The things (we think) we (ought to) do: Ideological processes and practices in teaching

A

'Black children in a white school' :language ideology and identity in a desegregated South African primary school

This thesis is an account of a qualitative study, which set out to investigate how black\ud multilingual children in their first year of formal schooling are socialised into the\ud cultural practices, particularly the English language practices, and ethos at a former\ud white English medium school in South Africa. This study is interdisciplinary drawing\ud on social theories and poststructuralist epistemology to explore the relationship\ud between ideology, language/knowledge practices and identity. In particular, I consider\ud the discursive construction of English as legitimate language, while other forms of\ud representation are viewed as 'abnormal'.\ud Set in the context of post-apartheid South Africa, the study was located in a\ud desegregated primary school in a suburban area of Johannesburg. Data was collected\ud using ethnographic methods and drawing on the traditions of school ethnography.\ud Qualitative data collection methods included non-participant observation, video\ud recordings of classroom interactions, audio recordings of interviews, and learners'\ud tasks. Forms of discourse analysis, blending approaches from sociology, education\ud and applied linguistics, are used to analyse social interaction as a discursive site where\ud resources are validated and marginalised, and as a site of identity construction.\ud Bourdieu's notions of linguistic capital, linguistic markets and linguistic habitus\ud inform my analysis. The analysis will also be located in Foucault's work, which sets\ud out the constitutive forces, and discursive practices by which identities are constructed\ud and negotiated within institutional contexts. The study reveals that proficiency in\ud English, and access to specific cultural practices associated with English, enables\ud learners with those resources to claim certain identity positions while those who do\ud not have access to them become disadvantaged and marginalised. Despite the\ud linguistically diverse nature of the institution, the school practices, discourse and\ud ethos work toward monolingualism. I argue that the value and legitimacy attached to\ud English plays a significant role in how black multilingual children in year one of\ud schooling imagine themselves as members of this community. Through making\ud visible, the ideological practices and assimilationist activities, especially with regard\ud to dominant language/knowledge, this study hopes to raise questions of inequality and\ud social justice in a society in transformation

(Un)reliable assessment : A case study.

The drive towards quality assurance at South African universities, with 'consistency' of approach being one of its key features, has profound implications for assessment policies and practices in relation to equity. In this article we present a case study discussion of an investigation we undertook, as a department, into certain anomalies which arose in the assessment of a particular group of post-graduate students' research reports. We were puzzled by the variability in the marks awarded by three different markers of the same reports and set out to investigate what factors were producing this 'inter-marker [un]reliability'. Through a content and discourse analysis of the different assessors' written reports, we uncovered the implicit assessment categories and criteria which assessors were working with in their assessments. We discovered shared categories and criteria, as well as differences in how these were weighted. In the interests of equity and increased inter-marker reliability, we have developed a set of banded criteria on generic features of the research report which we intend to develop a set of banded criteria on generic features of the research report which we intend to trial. We also surfaced two unresolved issues: the use of language and the role of the writer's 'voice' in the research report. As a result of this investigation, we argue that the 'consistency' of assessment within and across universities aspired to by quality assurers (such as the HEQC in the South African context) is difficult to achieve and much still depends on professional judgement, intellectual position and personal taste

A study in language contact

The objective of this thesis is to report on a research project investigating the language behaviour of Sotho-English bilingual students at the University of Cape Town (hereafter UCT). Sotho is used here as an umbrella term to refer to the Sotho group of languages; Sesotho (Southern Sotho), Sepedi (Northern Sotho) and Setswana. UCT is a multilingual institution in the sense that the students, and to some extent the lecturers, are proficient in a number of languages including English, Afrikaans, and a wide range of African languages from within and outside South Africa. At the time of the study in 1997 UCT was multiracial with a majority of white students and a minority of African students. At a general level the concept of language contact is the superordinate linguistic and philosophical category underpinning the thesis. At a more specific level, the thesis examines three related concepts; code-switching, code-mixing and borrowing. It is based on theoretically and empirically founded distinctions between code-switching, code-mixing and borrowing. Empirically the data was collected surreptitiously. The ethical questions about who researches what and whom are acknowledged. Permission to use the covertly collected data was sought after the recording from all informants and was granted. The data from the covert recordings was triangulated with interviews with the informants. Theoretically the thesis uses a number of approaches to describe and explain language contact: structuralist, interactionist and psycho-social approaches although the dominant framework is a structuralist one. Sociologically the thesis demonstrates that code-switching constitutes a variety in which speakers exhibit differing degrees of skilled abilities and may be unmarked or marked depending on the extent which it reinforces or violates community norms. The linguistic varieties must be understood in terms of individual repertoires and community speech economies. Code-switching may represent a normal, routine way of use or could be said to violate the expectations of how one should behave. Bibliography: pages 102-10