Literacy practices of english second language first year students at a university of technology.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.This dissertation reports on a study involving English Second Language first year students at a University of Technology. In this study, I argue that English Second Language first year students’ early literacy practices have an influence on their academic literacy. Sociocultural theory serves as the theoretical framework, and, using four data generation methods I aimed at eliciting participants’ stories on what they considered to have been their early literacy practices and how they understood those practices to have influenced their current academic literacy, was used. The participants were able to narrate their stories clearly through the varied data generation methods. This study adopted an interpretivist paradigm, allowing me to hear and understand participants’ perceived realities on their early and current literacy practices. Participants realised that their academic performance was shaped by their home literacy environment, and primary and secondary education. They understood that even though an English rich home literacy environment and English-medium schools might have better prepared some of them to comprehend English at university, academic literacy, particularly academic writing, remained a foreign concept with which they all seemed to grapple. Participants were aware that they needed to adapt to the new university literacies and that they were largely responsible for the assimilation of these university literacies in order to perform positively. Additionally, participants felt empowered to participate in this study, as it allowed them introspection, awakened the desire to improve academically and enabled a cathartic experience, as some were able to let go of negative past events, which affected present literacy experiences. One implication from the findings is the acknowledgement that fluency in English does not necessarily imply competency in academic literacy and academic writing. This dissertation adds to the discourse on academic literacy and English Second Language first year students’ literacies, by demonstrating that the combination of an interpretive paradigm together with sociocultural theory, enables an understanding of the literacy practices of English Second Language first year students at a University of Technology

Transgressing for Access: A Call for Higher Education Reform to Support Black Females in STEM

There continues to be the global demand for a qualified workforce in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Yet, for Black females in South Africa this means combating the legacy of Apartheid to overcome challenges due to race and gender. This paper draws data from a qualitative study of four Black South African females in STEM careers. Through their voices they identify ways in which they transgress gender and race to gain access to STEM careers. Further, their families transgress cultural norms in order to offer support for unfamiliar career pathways. Their narratives call for a transformative change in higher education to address the physical and safety needs of Black females in South Africa and the removal of the burden of educational fees for Black families. This is echoed in the 2015 #FEESMUSTFALL movement. Finally, there is a need for the creation of quality higher education institutions near Black townships

Global Apartheid: A Black Feminist Analysis of Motherwork in Townships

This thesis examines intersectional oppression operating within a South African township through the framework of Black Feminist Thought. Due to colonialism and the lingering effects of Apartheid-era policies, experiences of Black women in South Africa - particularly motherhood - must be navigated in a constant state of intersecting racism, sexism, and classism. In this current study, daily lived experiences are documented in thick, descriptive detail through portraiture, describing a day in the life of Somanga, a mother and non-governmental organization (NGO) employee residing in a township in the outskirts of Cape Town. Themes of conditional and individual violence, motherwork, othermothering, and racialized exploitation in the workplace are documented, with parallel analyses for Black women in the post-colonial nations of Brazil and the United States. Somanga’s portrait contributes to transnational conversations of Black Feminist epistemology, extending beyond the primarily White, colonial-centered documentation of South African history and contemporary research frames. Ways in which to resist global intersecting oppressions of Black women in the context of Black Feminist Thought are discussed

Negotiation of learning and identity among first-year medical students

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Teaching in Higher Education on 2 January 2013 available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13562517.2012.753050.The demand for medical schools to produce competent doctors to meet health needs in South Africa has increased. In response to this challenge, the Faculty of Health Sciences at a relatively elite university introduced a problem-based, socially relevant curriculum in 2002. The classroom environment is designed to facilitate a learning context where students from diverse backgrounds engage critically and learn from each other. This study draws on data from a larger qualitative case study to describe how a group of 'black' students who failed their first semester experienced the school–university transition. Drawing on post-structuralist theory, this article analyses how the students negotiated learning and identity. The argument is made that the students re-positioned themselves in deficit, outsider subject positions in order to survive their first year. This article ends with a consideration of the implications for developing a learning environment which recognises difference and fosters diversity

