Representing students

Chapter 3 Shaping influence of discourses

3.6 Representing students

My review of literature indicated that the definitions of literacy discussed in the previous sections are closely linked to the representations of students. Given that the dominant representations/conceptualisations of literacy are drawn from the field medicine, the resultant representations of students have resulted in discourses that

‗pathologise‘ students (see Boughey, 2008; 2000; Lea and Street, 2000). Moreover, these medical metaphors have been used to construct the image of the remedial student who suffers from some kind of disability, deficit, or defect (Rose, 1985 pp.

452-453). While these negative constructions of students and their writing practices have been challenged, there is evidence that these representations still dominate educational practice in most South African universities (see Boughey, 2009).

With regards to the deficits, a number of explanations have been given. For instance, there is a body of research which indicates that students enter university without having acquired the necessary literacy competencies to enable them to handle the curriculum at that level (Parkinson, Jackson, Kirkwood and Padayachee 2007; Rose, 2005; Yeld and Haeck, 1997). This body of work considers factors such as cultural background and language as the major causes of these deficits (Dison and Button, 1999). Hence, deficit has been defaulted to a certain group of students who do not speak English; the language of instruction in most institutions, as a first language and the explanation for underachievement is framed within a comparison of the mismatch between culture of the home and that of the university. Writing as early as 1985, Rose in The language of exclusion: writing instruction in the university argues that practitioners have applied harmful representations to minority students who do not fit the image of the ‗traditional student‘. These sentiments have been echoed

over the years in a number of critiques by international scholars such as Scribner and Cole (1988); Street (1984) and Gee, (1996). Thus, we are confronted with an old problem manifesting itself in a different context.

In the South African context, it is evident that the dominant discourse emerging from deficit conceptualisations of literacy has led to the attribution of failure to students‘

individual traits. Boughey (2012a p. 137) argues that in cases where the language of learning and teaching is not the home language of the students ―ability in an additional language is also cited‖ and this ―too tends to be constructed as an attribute of the individual‖. In a systematic literature review of postgraduate research on academic literacy, Bengesai (2010) found that terms such as ‗disadvantaged‘,

‗linguistic disadvantage‘ (Collett, 2002), ‗underpreparedness‘, ‗limited language proficiency‘ (Collett, 2002; Hugo, 1999), ‗handicapped‘ (Esterhuizen, 2001), and

‗educationally disadvantaged‘ (Yeld, 2001), were euphemistic ways to describe black students. Indeed, in the study by Bengesai (2010) it is clear that these labels were reserved for black students; a finding also supported by Thesen and van Pletzen (2006); Boughey (2002) and Thesen (1997). As a consequence, as black students enter higher education, they encounter these identity categories, which presupposes both the explanation for the ‗deficit‘ and the remedy (Gutierrez et al., 2009).

Internationally, Discourses that distinguish between ‗expert‘ and ‗novice‘ writers have been used to talk about students and to justify what is commonly termed ‗basic writing‘ courses. Consequentially, students who do not fit the identity of the ideal student are placed in these courses. Just like in the South African context, the label

‗basic writers‘ has been assigned to EFL/ESL students. Rose (1985 p. 193) has referred to this as the ―language of exclusion‖- ―a discourse that helps to exclude from the academic community students who are in need of repair‖. There are a number of reasons to support Rose‘s argument. First, students start their educational life already with a ‗deficit‘. This creates tension between the constraints these labels place on the students and their acquisition of academic literacy. Second, students represented as such are often enrolled in extra language support courses, which at times are non-credit bearing courses. Thus, they have to cope with an extra workload. Rose sees these remediation courses as a ―scholastic quarantine‖ until the disease has been remedied. On a similar note, Picard (2006) questions the logic of

delayed teaching of Discourse; what she calls ‗waiting to be academic‘, a situation that arises when students are placed in language courses that ground them in grammar before they can enrol in disciplinary courses.

This critique does not suggest that I am ignorant of the fact that terms such as

‗disadvantaged‘ or ‗underprepared‘ have been generated by South African HEIs in an effort to manage the transformational process which arose as a result of the massification of higher education. I do agree that some form of representation is needed to manage the educational process. As such, while accepting that these labels are a form of institutional Discourse (Thesen, 1997), I am also aware that the negative effects of this way of representing students are not always intentional. At the same time, I acknowledge that these representations can result in the exclusion and frustration of many ESL learners. Therefore, my critique is concerned with the constraints that are placed on students when this representation is done uncritically.

I suggest a few points in support of such a critique.

