BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE FOR STUDY
6.2 Changes to the Foundation Modules in Science
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complete a task or to rely on memorisation of information. As stated by Kember (2004), heavy workload has been positively correlated to ‘surface’ learning approaches.
Lara’s response highlights two other issues. The first is her view of discipline-specific literacies as being autonomous, independent of content, thus the reference to “we did not get time to concentrate on writing and many other language skills because we were dealing with a lot of content”. The second issue is her view of the literacies needed for foundation biology as “language skills” or “skills”. Through probing, Lara included ‘reading’ as another example of a ‘language skill’. DSs, like Lara, need to realize that for students to gain mastery of disciplinary discourse, they need to be acculturated into the discourse as
“language should not be taught in isolation” (Mohan, 1986) because “authentic content provide[s] the richest and most natural context for language teaching to occur” (Brinton and Holten, 2001: 239). As stated by Moore et al. (1998), “linguistic competence [should not] be separated from the cognitive demands” (11). Within NLS, the ideological model views literacy as a social practice rather than the acquisition of skills (Street, 2003: 78).
Some the verbal responses from the DSs indicated FP students being perceived as having a form of deficit. Teresa, for example, is highly critical of the students’ ability to cope with foundation biology when she states that “their reading pace is extremely slow; their comprehension is very low and it precludes any other higher skills development without those basics being in place”. Teresa’s response is contentious. Firstly, in the absence of a standardized reading test administered to each new cohort in the FP (or within foundation biology itself) to test students’ reading pace and/or comprehension capabilities, Teresa’s claim about the students’ reading pace and comprehension level is unsubstantiated. This study has shown that students admitted into the FP had to write the SATAP (English language) test, the purpose of which was only for placement into one of the two AL modules offered in the FP63. Secondly, Teresa’s claim is problematic in light of the students’ disadvantaged educational backgrounds; and research on minimal exposure to print media (Nyamapfene and Letseka, 1995; Kapp, 2004; Mgqwashu, 2009). Studies (Evans, 2002; Nel et al. 2004; van Wyk and Greyling, 2008) have cast light on the challenges encountered by university students in making sense of academic texts.
Difficulties with understanding and interpreting academic texts can present difficulties for inexperienced readers. Rose et al. (2003) offer reasons for this: the subject matter, including terms used in the academic field, is likely to be unfamiliar even if learners read it
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fluently; and the patterns of language in academic writing differ from those used in everyday speaking or writing. Scientific academic texts are complex, dense and abstract (The problem of students not being able to cope with dense content in foundation biology has already been alluded to in the analysis of the response from Lara in the previous paragraph). Scientific texts convey discourse through the use of secondary discourse (Gee, 1999) and the elaborated code (Bernstein, 1971) and are therefore more cognitively demanding which requires CALP. For students to be adept at reading and comprehension, they would have had to master academic discourse. Reading involves both decoding and comprehension66; and limited reading proficiency can impact on comprehension and consequently, learning. Another salient issue that needs to be taken into consideration here is that the students in the FP are forced to read texts that are in a language that is ‘non- native’ to them. The texts that they are engaging with are in English, which in this situation represents the ‘educated language’ (Bourdieu, 1977). The LoLT at UKZN is English. This, in itself, can seriously disadvantage the students’ engagement with the reading texts.
(Chapter 7 offers excerpts of reading text types that the FP students are forced to engage with in foundation biology. In addition, Appendices 11 and 22 offer other samples of dense reading materials extracted from foundation biology).
In attempting to probe the reasons for changes to the foundation chemistry module post- institutional merger, Seema explained that “It [the foundation chemistry module] has become simpler because in the past when the course was offered at the former UDW [in the former SFP, prior to the launch of CSA], it was more in line with mainstream – first year and not so much high school or secondary level work. But now, we’ve dropped the level”.
A perusal of the content in the foundation chemistry course manuals over a period of time (from 2008 until 2011) has shown no evidence of the level being dropped. The content (i.e.
topics) as shown in the textboxes below done from year to year has been exactly the same and the manner in which the content was presented had not changed:
Content: Semester 1: Energy and Matter; Pure Substances and their properties; Compounds and Mixtures; Pure Substances and their Changes; Chemical Reactions; Concentrations of Solutions; Solubility.
66 Decoding refers to the deciphering of printed symbols into language, and involves the oculomotor, perceptual and linguistic parsing aspects of reading activity relating to letter-sound correspondences, word identification and lexical access. Comprehension refers to the understanding process whereby meaning is assigned to the text as a whole (Pretorius, 2000a).
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Content: Semester 2: Measuring the Mole; The Mole and Formulae;
Mole Calculations, Limiting Reagent Calculations; Atoms, Isotopes and Ions; Electronic Configurations and the Periodic Table; Chemical Bonding and Nomenclature; Electronegativities; Common Citations and their Charges; Common Anions and their Charges.
There was only one example that seemed to fit into Seema’s notion of the “level being dropped”, an explanation of which follows. The question below appeared in both the 2009 and 2011 foundation chemistry course manuals.
(Foundation Chemistry, Semester 2, 2009: 30; 2011: 36)
In both course manuals, students were expected to answer the question by means of step- by-step calculations, each with a short set of instructions. In 2009, the instructions for ‘Part a’ were a 2-line sentence illustrating a brief overview of what was to be done in the question. The space for the answer was half a page long. Students were thus expected to answer the entire question at once in one long step as shown below:
(Foundation Chemistry, Semester 2, 2009: 30)
However, in 2011, the same instruction for the same question was sub-divided into three detailed steps, with each instruction having more detail than in 2009 (see below).