A longitudinal study of students' negotiation of language literacy and identity

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies on 5 December 2011, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.2989/16073614.2011.633366.The article is based on a longitudinal, qualitative case study of 20 Social Science students at a historically 'white', English-medium, South African university. The participants in the study are all from disadvantaged educational backgrounds and/ or are speakers of English as a second language. Post-structuralist theory is used to analyse students' shifts in language and literacy attitudes and practices and in constructions of self over the course of their undergraduate years. The paper describes students' ambivalence as they attempted to constitute appropriate subjectivity and become academically successful within the discourses of the academy, whilst retaining connections to home discourses. The participants used their linguistic resources and social science discourses to process, rationalise and neutralise their ambivalence. The paper describes how they started off trying to maintain a notion of single identity, but over time became adept, self-conscious and less conflicted about shifting identities across contexts

Insiders or outsiders? : the rhetoric of compromise in post-Reconstruction institutionally-sponsored African American literacy.

This dissertation examines the history of Berea College in Kentucky. Founded before the Civil War, it was a small, private southern college that educated blacks, whites, women and men equally, an early model of cooperation and social harmony. Its rigorous college curriculum was modeled after northern elite institutions, and black graduates before 1904 held a variety of positions: professors, principals and superintendents, ministers, attorneys, physicians, and civil engineers. However, in 1904 Kentucky passed legislation requiring blacks and whites to be educated separately. Berea College set aside funding and established the all-black Lincoln Institute near Louisville. While Lincoln Institute was presented as a positive achievement, it offered no college department and only provided secondary and industrial levels of education, similar to Tuskegee in Alabama and Hampton in Virginia. Although Lincoln Institute\u27s trustees specified arrangements for “the higher education of such graduates of this department as show special character and ability for leadership,” this promise was never realized. Using literacy theory and archival research, this research emphasizes differences between working class and classical educations, in education for freedom versus servitude, and places the loss of access to a collegiate-level education for blacks into a larger historical milieu. Chapter I identifies the boundaries and theoretical foundations of this archival research, and sets the historical context for the more detailed evidence in Chapters II-III. Chapter II examines institutional, national, and state sponsorship of education and uses W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington as examples of national pressures brought to bear on Kentucky. Chapter III focuses on community sponsorship through individual voices affected by the policy changes at the College. Finally, Chapter IV concludes the research with a brief summary and argues the importance of both institutional and community sponsorship in understanding the current challenges of encouraging diversity and social equality on college campuses

Lighting up learning: mathematics becoming less of a \u27killer subject\u27 in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

This paper reports the findings of an evaluative study of an initiative, in its sixth year of implementation, enhancing the learning and teaching of mathematics in 20 disadvantaged secondary schools in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa, twenty years after democracy. Findings highlight the importance of initial and ongoing professional development for under-qualified teachers. Support and strategies that have enhanced the achievement in mathematics of learners in these still under-resourced schools, are described

Signposting foundation phase teachers’ professional identities in selected Western Cape primary schools, South Africa

The aim of this article is to report on the Foundation Phase (FP) teachers’ professional identities in two primary schools in the Western Cape. This is meant to serve as a basis for understanding teachers’ identities with regard to their teaching experience, qualifications, specialised knowledge base, and ongoing professional development. The article is based on data collected by means of a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with the FP teachers in two township schools where isiXhosa is used as the medium of instruction in the Foundation Phase (Grades R to Three). We argue that while teacher identity research has received attention across the globe in the past four decades, little is known about the implications of teacher professional identity for literacy teaching in South African classrooms, especially where an African language is used as a language of learning and teaching. Our findings reveal the pluricentric nature of the FP teachers’ qualifications and backgrounds. We conclude that FP teachers’ professional identity (TPI) cannot be conceptualised in a simplistic and unidimensional way, but can be viewed as an intersectional construct that impacts on literacy instructional practices