in English. The SPQ research found that 60% of students consistently (62.3% in 2013) indicated that English was not their first language. Even the 37.7% who did indicate English as their first language might have over-estimated their English fluency as some of these students were not taught by English first language speakers. During 2013 three follow up questions were asked to get a better sense of the type of literacy environments that students came from. The three tables below show student

80

responses to the question about the number of books in the home where they grew up; the number of books they read “for fun” during the last year and how they rated the English ability of the main person who taught them the English language.

Table 3: Number of books in the house where the student grew up

Number of books 2013

None 11%

10 or fewer 30.8%

More than 10 58.2%

Table 4: Number of books read for fun during the previous year

Books read 2013

None 15.9%

5 or fewer 46.9%

More than 10 58.2%

Table 5: Student perception of language level of main English teacher

English teacher 2013

First language 60.7%

Non-first language 39.3%

Tables 3 to 5 above indicate more detail about the literacies backgrounds of newly entering students. Almost 42% of students indicated that there were 10 or fewer books in the house where they grew up and almost 63% of students had read 5 or

81

fewer books in the previous year. The data above will be strengthened over time as more data are collected.

Financial aspects

During 2007, only 34% of students reported being worried that a lack of money might prevent them from completing their studies. This changed to 41% in 2010 and 55.3% in 2011. This rising trend has continued with 59.5% of students reporting to be worried about this aspect in 2013. During this time period (2007 to 2013) the majority of students (50–55%) also continued to report that their parents would be paying for their studies. Why then the change in number of students being worried about money? One important contributing factor in this regard is probably the rising number of students whose parents have not completed a tertiary qualification themselves and as a result will be likely to earn a lower income. A second factor is the rising number of students depending on loans (18.5% in 2007 up to a high point of 31.4% in 2012). Many of these students depend on the National Student Financial Aid System (NSFAS), which only provides for their most basic needs. The international economic downturn that has taken place over the past 5 years probably also affected South African students and contributed to their increasing worry about money.

Life experiences

Breier (2010) points out that what is often called “financial considerations” includes real “poverty” and “socio-economic deprivation” in the South African context. This is different from students in many other countries who often only struggle to pay the high cost of education but who generally have their most basic needs met. The level of challenge faced by many of the students reporting being worried about money is illustrated by the fact that in 2013, 28.9% of students reporting that they were worried about food; 32.9% reporting that they were not happy in the place where they stayed during term time and 30.4% indicating that they had transport difficulties. The reports of these three types of problems have been rising slowly over time but have been above 20% since 2011. Many of these students share a multitude of problems with the same student often reporting problems with food, transport and accommodation. Students reporting worry about food are often poverty stricken and do not eat regular wholesome meals that would support their bodies and minds towards academic success. The worries expressed above also tend to draw students attention and/or efforts away from campus and the academic requirements of being a student.

82

Developing and implementing the UJ First Year Experience As knowledge of the profile of UJ students has grown over time, it has become very clear that traditional approaches to improving student success would not work. Terenzini and Reason (2005) called the first year at university a “make or break period for learning”. Most students who drop-out, do so during their first year of study and specific risk groups such as historically under-represented students, first generation students and low socio-economic status students (Terenzini and Reason, 2005) are at greater risk of dropping out. As Vosloo and Blignaut (2010) stated:

While all students have to make a transition from high school to university, the gap is deeper and wider for most access students than for the traditional students universities are used to

The majority of students at UJ can be classed as non-traditional university entrants with approximately 60% being first generation university entrants, 60% being non-English first language speakers and more than 50% having inappropriate study habits. A majority on non-traditional students necessitates a non-traditional response from universities. A more holistic, integrated institutional response is required to create an environment which allows all students a reasonable chance of success and coherently supports them towards that success. The UJ First Year Experience (FYE) is the institutional response to the issues described above. During 2010, UJ launched an institutional First Year Experience (FYE) initiative aimed at facilitating the effective transition of first year students into the UJ environment.

Links to theory A number of theoretical and practical perspectives were investigated during the planning phase of the UJ FYE, with investigations still ongoing. Tinto’s longitudinal interactionist approach was particularly useful as a broad perspective on the complex issue of student retention. Both the longitudinal nature of the student departure/retention experience and decisions as well as the strong social links to student decision making are of specific relevance to the UJ context. The work of Astin (the role of pre-entry attributes) and a number of perspectives using the ideas of Bourdieu (with particular reference to ‘cultural capital’ and ‘habitus’) were used as additional sources. In the South African context, the work done at the University of Stellenbosch (US) had the most pronounced influence on the work at UJ. US took the lead in terms of initiatives focused on first year student success by creating a SU First Year Academy initiative. This initiative tailored many international ideas to the institutional and national context and were therefore applicable to the UJ context. The UJ FYE is an effort to move towards embodying what Tinto (2013) stated:

83

Improvement in rates of student success requires intentional structured and proactive action, that is systematic in nature and coordinated in application.