First, it is important to note that it is the institutions that administratively categorise and identify students in terms of labels that they (the institutions) have constructed for them. In this case, the labels and representations used are socially and ideologically constructed; hence they must be opened to critique. It also goes without saying that these labels present student‘s challenges as rooted in their status as outsiders to academic Discourse (Boughey, 2000, p. 296). Kubota (2001) calls this the ‗othering‘ of ESL learners because it essentialises their culture and language as if it were static and monolithic. This is supported by Gutierrez et al.(2009), who suggest that such comparisons are problematic because they assume that home and school practices are static and homogeneous within a given cultural group.

Moreover, the dichotomy ignores the fact that students develop a number of literacy practices across a number of contexts -hybrid Discourses- which students acquire as they interact with agents in the community, school and home context (Gee, 1996).

Hence, though this understanding of a cultural mismatch has been pivotal in pointing out issues of difference, it needs to be opened to critique because such sweeping overgeneralisations of students prevent academics from understanding students as individual writers. Pretorius validates this critique when she states that ―if language proficiency alone were the basis of skilled reading, all L1 students would

automatically be good readers‖ (Pretorious, 2000 p. 36). By logical extension, if language proficiency was an end in itself, then all L1 speakers of the English language, the language of learning in South African HEIs, would automatically acquire Discourse. Unfortunately, this is not so, and a number of scholars (see Boughey, 2012; 2009; 2000; Gee, 2001; 1996; 1992; Lea and Street, 2000) have dedicated their scholarship to proving that Discourse is more than language. As such, it would not be erroneous to conclude that these dominant perceptions of ESL students are not manifestations of ―objective truths, but are constructed by discourses‖ (Kubota, 2001 p. 10). Thus, they are truth-effects, which unfortunately, have been sustained without being opened to critique. This raises a very important question: Have students been fairly represented?

Finally, I take on a personal critique of these discourses of difference. I know how it feels to be labelled, or spoken of in such a way as ‗underprepared‘ or

‗disadvantaged‘; after all, I am a ‗black‘ student myself. It never is a good feeling because it leaves one feeling hopeless and powerless. It takes away self-esteem and the motivation to succeed. Thus, in attempting to understand and deal with disadvantage, institutions have created another form of disadvantage. It is this understanding of representation and its effect that forms the crux of this study.

There are a number of scholars working in socio-cultural theories in the South African context who posit that students, irrespective of race or linguistic backgrounds, face one or more of a number of challenges such as learning in an additional language, the history of disadvantage and having to adopt or learn academic literacy (see for instance Boughey, 2000; McKenna, 2004a; Leibowitz, 2004; Simpson and Ryneveld, 2010). This work has been instrumental in building theory for academic literacy that is relevant to the South African context and has created a representation of students that is sensitive to the context in which students acquire academic literacy. Bartholomae (1985 p. 273) advises that the major challenges faced by students when they enter university is that they have to

―reinvent the university by assembling and mimicking its language, finding some compromise between idiosyncrasy, a personal history and the requirements of convention, the history of the discipline‖. These students have to learn to write in an academic voice which they are not familiar with. This reinvention however, is not an

easy process yet it determines their chances of success in the academy. Support for such a view of students has been advanced by scholars such as Gee (2001; 1996);

Street (1984, 2001) and Boughey (2009; 2008; 2002; 2000); van Heerden, 2000;

McKenna (2004b) who lament a dissonance that exists between this understanding of theory and practice. For instance, in a PhD study which explored undergraduate students‘ experience of acquiring the discourse of engineering, van Heerden (2000) found that the instrumental approach to writing and literacy, which is firmly located in the understanding of language deficiencies ―quietly perpetuates itself in many engineering classrooms‖ (p. 12). This finding is also supported by other studies such as Boughey (2009) and Moore (1998). Boughey (2009), in a meta-analysis of five HEIs in South Africa, found that the deficit discourse was still dominant in higher education, in spite of research that pointed to social understandings of the student experience. In a critique of the South African context, Mgqwashu (2011); Boughey (2008;2002;2000) and McKenna (2004b) concur that describing the challenge that students face as ‗second language problems‘ is highly seductive in South Africa because it rids of the apartheid mentality of attributing educational challenges to differences in cognition. McKenna (2004a, p. 167) suggests the representation

―function[s] to absolve the academy from dealing with politically sensitive issues of culture, by indicating that the difficulties students have all relate to a lack of English instruction‖. Thesen and van Pletzen (2006) conclude that this persistence points to a) the legacy of apartheid and b) difficulties in altering patterns of thinking about institutional provision. Thus, these scholars implicate history and institutional orders in the negative representations of students.

International critiques of the deficit notions of students and literacy have taken a number of forms. There are those who have based their arguments on studies of second language acquisition (see for instance Shaughnessy‘s (1977) Error and expectations and Bartholomae‘s (1980) The study of error. At the same time, there are those who have taken a socio-political perspective (see for instance Shor, 2001).

