Browsing by Author "Archer, Arlene"
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- ItemOpen Access“All these wonderful things”: the place of digital resources in newly qualified English language and literacy teachers' practices, from higher education to high schools(2021) Campbell, Eduard; Kell, Catherinel; Archer, ArleneUnderstandings of what counts as literacy and of how language is best taught are in considerable flux in the present period. The proliferation of the digital is often cited as a key factor driving this sense of flux. In initial teacher education, the place of the digital in teachers' practices is complicated by students' varying engagements with the digital, and unequal access to digital resources in schools. Research on how newly qualified teachers engage in teaching practices involving the digital is limited. Additionally, recent studies point to the immense pressures placed on these teachers during their first years as qualified teachers. This case study is an in-depth investigation of the practices of two newly qualified English language and literacy teachers, at two South African high schools, analysing their practices during a period of their initial teacher education and within their first year of teaching. The study aims to ascertain the place of the digital in poetry lessons by analysing their lesson plans, lesson observations, interviews, teaching materials, Whatsapp VoiceNotes and written reflections. The theoretical foundation draws on the New Literacy Studies and recent theories from multimodal social semiotics and discourse studies. The data analysis framework consists of three lenses: recognisable activities, multimodal ensembles and assemblages-as-tensions. The analysis of recognisable activities in lesson plans and high school lessons showed that the digital is not central to the two teachers' practices. They used digital resources as ‘placed digital artefacts': teacher-created finished products that connect with one activity and are then abandoned. Analysis of multimodal ensembles revealed the ways in which the digital, the teachers' bodily movements, their use of space in the classroom, speech and writing are entangled. Teachers have to control rapid changes in modal ensembles, or ‘beats', throughout lesson time. The analysis of assemblages-as-tensions showed that these two newly qualified teachers balance many conflicting discourses and tensions in their high school practice, which render the year following initial teacher education daunting. The digital often exacerbates these tensions. However, digital resource use is suggested to be connected to complex and powerful conceptions of language and of teaching that underpin teachers' practices. In teacher education, the digital could thus become a mediator of reflective practice and teacher support during and after initial teacher education, instead of focusing on digital technologies use per se. Consequently, classroom practices involving the digital could become more powerful.
- ItemOpen AccessArgument as design: a multimodal approach to academic argument in a digital age(2015) Huang, Cheng-Wen; Archer, ArleneThis study posits that using a range of modes and genres to construct argument can engender different ways of thinking about argument in the academic context. It investigates the potentials and constraints of adopting a multimodal approach to constructing academic argument. The research is situated within a seminar, in a second year Media course. Within this context, the study identifies the semiotic resources that students draw on and examines how they are employed to construct academic argument in three digital domains, namely video, comics and PowerPoint. Grounded in a theory of multimodal social semiotics, this study posits that argument is a product of design, motivated by the rhetor's interest in communicating a particular message, in a particular environment, and shaped by the available resources in the given environment. It proposes that argument is a cultural text form for bringing about difference (Kress 1989). This view of argument recognises that argument occurs in relation to mode, genre, discourse and medium. The study illustrates how each of these social categories shapes argument through textual analysis. A framework based on Halliday's metafunctional principle is proposed to analyse argument in multimodal texts. The framework combines theories from rhetoric and social semiotics. It offers analysis of ideational content, the ways social relations are established, and how organising principles assist in establishing coherence in argument. The analysis of the data (video, comics and PowerPoint presentations) demonstrates that the framework can be applied across genres and media. The significance of the study is threefold. Theoretically, it contributes towards theorising a theory of argument from a multimodal perspective. Methodologically, it puts forward a framework for analysing multimodal arguments. Pedagogically, it contributes towards developing and interrogating a pedagogy of academic argument that is relevant to contemporary communication practices.
