Chapter 2: Theoretical considerations and literature review
2.5 Academic literacies
2.5.1 Discipline-specific academic literacies
The importance of engaging in discipline-specific research and developing discipline-specific strategies relating to students‟ acquisitions of academic literacies has been advocated by several authors (see, for example, Hewings, 2001; Lillis, 2001; Parker, 2002; McKenna, 2004b; Zhu, 2004a; Boughey, 2005; Goodier & Parkinson, 2005; Hussein, 2005; Jacobs, 2005; Wingate, 2006; Duff, 2007; Paxton, 2007). This is because the Discourses of different disciplines differ according to the „meanings‟, values and beliefs inherent to them. In other words, it is not just
„writing‟ or „reading‟ as two distinct and generic language skills that are at issue here – as so many students and lecturers assume. Instead, disciplinary communities “bestow meaning, legitimacy and appropriacy on discourse forms” (Hyland, 1998, p.448; see also Richardson, 2004).
Jacobs thus defines academic literacies as “the fluent control and mastery of the discipline specific norms, values and conventions for reading and writing as a means of exploring and constructing knowledge in HE” (2005, p.485, emphasis added) and asserts that “social practices in general – and literacy practices in particular – are often very different across disciplines” (2005, p.484). Goodier and Parkinson (2005, p.75) agree that academic literacy is “always discipline specific” and Braine states that “separate disciplines are singular discourse communities with their own writing conventions” (1995, p.114). Facilitating epistemological access must thus move beyond providing a set of a-social, a-cultural skills and strategies, towards engaging with the content and ways of knowledge construction in particular disciplines (Boughey, 2005), as well as with students‟ identities (De Kadt & Mathonsi, 2003; McKenna, 2004b; Boughey, 2008). We thus need to analyse what discourse practices are expected of students in particular disciplines in order for them to succeed in those disciplines (McKenna, 2004a). Parker feels that it is crucial for every discipline to participate in “modeling its processes – of how the subject area is engaged with and the range of effects of that engagement” (2002, p.384). This is important because many students do not develop the sound academic foundations that are required to facilitate depth of understanding in their disciplines (Scott et al, 2007). As noted in Chapter 1, Pearse & Amos (2000) call specifically for research to investigate academic literacy in management disciplines.
The generic and decontextualised nature of most academic literacy courses in South Africa suggests an autonomous view of literacy (Jacobs, 2005). In contrast, and in line with a view of literacy as social practices embedded in context and as ideological, the position taken in this study is that each discipline has its own norms, values and literacy practices (McKenna, 2004b).
One implication of this is that students have to learn to negotiate diverse, and sometimes contradictory, academic cultures (Haggis, 2003). This point is particularly pertinent in the context of this study. As outlined in Chapter 1, at UKZN Marketing is offered as an elective major in general Commerce and Social Science degrees in which students typically take modules from a range of disciplines which are offered by different faculties. Yet even disciplines within the same faculty reflect fundamental differences in terms of their epistemological and social conventions (Lung, 2008). As Zhu (2004b) has pointed out, the variance among different business disciplines means that each of these disciplines can be viewed as constituting a different discourse community.
A second implication is that students will best acquire „academic literacy‟ when it is embedded within particular disciplines (Jacobs, 2005). As „insiders‟, mainstream subject lecturers are a part of the discourse community of their discipline and are best placed to induct students into this community by modelling appropriate disciplinary practices.
However, this is complicated by the frequent lack of explicitness within mainstream teaching of the literacy norms of specific subjects (Christie, 2001; McKenna, 2004b; Richardson, 2004;
Jacobs, 2005; Morrow, 2009). In part, this may be due to the fact that most academics, as subject specialists whose primary concern is course content (Lea, 2004), are not very knowledgeable in teaching and learning matters (Jacobs, 2005; Jansen, 2011). Also contributing to this lack of explicitness is the tacit nature of lecturers‟ disciplinary practices, knowledge and discourses (Russell, 1997; Graff, 2002; Hussein, 2005). Unlocking the tacit knowledge that academics have of the discourses of their disciplines can thus facilitate more effective teaching (Jacobs, 2005).34 Habits of thinking and writing, which are so familiar to academics that they hardly recognise them, often seem counter-intuitive to students; the most productive way to help students deal with these, therefore, is to identify and discuss them – otherwise students are in effect “forced to play the academic game with one hand tied behind their backs” (Graff, 2002, p.37). Indeed, research investigating the high dropout rate at South African universities revealed that one contributing factor to this problem was that students “struggled to „think‟ in their chosen fields of study”, and that they were not adequately supported academically to address this or to „fit in‟ to the
34 Later in this chapter, the contribution that LCT can make in this regard will be specified.
institutional and disciplinary cultures (Letseka, 2009).35 While all students will benefit from making the demands of academic discourse explicit (Hewings & Hewings, 2001), this is especially important for students who have been poorly prepared for higher education. Not helping such students with academic discourse “is simply to leave a power vacuum and thereby reward privileged students who have already learned academic discourse at home or in school – or at least learned the roots or propensity for academic discourse” (Elbow, 1991, p.135).
Very often, however, “lecturers expect students to come onto campus and know what the deal is”
(Soudien, 2009).36 In other words, lecturers may view academic literacy as a starting point for, rather than as a goal of, university study (Bock, 1988). Perhaps this helps to explain why lecturers often tend to see the development of students‟ academic literacy skills as somebody else‟s responsibility (Lea, 2004; Jackson et al, 2006; Mohamed & Banda, 2008; Thomson, 2008).