Still, there are some who have taken up the critique from an identity/ social practices perspective (NLS scholars such as Gee 2001; 1996; Street, 1984; 2001). All these critiques provide conceptual stepping stones for this study.

Shaughnessy (1977) examined the types of mistakes that students categorised as

‗basic writers‘ make in their writing. While her analysis was meant to bring to the fore the nature of ‗basic writing‘ in an attempt to assist writing teachers deal with students‘ writing, she also noted that the way ‗basic writers‘ are treated has got implications for their development and success in the academy. This is because once students are categorised as ‗basic writers‘, teachers tend to focus on formulaic flaws in the writing, and nothing else. Yet, sometimes these errors are evidence of learning in progress and academics will need therefore to understand the logic behind such errors. In support of such a stance, Kapp and Bangeni (2009) urge academics to use the interaction between student writing and their Discourses as a platform for understanding the challenges they face. Shaughnessy concludes that the field of basic writing needs to take a new perspective on writing. Although she did not refer to the social turn, or social practices framework, her call for a new perspective attests to a need for different ways of talking about students and about writing.

Bartholomae (1980 p. 253) elaborated this work and concluded that what is called

‗basic writing‘ is ―not evidence of arrested cognitive development, arrested language development or unruly or unpredictable language use‖. If we take Bartholomae‘s position, it becomes fundamentally erroneous to represent students as having limited language proficiency. To illustrate his point, Bartholomae uses a T-unit⁵ analysis in the following example of a sentence from a student.

Using a T-Unit analysis reveals that this student, considered a ‗basic writer‘, did not write an immature sentence. This is because in both sentences there are more than two t-units, suggesting that this is a complex sentence. An observation by Bartholomae, which I have also found to be true of ESL and English Additional Language students (EAL) in the South African context, is that they write far more

5 A T-unit analysis is a minimum terminable unit of a sentence that can be used to measure the smallest group of words that can stand alone or be considered a grammatical unit. It was introduced by K.W Hunt in 1964 and has been extensively used in second language acquisition research.

The time of my life when I learned something and which resulted in a change in which I look upon things. This would be the period of my life when I graduated from elementary school to high school (p. 254).

complicated sentences than their English L1 counterparts ―attempting to do more than they can‖ and a target syntax that is more than what the convention requires (Bartholomae, 1980 p. 254). In this case, what is normally referred to by academics as failed sentences are, in Bartholomae‘s view;

 stages of learning rather than failure;

 evidence that students are using writing as an occasion to learn (1980. p.

254).

What this suggests is that academics need to re-consider their perceptions of the ESL/EAL writer and invoke pedagogical strategies that enable these students to fully develop their writing practices. Thus, both Bartholomae and Shaughnessy provide pragmatic evidence that can help practitioners move away from deficit notions of the student by perceiving writing as developmental. Taking this position therefore makes it not only unfair, but also unethical to judge students‘ writing at the time when they are still learning. Practitioners need to understand that as students develop in the discipline, they further approximate the conventions of the discipline. Gee‘s (1996) theorisation on the acquisition of Discourses provides support for this argument. If academic literacy is a secondary Discourse, it can only be effectively acquired through interaction within the context, rather than learnt in the course of a semester.

Students need more opportunities to interact with the Discourse for them to master the conventions of their disciplines. Thus, academic literacy should be inherent in every course in the curriculum throughout the degree programme rather than something offered at the beginning; as a quick fix. This understanding of learning as situated in a context is affirmed by Lave and Wenger (1991) who see learning as process of moving from the periphery to the centre through a process of ‗legitimate peripheral participation‘. Thus, the more students write the closer they get to full participation within the discourse. If this is the case, then academic writing can be seen as having two dimensions, competence and performance. This suggests that students have the capacity to learn how to write, provided the necessary mechanisms are put in place, for instance, ‗is the discourse made explicit?‘

Performance varies, therefore, as students develop. So when we represent students, are we considering performance or competence? This is a very crucial question that needs to be properly addressed in higher education.

Shor (2001), on the other hand, takes up a critical literacy approach in his critique of representation of students and literacy, and suggests that educational and socio- economic inequality has bred the concept of remediation. Thus, instead of academics examining the inequalities that exist in society, they have concentrated on the students and the focus is on changing people/students more than the educational system in which they confront learning. In consequence, such an approach transfers blame from the system to the individual, encouraging students to

―internalize fault, to blame themselves for their own failures, especially on entry exams and in first year writing classes where their errors are legion‖ (Shor, 2001 p.

40). Thus Shor, is highly critical of courses that purport to remediate deficits, and implicates such courses in the perpetuation of social injustice. This view is affirmed by Gutierrez et al. (2009), who state that pedagogic activities framed within a deficit/difference context are problematic because they can potentially affirm the difference they serve to resolve.