BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE FOR STUDY
5.4 Research Context and Research Participants
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“Memo writing refers to the analytic thoughts about the codes; they provide clarification from coding to reporting” (Gibbs, 2007: 31). I used the memos to identify the emerging patterns and explanations. Richardson (2004) states that “researcher’s memo writing can be organized into different categories of note taking such as observational notes (what the researcher saw, heard); methodological notes (on how to collect data); theoretical notes (notes to yourself on hypotheses, connections, alternative interpretations) and personal notes (your own anxieties, pleasures, doubts about the research)” (489).
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The purposively sampled population for this study comprised both the disciplinary specialists and the academic literacy specialists teaching within the FP in science. All these RPs were selected because of their involvement in the teaching of the foundation modules offered in the FP. The disciplinary specialists taught one of the following foundation modules in science, i.e. biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics, while the academic literacy specialists taught Communication in Science (SCOM). It was on the bases of their professional roles as educators and because of their expertise and/or experience in teaching students at foundation level that they were selected as RPs. I selected them for this study with the assumption that they might be able to provide in-depth data with regard to the focus of this study: to understand what discipline-specific literacies do academic literacy specialists and disciplinary specialists who teach in the foundation programme believe are required by students to learn science. This assumption was because these RPs by virtue of being employed within the CSA, have had accesses to discussions of FP students’
understanding and competencies of discipline-specific literacies in science. These discussions were, over time, raised at formal forums, i.e. staff meetings; disciplinary/inter- disciplinary/planning/teaching and learning committee meetings; as well as examinations/CSA Board of Studies meetings.
At the time this study was undertaken, thirty-seven academics48 were involved in the teaching of students within the CSA. Twenty-eight of these academics were employed to teach students in the FP in science. Of these, eight taught SCOM while twenty taught one of the following foundation modules in science offered in the FP: biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics. The purposively sampled population was made up of twenty RPs. There were sixteen disciplinary specialists teaching in the foundation disciplines of biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics, as well as four academic literacy specialists teaching SCOM. Due to the majority of the FP staff being employed on fixed-term contracts, there existed a high employee turnover rate within the CSA. It is because of this that some of the teaching staff only had short periods of three months to a year of teaching experience in the FP. Over and above this, some of them had very little experience and exposure to teaching students in science access programmes.
48 Twenty eight academics taught in the BSc4 (Foundation) programme while nine academics taught in the BSc4 (Augmented) programme.
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Given the nature of the research problem in this study, the qualitative approach was necessary as the responses from the RPs was one of the ways in which I aimed to acquire a holistic account to engage with the research problem. Lincoln and Guba (1985) state that
“purposive sampling enables the full scope of issues to be explored” (220). In respect of this study, this meant that for RPs to be able to contribute to the study, they would have had to have some knowledge of the philosophy of the science access programme. It was because of this that I had isolated teaching experience (two years and above) within the FP as a criterion for participant selection in the research. The RPs’ teaching experience in the FP ranged from two to ten years. The sample was homogenous in that all the RPs only taught within the FP at UKZN and they were employed as either tutors or senior tutors or lecturers. The sample was representative in that there was an equal number of RPs per module in the FP. Table 3 below presents the RPs in the various disciplines in the FP in science who were part of the sample in this study.
Name49 (Research Participant) Foundation Module
Shane Physics
Cindy Academic Literacy
Raj Mathematics
Lara Biology
Seema Chemistry
Siva Mathematics
Dennis Chemistry
Annah Physics
Iqbal Academic Literacy
Lisha Biology
Vusi Mathematics
Sudeer Academic Literacy
Kenneth Mathematics
Nancy Chemistry
Josh Biology
Petrus Physics
Rabia Academic Literacy
Teresa Biology
Jessie Chemistry
Susan Physics
Table 4: List of Research Participants (RPs) in the study
In respect of the above sample, there were four RPs in each of the following foundation modules offered in the FP: biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics as well as four RPs who taught SCOM. In this study, the RPs who taught the science modules in the FP
49 On condition of the ethics of anonymity and at the request of the majority of the research participants in this study, the research participants’ names have been replaced with pseudonyms.
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are referred to as Disciplinary Specialists, which has been abbreviated as DSs50. In this study, the RPs who taught the academic literacy module are referred to as Academic Literacy Specialists, which has been abbreviated as ALSs51. The RPs’ academic qualifications were in one of the following fields of tertiary study: pure sciences, social sciences, education and English literature. To assure participant anonymity, I assigned a pseudonym to each RP selected for this study. Since all the RPs taught one of the modules offered in the FP, I was keen to identify similarities and differences among the RPs’ views in response to the research problem and the research questions.