- ItemOpen AccessBorder crossings : how students negotiate cultural borders during digital video production(2010) Cronje, Franci; Archer, ArleneThis thesis explores emerging patterns of communication in student video production and the extent to which such patterns signify cultural border crossings in a South African upper income group school context. The investigation was carried out with specific reference to the politics of difference, an educational philosophy defined by Henry Giroux (2006) as border pedagogy. Within the framework of multimodal pedagogy, four learners from diverse cultural backgrounds collaborated with one another in a timeframe of three days to create digital video productions using guidelines provided by the researcher. The production unit was observed in order to answer questions around the utilisation of video production in the classroom, as well as how learners interact and negotiate cultural issues while producing video. The data was analysed with a custom-made multimodal toolkit as proposed by Baldry and Thibault (2006). By employing Kress and Van Leeuwen's four strata of Discourse, Design, Production and Distribution various types of data illuminated themes around social memory, race, the influence of class difference, and gender representation. Assessment techniques in terms of the multimodal theories of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) also enabled the researcher to look at the way in which meaning is made "in any and every sign, at every level, and in any mode" (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001: 4). The classroom intervention was designed to encourage adolescents as "unique hybrids" (Bhabha 1994) to cross borders of cultural identity, hypothesising that difference might emerge more clearly in the negotiation and video production process, than what might crystallise in analyzing the final video production. Metaphorical border crossing in a cultural and racial sense might become more apparent in production than final product. The negotiation of Border Difference took preference over the ultimate erosion of these borders.
- ItemOpen AccessChallenges and potentials for writing centres in South African tertiary institutions(Taylor & Francis, 2010) Archer, ArleneThere are many challenges involved in developing and running Writing Centres in tertiary contexts in South Africa. These challenges include recognizing the role Writing Centres need to play in the redress of basic academic literacies. They also involve emphasizing writing as a mode of learning where higher cognitive functions such as analysis and synthesis are developed through spoken and written language. Academic discourse takes a distinct written form, comprising often unspoken conventions which dictate appropriate uses of lexicogrammatical structures. Each discipline also has its own particular 'dialect'. Acquiring these 'foreign' methods of communication poses a challenge to many students, not only English Additional Language students. One of the main challenges for Writing Centres is to provide access to academic and disciplinary discourses through making explicit how texts work in a critical manner, whilst at the same time inducting students into these discourses. This article examines some key tensions in Writing Centre practices in the South African context, including debates about decontextualization, skills versus practices, process versus genre approaches to writing, the challenges and opportunities of the one-to-one. It explores how the Writing Centre at the University of Cape Town tries to address some of these challenges, and looks at the potentials for Writing Centres in tertiary institutions.
- ItemOpen AccessClip-art or design: exploring the challenges of multimodal texts for writing centres in higher education(Taylor & Francis, 2011) Archer, ArleneIn higher education, genre theorists and academic literacy practitioners have examined evolving genres, but they have not specifically focused on the multimodal nature of texts that students need to produce for assessment purposes. This paper explores the increasing influence and incorporation of the visual into academic texts, and ways of enabling student access to academic discourse in a multimodal environment. Taking a multimodal perspective on 'academic literacies', it looks at examples from different disciplines and provides guidelines on how writing centres can assist students with the designs of their multimodal texts in a changing representational landscape. In particular, it focuses on helping students with predominantly visual texts, integrating visuals into written assignments, and ways of writing about images.
- ItemOpen AccessCritical Access to higher education: challenges and goals for South African writing centres.(Twenty Six Design LLC, 2007) Archer, ArleneOne of the main challenges involved in developing and running writing centres in tertiary contexts in South Africa is the recognition of the role that writing centres need to play in the redress of basic academic literacy competencies. Related to this is the complexity of providing access to academic and disciplinary discourses through making explicit how texts work in a critical manner. This paper examines these key challenges, focusing in particular on the Writing Centre at the University of Cape Town.
- ItemOpen AccessCultural studies meets academic literacies: exploring students resources through symbolic objects(Taylor & Francis, 2008) Archer, ArleneThis paper reflects on a first year communication project in a South African engineering foundation programme which attempted to bring a cultural studies perspective to the teaching of academic literacy practices. In the project, students identify everyday objects that have symbolic meanings and examine these in a range of physical, cultural and communicational contexts. These objects are seen as catalysts for enabling student narratives and understandings to emerge. Objects also become a way of exploring notions of culture and cultural practices in the classroom and the tensions between convention and change they often index. This paper focuses on a particular manifestation of this tension, in the form of a moralistic discourse, or a discourse of 'propriety'. The pedagogical implications of this kind of cultural studies project are explored, including the importance of opening up less regulated spaces to allow different competencies to be validated and, crucially, ways of framing and critiquing students' resources in order to harness these constructively.