However, Zhu (2004a) asserts that because much writing happens in content courses, and because „mainstream‟ student profiles are changing, the responsibility for improving academic literacy skills needs to be extended to mainstream lecturers – making it important to examine their views on academic literacy and their role in literacy instruction. Scott et al (2007) agree that
„mainstream educational development‟ is crucial to improving higher education performance and output in South Africa and others have supported the call for academic development to be
“infused in mainstream academic teaching” (Smit, 2010, p.5). Mainstream subject lecturers have three roles to play in this regard: “lending the capacity to participate in meaning, designing well planned excursions into unfamiliar discursive terrain and coaching students in speaking the academic discourse” (Northedge, 2003, p.169).
However, being able to undertake these roles effectively rests on an understanding of what legitimate participation in the Discourse of a discipline entails – and what literacies are required in order to enable this participation - a question that is central to this study. With regard to Marketing, one broad example of what may be required arises in several studies in both the marketing practice and Marketing education literatures, which have pointed to the importance of written communication skills for marketing practitioners and Marketing students (Gray et al, 2002;
Stringfellow et al, 2006; Melaia et al, 2008; Treleaven & Voola, 2008).
35 This finding was presented at a seminar entitled „Why do university students drop out?‟, which was delivered by Moeketsi Letseka of the University of South Africa (UNISA) at UKZN‟s Howard College campus, on 20 March 2009.
36 This statement was made at a public lecture entitled „The state of transformation in South African higher education‟, which was delivered by Professor Crain Soudien of the University of Cape Town (UCT) at UKZN‟s Westville campus, on 30 June 2009.
Of particular relevance to this study, research undertaken in the Faculty of Management Studies at UKZN (Goodier & Parkinson, 2005) revealed that third-year students (such as those participating in this study) are expected to engage in much more writing than students in earlier years of study (in which multiple-choice assessments tend to be more prevalent). Table 2.2 provides an overview of the extent of the increase in writing tasks across the years of study in the Faculty, as well as an indication of the genres of writing tasks set.
Table 2.2: Written genre types set for undergraduate students, Faculty of Management Studies, UKZN, 2004
YEAR OF STUDY FIRST
YEAR
SECOND YEAR
THIRD YEAR
TOTAL OF WRITING TASKS SET (BY GENRE TYPE)
Research paper/project 9% 9% 25% 43%
Report 9% 3% 18% 30%
Case study - 3% 18% 21%
Summaries of readings - - 6% 6%
TOTAL OF WRITING TASKS SET (BY YEAR) 18% 15% 67% 100%
Source: adapted from Goodier & Parkinson (2005, p.68)
Given the substantial increase in writing in the third year of study, the Faculty is keen to explore ways of developing student writing more consistently across all years of its programmes within mainstream modules in the various disciplines. Writing practices in the disciplines are thus becoming a focus of attention; for example, in 2010, the Faculty hosted a workshop on Writing Intensive Teaching.
As indicated in Chapter 1, The Writing Place is one of the primary initiatives in place in the Faculty to help students develop their writing in its constituent disciplines. Indeed, writing centres are “a main form of support” in South Africa (Lillis, 2001, p.22). According to Lillis (2001), this sort of institutional response indicates a particular theory of language and frame of reference, characterised by three things:
the construction of the problem and solution as textual rather than related more broadly to issues of contexts, participants and practices – hence a focus on developing writing outside mainstream disciplinary modules;
the „institutional claim to transparency‟, where “whilst the language of students is made visible and problematised, the language of the disciplines and the pedagogic practices in which these are embedded usually remains invisible, taken as „given‟” (p.22);
the perception that the problem, being textually based, is simple to identify and resolve.
To the aforementioned might be added a fourth characteristic: the assumption that the problem lies within the student.
While I do not believe that this frame of reference underpins The Writing Place, the location of this support outside students‟ mainstream disciplinary modules does present some challenges in terms of facilitating students‟ acquisition of discipline-specific academic literacies, as indicated in Chapter 1.
In their study, Goodier and Parkinson (2005) noted that two types of genre are set for students in the Faculty: a general academic genre (represented by the research essay/paper/project, which Table 2.2 reveals is the prevalent genre type set in the Faculty), and business genres that are specific to management studies disciplines (represented by the report and case study). Following his study of writing in a range of disciplines in a business faculty in the USA, Zhu noted that business genres are oriented towards decision making, problem solving and team work; require students to take on business roles and write for a business audience (while simultaneously demonstrating learning to an academic audience); involve the synthesis, analysis, application and evaluation of a range of information sources; and require strong persuasive and rhetorical skills (2004b). However, the existence of different disciplinary preferences (in terms of problem-solving and decision-making tools and information sources) led Zhu to suggest that „„‟business‟ may not constitute a single and unified discourse community” (2004b, p.131) - a suggestion that has been supported by other authors (for example Brown, 1997; Ottewill et al, 2005). As previously mentioned, this study views Marketing as a Discourse community in its own right.
As noted in the previous section, the work done under the umbrella of „academic literacies‟ is of use to this study, but also poses some limitations. While it does bring the focus more onto academic settings and on disciplines - which is in line with the interests of this study - the main focus is still on meaning (and especially on writing) within the context of disciplines, rather than on the disciplines themselves. As indicated earlier, for the purposes of this study, it is necessary for me to show how Marketing operates as a discipline. Important in this regard is to explore what influence the form or structure of knowledge underpinning Marketing might have on lecturers‟ and students‟ practices. An academic literacies framework does not allow for this sort of exploration.
However, Legitimation Code Theory, which focuses on the study of knowledge and education and which has been applied extensively in disciplinary settings, does enable this work to be done, and will thus be discussed in the next section.