Planning the UJ FYE Faced with the serious and complex problem described above, UJ decided to follow the international trend that started in 1972 (Hunter, Keup & Gardner, 2011) of focusing on the first year transition of its students. The broad approach is called a First Year Experience (FYE) approach. The FYE is a combination of curricular and co-curricular efforts across the whole institution aimed at enabling first year student success (Keup, 2013). Following a consultative process involving all relevant stakeholders, an FYE proposal document was created and approved. The following information sums up the UJ FYE approach.

Definition of the UJ FYE

The FYE has been conceptualized as a holistic initiative which encompasses all aspects of first year student experience in the context of an invitational and equitable institution. It comprises both curricular and extra-curricular initiatives, and is far more than a single event, programme or course. It attempts to establish an ethos and a way of life, through which all first year students will experience the transition into university life.

Principles of the UJ FYE As part of the planning process, the following principles were developed to undergird the UJ FYE’s implementation and were also informed by the UJ values.

1. The FYE is a holistic approach to the total student experience, and is an initiative of the university.

2. The FYE is embedded within the preferred UJ student experience, which begins prior to an application to UJ and ends with alumni status.

3. It is incumbent on the university to ensure that students are provided with enabling learning environments.

4. The FYE is not envisaged as simply assisting students to pass, but as enabling as many as possible to achieve their full potential.

5. The FYE requires the contribution and support of all sectors of the UJ, of both Faculties and Support Divisions.

84

6. An equitable First Year Experience will be based on the participation of all Faculties in terms of common principles; a common core combines with specific Faculty ethos and needs.

7. The FYE is informed by and grounded in ongoing developmental and evaluative research.

8. The FYE requires commitment from students and support and development by staff.

9. The challenge of first year teaching requires special expertise from the academic staff, who must in turn be assisted in meeting these challenges.

10. All components of the FYE strive, as far as possible, to be fully integrated.

First phase of implementation during 2010 It was decided to follow a phased approach to the implementation of the UJ FYE. The following seven broad initiatives were identified, as constituting a first phase of implementation.

1. Placement testing, aimed at assisting Faculties in selecting and placing students in the most appropriate qualifications and modules.

2. The initial two-week Orientation programme was re-designed. This programme ‘kick-starts’ the FYE, by orienting students to studying at UJ and building an initial awareness of the academic expectations, activities and values associated with UJ.

3. An ‘extended orientation’ approach, which involves scheduling themes from the initial Orientation throughout the first semester. ‘Extended Orientation’ includes strands on academic development (literacies and learning skills), Library orientation, and Edulink orientation, each of which should be integrated into core first year curricula.

4. Ongoing tracking of student performance and immediate identification of students who seem not be ‘engaging’ and therefore may be, or are ‘at risk’, with appropriate interventions. The SAFENET tracking system is partly in use with the final development work currently being conducted.

5. Senior students: The involvement of senior students takes a number of forms such as tutorial programmes, mentoring programmes and community engagement. Senior students are seen as a key element in facilitating successful student integration.

6. Co-curricular activities, e.g. organised sport, clubs and societies, and cultural activities, provide a wide variety of learning, and friendship building

85

opportunities and facilitate a ready acceptance of the diversity in the UJ community. Such activities are widely promoted and form a fourth strand of ‘extended Orientation.’

7. Focus on residences as centres of academic excellence. UJ would like to create an optimal learning experience for the relatively limited numbers of students in residences, and those associated with day-houses; this involves the establishment of guided learning communities, which have been shown to have a very positive impact on student learning.

Subsequent developments Steady progress has been made on all the initial initiatives with a number of working groups and sub-committees having been established at UJ. Current efforts of the FYE committee are aimed at sustaining these current initiatives as well as acting on newly emerging themes. Newly emerging themes for the FYE committee include increasing the level of student involvement in all FYE structures and activities. This is being pursued in a number of ways including the creation of a UJ FYE student forum that meets three times a year. Consideration is also being given to an enhanced role for parents and care-givers but the exact form this will take is still uncertain. The fact that many UJ students are worried about food has come to the fore through the ISES research and a multi-pronged institutional approach in partnerships with various Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO’s) was put in place during 2012. In an effort to reach more students an initial UJ FYE website was created and Facebook and Twitter is being used to communicate students. The website is designed in a ‘frequently asked questions’ format with various stakeholders providing input on the most prominent questions students ask.

National and international involvement Student transitions and the First Year Experience (FYE) are relatively new research and practice fields in South African higher education. It was decided right from the start to follow a cooperative approach to ensure that best practice and resources are shared effectively both within and outside South African higher education. This has led to the establishment of the Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association of Southern Africa (HELTASA) Special Interest Group (SIG) on student success during the 2011 HELTASA annual conference. Contact has also been made with the International FYE community, including the National Resource Centre for the First

86

Year Experience and Students in Transition based at the University of South Carolina. Conclusion To be better able to teach the students we have, a deeper understanding of who they are and what their life experiences are is essential. The profiles gathered at UJ have assisted the institution in responding to our students and their needs in a focused way that increases the impact of our efforts. More and deeper qualitative investigations into the matters mentioned above and their impact on students should be undertaken to ensure that efforts aimed at improving student success is built on a solid base. A data informed institutional approach such as the UJ FYE is suggested as the best way forward in trying to improve levels of student success. The UJ FYE has made a promising start in addressing the issues that have a bearing on student success that are to some degree within institutional control. The holistic and systematic approach enables an institutional response which harnesses the institutional resources more effectively. Top management support at UJ has been invaluable to enable the required momentum of the UJ FYE and growing levels of student involvement will ensure that the student voice also informs the FYE going forward. Because institutional change is required for an institutional response as described above, patience is required to grow institutional student success efforts.

References Breier, M. 2010. From ‘financial considerations’ to ‘poverty: towards a reconceptualization of the role of finances in higher education student drop out. Higher Education, 60: 657–670 Council on Higher Education (CHE). 2012. Vital Stats: Public Higher Education 2010. CHE publication (2012): 1-58. Accessed on 25 May 2013. Url: http://www.che.ac.za/documents/d000249/

Council on Higher Education (CHE). 2013. A proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in South Africa: The case for a flexible curriculum structure. CHE publication. Pretoria

Hunter, M.S., Keup, J.R & Gardner, J.N. 2011. Primer for first time attendees to the International FYE conference, Manchester, UK. 21–24 July 2011

87

Keup, J.R. 2013. The First year Experience: Lessons learned and emerging issues. Presentation to the First Year Success conference held at the University of Johannesburg 17 September 2013. Unpublished slides.

Laskey, M.L. & Hatzel, C.J. 2011. Investigating Facors Realted to Retention of At-risk College Students. The Learning Assistance Review (TLAR), 16 (1): 31–43.

Lewin, T & Mawoyo, M. 2014. Student Access and Success: Issues and Interventions in South African Universities. Inyathelo: The South African Institute for Advancement.

Morrow, W. 2009. Entitlement and achievement in education. Bounds of Democracy: Epistemological Access in Higher Education. HSRC press. Cape Town 2009. Accessed on 28 May 2013. Url: http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/product.php?productid=2254&js=y

Smith, W.L. & Zhang, P. 2010. The impact of key factors on the transition from high school to college among first- and second-generation students. Journal of the First Year Experience & Students in Transition, 22 (2): 49–70

Terenzini, P.T. & Reason, R.D. 2005. Parsing the first year of college: A conceptual framework for studying college impacts. Paper presented at the meeting of the Association for the study of Higher Education, November 19, 2005, Philadelphia, PA. Accessed on 12 November 2013. Url: https://www.ed.psu.edu/educ/parsing-project/.pdf%20documents/ASHE05ptt.pdf/view

Tinto, V. 2012. Enhancing student success: Taking the classroom success seriously. The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 3 (1) (2012): 1–8. Accessed 22 May 2013. Url: 10.5204/intjfyhe.v2i1.119

Tinto, V. 2013. Theoretical underpinnings and research framework for student success. Presentation to the CHE symposium 20 August 2013, Pretoria. Accessed 15 January 2014. Url: http://www.che.ac.za/content/regional-symposia-student-success-19-23-august-2013

Thomas, L. 2012. Building student engagement and belonging in Higher education at a time of change: a summary of findings and recommendations from the What Works? Student retention & Success programme. Report by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Accessed on 29 May 2013. Url: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/what-works-student-retention/What_Works_Summary_Report

University of Johannesburg. 2013. UJ enrolement details. Accessed on 9 June 2013. Url. https://mis.uj.ac.za/heda/fsmain.htm

88

Van Zyl, A., Gravett, S. & de Bruin, G.P. 2012. To what extent do pre-entry attributes predict first year student academic performance in the South African context? South African Journal of Higher Education, 26 (5): 1095–1111

Vosloo, M & Blignaut, S. 2010. From hero to zero … and back? The journey of first year access students in mainstream programmes. ASSAF “Mind the Gap” forum, October 2010, Accessed 10 January 2014. Url. http://www.assaf.org.za/stem-mind-the-gap-forum