BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE FOR STUDY
2.9 Epistemological Access in the HE Environment
Students need to acquire the literacies of specific disciplines to become members of the discipline. For McKenna (2009), this process of becoming part of a culture requires both engagement and immersion (13). Bartholomae (1985) describes this as the process of acculturation, stating that “to become members of a particular discipline, students have to appropriate (or be appropriated by) a specialized discourse, and they have to do this as though they were members of the academy” (4). This issue of acculturation is linked to
‘epistemological access’. For Morrow (1994), this means that “mere formal access to institutions which distribute knowledge is different from and, not [a] sufficient condition for ‘epistemological access’, which is about learning the standards of practice or learning how to become a participant in academic practice” (77). In this respect, Clarence (2010) explains that “the academic staff and the students need to become explicitly aware of their discipline’s ‘epistemological core,’ of the kind of knowledge valued by the discipline, of
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what kinds of knowledge are excluded from it and of which linguistic constructions are best used to represent those values” (19). The essence of this is that once students have been able to gain admission into HEIs and become part of the higher education process, it is the institutional environment that should aid in their acquisition of ‘epistemological access’.
Rollnick (2010) elaborates on this issue of epistemological access by stating that “in order to become a participant in academic practice, students have to learn the forms of knowledge and accepted standards of the practice which may also be considered as
‘gaining access’ to the particular discipline” (93). This can be achieved if those involved in teaching at any level are able to encourage student participation in the learning environment. This point of view is further supported by Boughey (2005) who states that epistemological access is more than the provision of social and academic skills required to cope with academic learning. “It is about bridging the gaps between the respective worlds students and lecturers draw on” (Boughey, 2005: 240). She suggests that foundation programmes should be designed in a way that allows for engagement with the demands of the content material, enabling students to become participants in their discipline.
The FP in science should be able to develop students holistically in terms of epistemology, intellectual capacity and social functioning. Simply put, the foundation programmes should enable students to acquire discourse and also assist them in immersing themselves in the culture of the university. In other words, students need to become actively engaged in university activities; they would have to participate actively in the different disciplines.
The students would have to learn the ground rules of a discipline which are the values, attitudes and ways of thinking characteristic of a discipline. This would include the acquisition of new knowledge in a specific discipline and the way in which new knowledge is produced.
Conclusion
This Chapter focussed on two crucial issues in this study, educational disadvantage and the LoLT especially for EAL students, linking these to the need for the provision of institutional academic support in the context of higher education, with specific reference to the provision of academic literacy. The salient issue of the nature of academic tasks and
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their dependency on well-developed CALP (Cummins, 1979) has been provided. The rationale for including an understanding of CALP (Cummins, 1979) is that academic reading and writing require CALP (Cummins, 1979). This Chapter has also shown the evolution of the concept of ‘literacy’ from being a mere reference to being able to read and write ‘text’ to one that incorporates multiple dimensions. One of the major issues that this Chapter has dealt with is that of the provision of academic literacy in the tertiary sector.
This is especially relevant in this study which explores the acquisition of such literacies within the domains of not only science, but the science disciplines that cater specifically for students’ from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, who enter the HE arena confronted with language barriers (especially in light of the LoLT), complex readings and writing genres as well as the challenges of communicating disciplinary knowledge using the appropriate disciplinary discourse practices. This thus required a commentary on the role of DSs in disciplinary discourse facilitation, to enable participation in the university learning environment. The discussion of academic literacy is particularly relevant especially in the light of the inclusion of an academic literacy course in the foundation programme in science in this study. One of the particularly salient issues is that of the transfer of literacies across domains, especially from academic literacy, especially in light of infusing literacy with content. An understanding of disciplinary literacy is essential in light of the issue of discipline-specific literacies in this study. An understanding of Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom et al. 1956) has been outlined primarily for its use in devising performance and assessment tasks and questions in the foundation modules in science.
Chapter 3 offers a comprehensive outline of the theoretical and conceptual framework that informed and directed this study.
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CHAPTER 3
THEORIES AND CONCEPTS TO THINK ABOUT THE PHENOMENON
Introduction
The previous Chapter made reference to the challenges presented to students who enter the HE sector where the LoLT is not their native language. They would have to use the LoLT to engage with conceptually dense academic texts especially if their CALP (Cummins, 1979) is inadequate for such textual engagement. The Chapter also offered the various definitions of literacy, and their role in negotiating academic texts. Included in the Chapter, was a description of institutional support measures offered in higher education sectors, focusing specifically on the development of AL. This was followed by an outline of academic writing and a discussion on Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom et al. 1956). The latter is useful for formulating questions in science-related tasks. The Chapter concluded with reference to the key issues of discourse facilitation, acculturation and Morrow’s (1994) “epistemological access”.
This Chapter deals with the theoretical and conceptual framework of this study. It provides the theories, core concepts, terminologies and ideas that contribute to an exploration of this study that focuses on the acquisition of discipline-specific literacies for science in the FP.
This Chapter commences by exploring the theory of New Literacy Studies (NLS) (Street, 1984; Gee, 1990) distinguishing, too, between the autonomous and ideological models of NLS. This has thus necessitated an explanation of Discourse (Gee, 1990) in the academic field as well as a discussion around concepts such as ‘discourse practices’ and ‘discourse community’ (Gee, 1990). This Chapter then distinguishes between ‘primary’ and
‘secondary’ discourse (Gee, 1999) and examines Bernstein’s (1971) ‘restricted’ and
‘elaborated’ codes in use in differing situations and circumstances. Included in this Chapter, is an explanation of Bourdieu’s (1977) ‘cultural capital’.
The purpose of academic discourse as a mechanism to indicate the ability to participate within the academic environment is outlined. Owing to the need to be able to use academic language appropriately, this Chapter pays attention to the nature of three different academic literacies models (Lea and Street, 2006), i.e. study skills model, academic socialization model and the academic literacies model. A detailed explanation of Halliday’s Systemic
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Functional Linguistics (SFL) (1978; 1985a) is offered to show the relationship between language, text and context. This Chapter informs of the nature of Grammatical Metaphor (GM) (Halliday and Martin, 1993), paying specific regard to nominalisation and lexical density, especially for its use in the language of science as well as an outline of the meaning of ‘construal’ (Langacker, 1987). Thereafter, is an explanation of ‘genres’ and genre pedagogy (Hyland, 2002b) which are useful for this study which focuses on the genres required for conveying science discourse. This Chapter ends with a portrayal of pedagogic practices such as Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Vygotsky, 1978b) and scaffolding (Wood et al. 1976) which are efficient teaching and learning tools to assist students’ in their acquisition of science knowledge.