- ItemOpen AccessDealing with multimodal assignments in writing centres(Twenty Six Design LLC, 2011) Archer, ArleneWe can no longer confine literacy pedagogy to the realm of language alone, as we need to take into account the role of images and other modes of meaning-making in texts. Nowadays, the tasks set for students’ assignments in higher education often require complex multimodal competencies (Archer 2006). Many assignments use images as evidence, whilst other assignments are predominantly visual in nature, such as posters, storyboards, or assignments that include CD-roms or other media. New technologies also enable a range of possibilities for individuals creating documents, including variety in layout, image, color, typeface, sound. The challenge for writing centers is to train the tutors to utilize these technologies effectively themselves so that they can deal with the changing nature of assignments.
- ItemOpen AccessDesigning multimodal classrooms for social justice(Taylor & Francis, 2014) Archer, ArleneThis paper explores the ways in which multimodal classroom discourse could inform a social justice agenda through broadening the base for representation in the classroom. It identifies some of the challenges and opportunities of designing multimodal classrooms in diverse and developing contexts, where there are vast differentials in terms of access to resources. It focuses on the ways in which multimodal classrooms could recognise a range of student resources, whilst at the same time enabling access to dominant forms. This includes access to the discourses and knowledges of official curricula and formal methods of assessment, as well as the creation of dispositions towards meaning-making outside of the classroom. Formal education often closes down access to a range of semiotic resources and multimodal classrooms can potentially recover 'recognition' of these. This paper explores ways of designing multimodal classrooms for social justice in order to bring to the surface the range of students' resources which are often not noticed or valued in formal educational settings. It proposes the following: the questioning of boundaries between domains, harnessing students' representational resources, developing metalanguages for reflection and creating less regulated classroom spaces.
- ItemOpen AccessDiscursive constructions of medical students identities in informal course-based online discussions(Taylor & Francis, 2008) Huang, Cheng-Wen; Archer, ArleneStudies into student identity have tended to focus on formal academic writing for assessment purposes. However, this is beginning to change with a shifting academic and semiotic landscape. More and more tertiary institutions are making use of the writing opportunities afforded by the online environment. Online forums are popular as they promote interaction and discussion among students. This change in the academic landscape has allowed for new approaches to studying the discursive constructions of student identity. Using critical discourse analysis, this paper explores how students construct their identities in informal course-based online discussions in Higher Education. It focuses on the various discourses medical students draw on and the language of online communication in identity construction. By providing a site for students to interact with each other, these online discussions provide for a more active curriculum where students are involved in the meaning-making process.
- ItemOpen AccessInvestigating the effect of writing centre intervention on student writing.(Taylor & Francis, 2008) Archer, ArleneWriting is one of the main means of assessment in tertiary institutions and helping students with writing could improve their overall academic performance and could ensure that students proceed to graduation. More and more, Academic Development initiatives are being 'driven to demonstrate their ""success"" by substantiating the rhetoric of their mission statements with researched evidence of performance' (Yeld and Visser 2001,6). This article describes in detail one study investigating Writing Centre interventions by looking at improvement in assessed writing in the context of the curriculum. The context-embedded nature of the methodology coheres with an 'academic literacies' approach to student writing (Lea and Street 1998), rather than a skills-based approach. The study was achieved through interviewing forty first year students on their perceptions of the Centre and its influence on their writing; looking at consultants' comments; looking at grades; comparing independent assessments of the students' first and final drafts. This multi-faceted approach enabled a holistic and contextualized picture of student writing to emerge.
- ItemOpen AccessInvisible landscapes: Students constructions of the social and the natural in an engineering course in South Africa.(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Archer, ArleneThis paper examines the discourses that students draw on and propagate in a course on rural development in a first‐year engineering foundation programme. It looks at the way 'rural' is often constructed as 'lack' and therefore 'other', the dangers of constructing development as linear, the ways nostalgia and utopianism feed into discourses of development and how 'propriety' serves to maintain boundaries between nature and people, society and individuals. Different modes and media, coupled with the degree of regulation in the classroom, may enable alternate discourses to emerge or to be suppressed. This paper argues that the curriculum needs to engage with students' views in order to understand, interrogate and critique the kinds of realities they feed into.
- ItemOpen AccessA multimodal approach to academic literacy practices: problematising the visual/verbal divide(Taylor & Francis, 2006) Archer, ArleneThere has tended to be an overemphasis on the teaching and analysis of the mode of writing in 'academic literacies' studies, even though changes in the communication landscape have engendered an increasing recognition of the different semiotic dimensions of representation. This paper tackles the logocentrism of academic literacies and argues for an approach which recognises the interconnection between different modes, in other words, a 'multimodal' approach to pedagogy and to theorising communication. It explores multimodal ways of addressing unequal discourse resources within the university with its economically and culturally diverse student body. Utilising a range of modes is a way of harnessing the resources that the students bring with them. However, this paper does not posit multimodality as an alternative way of inducting students into academic writing practices. Rather, it explores what happens when different kinds of 'cultural capital' (Bourdieu, 1991) encounter a range of generic forms, modes and ways of presenting information. It examines how certain functions are distributed across modes in students' texts in a first year engineering course in a South African university (specifically scientific discourse and student affect) and begins to problematise the visual/verbal distinction.
