Exploring first year students' and their lecturers' constructions of what it means to read in a humanities discipline: A conflict of frames?

Niven, PM

doi:10.4314/sajhe.v19i4.25667

Cited by 18 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The assumption for students' lack of pleasure reading could again be attributed to socio-cultural practices among others. Communities that do not elevate individual reading but dwell on collective oral discussions as found in Niven's (2005) study of ISAL students could influence this non-reading culture. Different literacy practices may influence learners' reading habits.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many of these learners are from a low socio-economic background and may have had minimal literacy interactions both at home and at school. In addition their literacy interactions as observed by Niven (2005) differ from the schools' literacy practices.…”

Section: The South African Contextmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Those with different forms of social literacy, for example, a strong emphasis on oral literacy traditions, have unfortunately not had frequent interactions with written texts (Niven 2005), and have attended poorly functioning schools (Pretorius 2000;Taylor and Yu 2009). South Africa's bimodal school system relegates ISAL speakers to the historically disadvantaged and currently dysfunctional schools, whereas English and Afrikaans students are concentrated in the historically white and Indian schools that demonstrate much greater functionality.…”

Section: Social Literacy and The Language Groups In South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, they advocate that lecturers should be compelled to infuse academic writing in their assessment and learning regime, and that the academic literacies approach advocated by Lea and Street (2001) should be used to socialise students in academic writing. Niven (2005) investigated the reading practices of 14 Foundation Year students at a South African university. These students were all ISAL from poor SES and attend rural schools that are under-resourced.…”

Section: Social Literacy and The Language Groups In South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This mismatch between home and school literacies may negatively affect students' learning and reading practices (Niven 2005;Taylor and Yu 2009). …”

Section: The South African Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

The social dimension of reading literacy development in South Africa: Bridging inequalities among the various language groups

Boakye

2015

International Journal of the Sociology of Language

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is widely acknowledged that different communities, such as language groups and socio-economic status (SES) families, practice literacy in different ways. Certain language communities of low SES observe literacy interactions differently from the traditional "schooled literacy", which may influence learners' reading literacy. However, the link between language communities, SES and reading literacy has not been extensively researched, especially in the South African context where there are 11 official languages and wide socio-economic disparities. This article examines students' social literacy in relation to their reading literacy levels, and reveals that the literacy gap between indigenous South African language (ISAL) speakers, a number of whom are from low SES families, and speakers of English and Afrikaans is further widened at the tertiary level due to the mismatch between the social literacy practices of the different language groups and the education system that operates in the country. Recommendations are made on how educators could employ strategies such as social relevance and culturally sensitive teaching to bridge the academic literacy gap among the language groups.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The South African Contextmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Social Literacy and The Language Groups In South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Social Literacy and The Language Groups In South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This mismatch between home and school literacies may negatively affect students' learning and reading practices (Niven 2005;Taylor and Yu 2009). …”

Section: The South African Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The social dimension of reading literacy development in South Africa: Bridging inequalities among the various language groups

Boakye

2015

International Journal of the Sociology of Language

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Seeing epistemic order: construction and transmission of evaluative criteria

Shalem

Slonimsky

2010

British Journal of Sociology of Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper focuses on formative assessment in the field of higher education. It examines Bernstein's work on vertical discourses and knowledge structures with the view to deepening understanding of the concept of assessment for learning. The first part of the paper draws on Vygotsky's work on concept development and Bernstein's work on knowledge structures to explain why 'generalisation' and 'hierarchy' are central in knowledge acquisition. It then explores Bernstein's claim that, within the vertical discourse, different knowledge structures (hierarchical and horizontal) afford greater or lesser visibility of their epistemic structure, and thus of their evaluation criteria of what counts as a legitimate text. The second part of the paper investigates the ways epistemic expectations are signalled through the practice of evaluation to first-year university students in a professional education course and proposes that markers do not offer students stuffiest access to recognition rules necessary for producing legitimate texts in the future. Drawing on Maton's distinction between semantic gravity and semantic density, the paper offers an example of how markers could recast what is present in students' work to offer students access to key ordering principles in vertical discourses.

show abstract

Education, Language, and Identity Amongst Students at a South African University

Parkinson

Crouch

2011

Journal of Language, Identity & Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article reports on a study of language and cultural identity of mother-tongue Zulu students at an English-medium South African university. The data consist of focus group interviews, questionnaires, and student opinions in essays. Findings include a strong identification of the participants with the Zulu language and Zulu culture, and a view of English variously as a language of settlers that participants are forced to speak for instrumental reasons, or, more positively, as a language useful for education and as a lingua franca. Stigmatisation of those who speak English "too much" was evident. Other findings are that although participants had been educated at nominally English-medium schools, classroom instruction for many was likely to have been in Zulu, with English used only for written work. After 1 year at university, however, students could articulate a clear idea of the kind of writing demanded by university study.Tertiary education requires accommodation to the values and the literacy practices of the university, which inevitably impacts students' sense of identity. Rural L2 students are likely to have attended poorly resourced secondary schools, which neglect university-related literacy practices. They thus have greater accommodation to make than do those South African students who have attended well-resourced schools and who are able to study in their mother tongue. Thus the university sees many L2 speakers as lacking in the academic literacy necessary for university study.This article examines the influence of schooling, language, and literacy on identity construction in South African students who are mother-tongue speakers of Zulu and who live in KwaZulu-Natal. It examines experiences of (dis)continuity between under-resourced rural schooling and tertiary study in a multicultural city environment. Because the participants have, for equity reasons, been admitted to university despite not meeting entry criteria, they are enrolled in an "alternative access" degree program. We explore the effect of this positioning by the institution on participants' sense of identity.Correspondence should be sent to

show abstract

Exploring first year students' and their lecturers' constructions of what it means to read in a humanities discipline: A conflict of frames?

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

The social dimension of reading literacy development in South Africa: Bridging inequalities among the various language groups

The social dimension of reading literacy development in South Africa: Bridging inequalities among the various language groups

Seeing epistemic order: construction and transmission of evaluative criteria

Education, Language, and Identity Amongst Students at a South African University

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About