research in language development : promoting transformation and access to higher education
DESCRIPTION
The Language Development Group has been engaged in teaching, research and curriculum development work across all the faculties at UCT. Our work has targeted undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as staff. Drawing on our experience in this varied environment, our central research question has addressed the complex role that language plays in learning and teaching. Using the New Literacy Studies and Academic Literacies as our theoretical frameworks, our research has in the past ten years focused on exploring teaching and learning issues related to students' acquisition of specific disciplinary discourses. Key to this process have been concepts like multimodality, multilingualism and identity. Our findings have emphasised the importance of paying close attention to the specific educational and other social contexts within which language interventions are developed and implemented. These include students’ home and schooling backgrounds, the institutional culture that they encounter in specific academic departments and the wider university, and the impact that these may have on students’ learning. Located within a framework that values diversity and social justice, our research aims to promote access to higher education through language and in this way to contribute to transformation in the institution and more widely. Presented by Dr. Lucia Thesen and Dr.Moragh PaxtonTRANSCRIPT
Research & the Language Development
Group
what we’ve been doing and what it means
‘languages of change’
• Language – as linguistic code– as medium of teaching and learning– as multi-semiotic– as metalanguage– as discourse
academic literacies
• as communicative practices
• as our work
• as field of enquiry
Where are we now and what difference has it made?
Where are we now and what difference has it made?
Research Output over last 7 years
• 4 PhDs• 5 PhDs bubbling• LD Book (2006): Academic Literacy and
Languages of Change• 29 Peer reviewed journal articles including
– 15 Accredited publications• 3 Chapters in books
LD’s Research Contribution to CHED
SPENCER
PROJECT
RPL
CET
NumeracyScience
Code switching
PG literaciesPhD
PhD
PhDPhD
ADPrPHealth Science
Multimodality
MEPIn 5 disciplines
Commerce
PhD
Numeracy
International
National
Institutional
CHED
Some Evidence:Institutional & International
• Embedding of academic literacies in curricula at UCT
• ‘…there is evidence that academic literacies [research] is informing institutional pedagogical initiatives (see for example Thesen and van Pletzen 2006) and more mainstream educational debates (see for example Haggis 2003, Ganobcsik-Williams, 2006) thus offering an additional and contrastive perspective to the dominant influence of psychologically oriented approaches.’ (Lillis and Scott 2008)
National SchoolingStudent feedback: Masters EAL
• I really do not know how it can be done, but courses like these should be introduced to as many teachers as possible. Teachers out there are struggling with changing curricula and there is little or no help offered to them. With the knowledge I gained in this course, I strongly feel I can make a difference out there. Hence I appeal to the course co-ordinator to send brochures to schools selling the course to teachers.
NationalLD in CHED: a model that is unique
• ‘a stimulus and an example’ to other units in SA (Stella Granville, Wits Colloquium, 2006)
Health Science
Engineering Law
Commerce
Humanities
ADPCHED