- ItemOpen AccessA multimodal social semiotic approach to jewellery design pedagogy(2012) Salaam, Safia; Archer, ArleneThis thesis presents a multimodal social semiotic theoretical framework to explore jewellery design pedagogy. The role of the designer, meaning making and the semiotic functions of resources used within the practice of jewellery design are analysed.
- ItemOpen AccessA multimodal social semiotic approach to the analysis of manga : a metalanguage for sequential visual narratives(2009) Huang, Cheng-Wen; Archer, ArleneThis study contributes towards an understanding of the nature of sequential visual narratives, how different semiotic resources may be employed to construct a visual narrative and how sequence of images may be developed. Over the years, extensive research has been undertaken in the area of still images. However, the particularities of meanings made in sequential images remain relatively unexplored. The significance of the study is that it contributes towards an understanding of sequential narratives by proposing a metalanguage for manga. The term ‘manga’ refers to comics that originate from Japan and it is currently a trend in popular culture worldwide.
- ItemOpen AccessA multimodal social semiotic exploration of the 'glocal' in EAL(2015) Pearman, Akisha Estelle; Archer, ArleneMany English as an additional language (EAL) teachers around the world want to improve their professional practice in classrooms. In Angola, one particular approach to teacher training utilized two different video series published by the United States Department of State, to address the pedagogical concerns and methodological needs of teachers. One video is distributed around the world and the other is designed for particular local teachers. Both training videos utilize editing techniques like those in film to merge moving and still images, written and spoken text, voiceover and music. Reactions to the videos in Angola varied, but generally informal feedback from teachers after trainings implied that the video used methods that were not relevant for Angolan contexts. Although studies have investigated the impact of training materials on teacher practice (Kuter, Gazi, & Aksal, 2012; Kaskaya, 2011; Britsch, 2010; Orlova, 2009; Mitchell, 2008; Taylor, 2002; Maheshwari & Raina, 1998), no studies have examined the materials themselves in order to explore this mismatch between pedagogical material and context. Thus, this study contributes to an understanding of how multimodal semiotic resources in EAL teacher training videos construct English teaching in global settings. The investigation of the videos utilizes a multimodal social semiotic lens based in the work of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) and grounded in Halliday (1978). The study includes three steps: The first explores multimodal semiotic resources within the videos that construct 'glocal' configurations. The second examines what the configurations realize about the field of EAL teaching. The third explores how these configurations can inform principles to consider in future video production that are mindful of local contexts within current sociolinguistic dynamics of pluralism (Canagarajah, 2006) and super-diversity (Blommaert and Dong, 2010). Multimodality conceptualizes communication as being possible through multiple modes such as the written, spoken and the musical. Social semiotics can be defined as "what can be said and done with images (and other visual means of communication) and how the things people say and do with images can be interpreted" (Jewitt & Oyama, 2001: 134). Thus, the combination of multimodality and social semiotics used in the study provides a suitable framework for exploring meaning potential within the semiotic choices of resources in the videos. The analytical lens also allows for an exploration of the power-related assumptions and ideologies about EAL teaching that are constructed through the semiotic choices made in the videos. Many English as an additional language (EAL) teachers around the world want to improve their professional practice in classrooms. In Angola, one particular approach to teacher training utilized two different video series published by the United States Department of State, to address the pedagogical concerns and methodological needs of teachers. One video is distributed around the world and the other is designed for particular local teachers. Both training videos utilize editing techniques like those in film to merge moving and still images, written and spoken text, voiceover and music. Reactions to the videos in Angola varied, but generally informal feedback from teachers after trainings implied that the video used methods that were not relevant for Angolan contexts. Although studies have investigated the impact of training materials on teacher practice (Kuter, Gazi, & Aksal, 2012; Kaskaya, 2011; Britsch, 2010; Orlova, 2009; Mitchell, 2008; Taylor, 2002; Maheshwari & Raina, 1998), no studies have examined the materials themselves in order to explore this mismatch between pedagogical material and context. Thus, this study contributes to an understanding of how multimodal semiotic resources in EAL teacher training videos construct English teaching in global settings. The investigation of the videos utilizes a multimodal social semiotic lens based in the work of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) and grounded in Halliday (1978). The study includes three steps: The first explores multimodal semiotic resources within the videos that construct 'glocal' configurations. The second examines what the configurations realize about the field of EAL teaching. The third explores how these configurations can inform principles to consider in future video production that are mindful of local contexts within current sociolinguistic dynamics of pluralism (Canagarajah, 2006) and super-diversity (Blommaert and Dong, 2010). Multimodality conceptualizes communication as being possible through multiple modes such as the written, spoken and the musical. Social semiotics can be defined as "what can be said and done with images (and other visual means of communication) and how the things people say and do with images can be interpreted" (Jewitt & Oyama, 2001: 134). Thus, the combination of multimodality and social semiotics used in the study provides a suitable framework for exploring meaning potential within the semiotic choices of resources in the videos. The analytical lens also allows for an exploration of the power-related assumptions and ideologies about EAL teaching that are constructed through the semiotic choices made in the videos.
- ItemOpen AccessMultimodal texts in higher education and the implications for writing pedagogy(Wiley, 2010) Archer, ArleneAlthough studies on writing pedagogy and academic literacies have examined changing genres in tertiary education, there has not necessarily been an emphasis on how a range of modes and media have influenced texts in various disciplines. This paper explores the influence and incorporation of the visual into student texts in Higher Education, looking at the semiotic weighting of modes, conventions and functions of images, visual/verbal linkages and visual composition. These aspects of multimodal texts have implications for the ways in which we teach 'academic literacies' practices and writing as multimodal composition to students.
- ItemOpen AccessA new literacies approach to academic numeracy practices in higher education in South Africa(UTS ePress, 2008) Prince, Robert; Archer, ArleneThis paper explores the terms 'mathematical literacy', 'quantitative literacy' and 'numeracy', in order to gain theoretical clarity on their meanings and the ways in which they are used. The teaching-learning situation and the learner are constructed in particular ways by these terms, and different understandings of these terms may reflect the values and rationales of various stakeholders who promote them. We propose the term 'academic numeracy practices' in order to emphasise the socially situated nature of all practices, to avoid reifying 'numeracy' into a set of discrete skills that an individual can either possess or lack, and to avoid extending the characteristics of one mode (namely, writing) to other modes. In arguing for the new term, we draw on the theoretical orientation of New Literacies Studies and multimodality. We exemplify our position by looking at charts as conventionalised practice in Higher Education in South Africa, focusing on BMI charts in the Health Sciences.
- ItemOpen AccessNo goats in the mother city: using symbolic objects to help students talk about diversity and change(Wiley, 2007) Archer, ArleneThis paper reports on a first year project in a South African engineering foundation programme which attempted to bring a cultural studies perspective to teaching academic literacy. Students identify and investigate everyday objects that have symbolic meanings in their communities. Objects are seen as catalysts for enabling student narratives to emerge, and are a way of exploring the tensions between convention and change in cultural practices. A project such as this breaks disciplinary frames, working across diverse contexts such as engineering and cultural studies. The aim is to begin to explore some of the complexities around 'development' in contexts of diversity and change, globalization and relocalization.
- ItemOpen AccessOpening up spaces through symbolic objects: harnessing students' resources in developing academic literacy practices in engineering.(Taylor & Francis, 2006) Archer, ArleneThis article reports on one aspect of my PhD study, which I undertook as a teacher-researcher in the context of a first year Communication Course in a South African engineering foundation programme. The programme caters for students from less advantaged educational backgrounds and the course focuses on developing students' academic literacy in English. I argue that less regulated spaces need to be created in the curriculum in order to allow student resources to emerge and to be validated. These resources include English, indigenous languages, local knowledges, personal experience and multimodal competencies. By less regulated spaces, I mean classroom environments which require open tasks with no strict generic guidelines specified. Also, classroom environments which place less emphasis on assessment and more emphasis on creativity, and the use of students' own resources. I analyse the texts the students produce in one of these less regulated spaces in order to identify and describe the discourses that they draw on and propagate. Once visible, these discourses become resources for both teacher and students to draw on. I attempt to suspend 'teacherly' judgement, put learning and the formal curriculum aside and look at students' texts free of a norm-driven, evaluative eye in order to see the ways in which traces of their lives manifest.