Media Studies

This paper explores the nature of literate life histories (LLHs) as one particular form of narrative, autobiographical task at a B.Ed level.  Although the task was used in two contexts for different  purposes, and responded to differently by both teachers and students in the two contexts, there were sufficient similarities in the process as a whole, to allow us  to interrogate more critically the role that literate life  histories can play in contributing to our goal of student language development. 

We being with a theoretical contextualisation  and a brief overview of the use of LLHs in other educational contexts.  This is followed by a description of the two contexts on which this paper is based and an analysis of our findings.  We then reflect on the possible need to reconceptualise our approach to the use of this particular task in future.  We conclude with the implications of the use of LLHs in language development prgrammes.

Many reports of needs analysis and curriculum design of EAP courses focus largely on the immediate pedagogic context and ensuing decision making and materials design processes of the course designers.  This paper explores the process of curriculum design from the perspectives of both debates and developments within the field of language and literacy education, and the impact of international, national and institutional shifts in higher education on one course design process within one South African university.  The paper explores the realities of instituional and disciplinary histories and changes that impacted on the design of an EAP course for a linguistically, culturally and racially diverse group of first-year commerce students.  The intricacies of creating such a course as an inter-disciplinary school, rather than departmental, project are explored and briefly evaluated. The key principles underpinning the course design are explained.  The paper concludes with consideration of why the collaborative inter-disciplinary project has faded, although the course has continued successfully.

This paper provides a critical exploration of work in progress to develop a genre based academic support that promotes post-graduate academic literacies among new EIL and EAL Honours and Masters students in the School of Theology, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg.  It traces the path of an action research project, using an eclectic needs analysis of post-graduate Theological students for their writing, in order to design and implement and effective intervention course.  The paper evaluates the successes and failures of the project thus far.  The final section of the paper considers the challenges presented by both micro- and macro-level contextual factors within the tertiary education sector to such a project, and the implications arising from these for academic development responsibilities facing both disciplines seeking to expand student access to post-graduate study and academics with writing development expertise.

Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT)  (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002), a cognitive theory of human processes of innovation, can be productively used  alongside  critical literacy approaches, for the analysis of how teachers and learners draw selectively, transformatively and purposively from aspects of the mass media.  While numerous studies have pointed to the complexity of the relationship between globalised mass media forms and local cultures, highlighting intricate bi-directional flows of influence, there is still much to be learned of the nature of individual take-up of the global within the local, particularly with respect to youth in school settings. CBT offers a set of tools with which to peel open certain pedagogic processes and products, gaining a clearer vision of parts of their components and inner workings.  In this paper I analyse qualitative data showing how one South African English teacher and a group of her Grade 10 learners, draw from mass media genres of advertising, infomercials, talk shows and popular music, and blend these with elements of local culture and pedagogic genres, in order to meet their specific, localized communicative purposes. In the light of this analysis, I also consider implications for the use of mass media genres and products within English education, for the promotion of critical media literacy amongst learners.

This paper is a case study of a range of written tasks completed by one English mother tongue and one second language student in B.Ed (Second Language Learning and Teaching) modules on Psycholinguistics, Approaches to Language Teaching, and Writing and Grammar.  It explores the relationships between the conceptualisation of key concepts in an unfamiliar disciplien and the nature of the students' writing in various writing tasks.  It critically reflects on the relative effectiveness of these tasks as ways of inducting students into the discourse of Applied Linguistics.  The implications for future curriculum development of the insights thus generated are also considered.

This article outlines selected aspects of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), as presented in
Maton’s book Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education (2014),
and considers their usefulness to the field of education research, in particular, for language
education. An introduction to key LCT concepts is provided highlighting their analytic
power for the investigation of the varying forms of educational knowledge structures,
knower roles and what forms of pedagogic practices promote or inhibit cumulative learning.
The notion of ‘context’, in relation to LCTs concept of semantic gravity and
decontextualised knowledge forms, is considered alongside Cummins’ notions of
contextualised and decontextualised language. The importance of further research into what
is meant by ‘context’ in relation to pinpointing the nature of contextualised and
decontextualised knowledge, and the nature of forms of cumulative learning is raised

This paper utilises two dimensions of Legitimation Code Theory, Specialisation and Semantics, to describe and analyse aspects of the poetry pedagogy of a South African home language subject English teacher. The Specialisation analysis illuminates how, while the lesson is oriented towards social relations in its focus on cultivating learners' literary gaze, the teacher's pedagogy exhibits varying emphases on epistemic relations and social relations in different phases of the lesson. These concepts facilitate more precise description of the pedagogy, which assists in clarifying and explicating the nature of the pedagogy of a teacher working with a cultural heritage orientation to literary instruction. Analysis within the Semantic dimension enables the tracking of pulses of shifts in abstraction and particularity through the lesson. This highlights the ways in which the teacher moves between more and less abstract and concrete forms of knowledge, which implicitly models ideational networks required for higher levels of close textual analysis.

Poetry instruction in South African English Additional Language (EAL) classrooms is in sharp decline, while little empirical research exists to shed light on this situation. This paper describes what happened to poetry pedagogy in a Grade 10 EAL classroom in rural KwaZulu-Natal when teacher and learners were forced to engage with a poem inappropriate to the context, learner level and teacher content knowledge. This paper applies a sociology of knowledge lens, Legitimation Code Theory, to the task of describing EAL poetry pedagogy in a resource scarce context of high difficulty. The analysis shows how the difficulty level of the poem obstructed epistemic access to the poem's global meanings, generating pedagogic incoherence. Implications and recommendations for further research are presented.

This article outlines selected aspects of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), as presented in Maton's book Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education (2014), and considers their usefulness to the field of education research, in particular, for language education. An introduction to key LCT concepts is provided highlighting their analytic power for the investigation of the varying forms of educational knowledge structures, knower roles and what forms of pedagogic practices promote or inhibit cumulative learning. The notion of 'context', in relation to LCTs concept of semantic gravity and decontextualised knowledge forms, is considered alongside Cummins' notions of contextualised and decontextualised language. The importance of further research into what is meant by 'context' in relation to pinpointing the nature of contextualised and decontextualised knowledge, and the nature of forms of cumulative learning is raised. Knowledge and Knowers: To...

This article outlines selected aspects of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), as presented in Maton’s book Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education (2014), and considers their usefulness to the field of education research, in particular, for language education. An introduction to key LCT concepts is provided highlighting their analytic power for the investigation of the varying forms of educational knowledge structures, knower roles and what forms of pedagogic practices promote or inhibit cumulative learning. The notion of ‘context’, in relation to LCTs concept of semantic gravity and decontextualised knowledge forms, is considered alongside Cummins’ notions of contextualised and decontextualised language. The importance of further research into what is meant by ‘context’ in relation to pinpointing the nature of contextualised and decontextualised knowledge, and the nature of forms of cumulative learning is raised. Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociolog...