OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Kapp, Rochelle"

Browsing by Author "Kapp, Rochelle"

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Open Access
A case study of grade 6 multilingual learners' experiences with monolingual assessment practices in a working-class township school in Cape Town.
(2022) Cingo, Siviwe Innocent; Kapp, Rochelle
This qualitative case study focusses on the experiences and challenges f multilingual learners when writing monolingual assessments. It draws on a growing body of poststructuralist theory on linguistic repertoire and translanguaging in order to understand how grade 6 multilingual learners engaged with monolingual assessments in a working-class school in the Western Cape where English is the language of learning and teaching for all learners except those for whom Afrikaans is a home language. Using ethnographic methods, I focused on 3 grade 6 classrooms and observed 46 lessons over a period of 8 weeks. In addition, I collected assessment transcripts, learners' notebooks and conducted interviews with 14 learners and their teachers. The data shows how classroom pedagogy tended to be mainly oral and dominated by teacher talk with limited space for learner engagement. Informal written assessment tasks were monolingual, but generally mediated by translanguaging and translation. Learners relied on teachers and on the linguistic resources of peers to facilitate comprehension of assessment questions and assessment content. By contrast, formal, high-stakes assessments included no mediation prior to and during assessment. Thematic analysis of learners' written answers shows how the majority of learners struggled with language comprehension at the level of vocabulary, sentence, as well as schooled academic literacy. The study concludes that both teachers and learners are placed in an untenable position by language in education policies that insist on monolingual assessment practices. Such policy results in compensatory, and contradictory classroom teaching and learning that is aimed at instrumental, assessment focused practices rather than meaningful learning. The study ends with recommendations for policy and practice.
Open Access
An analysis of dominant discourse in Grade 8 English Home Language textbooks
(2016) Cahl, Gregory Elkan; Kapp, Rochelle
Post-Apartheid South Africa has heralded a period of intense curriculum reform, explicitly aimed at fostering social transformation and a shift from the uncritical rote-learning which dominated Apartheid-era schooling. There have been three major curriculum shifts since 1994 and each change has required the production of new textbooks for every single school subject, usually within highly limited time-frames. This study focuses on textbooks produced for the most recent iteration of the Language curriculum, that is, the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement, commonly known as CAPS. The study draws on poststructuralist theory on discourse, in particular Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), to engage in close, critical analysis of the dominant discourses in two grade 8 English home language learner textbooks. The textbooks are examined in terms of how social issues are depicted; the notions of English education; the extent to which they promote a critical approach to language and literacy learning as outlined in the curriculum and the ways in which learners are constructed as subject. The analysis of different levels of discourse evident in the texts and text-based tasks demonstrates that the orientations to reading that are offered are focussed largely on the surface meaning of the texts. While social issues related to contemporary South African and global topics are evident in the choice of content, the texts often perpetuate fairly conservative ideologies, either through their content, the exercises that follow or through the silences implicit in the selection of excerpts. Many of the text-based exercises are decontextualized, cognitively undemanding and learners are often steered towards particular answers, leaving very limited space for critical engagement. The thesis ends with a consideration of the implications of this analysis for teaching and learning.
Open Access
Digital Literacies for Pre-Service High School English Teachers
(2015-06-01) Campbell, Eduard
This series of lectures serves as a course component for the Senior Phase and FET English Method course at the University of Cape Town, which forms part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) professional teacher education qualification. It consists of 5 lectures presented at strategic times throughout the year. The purpose of the course is to provide pre-service English teachers with an opportunity to critically discuss the integration of Digital Literacies into the high school English curriculum. The course component has a dual teaching outcome: 1. Addressing the digital divide within the English Method classroom and providing an opportunity for the pre-service teachers to engage in Digital Literacies practices themselves; 2. Creating awareness of the digital divide within the high school classroom and discussing various methods that enable learners to engage in effective Digital Literacy practices. The course is built on discussions where the class could voice their varying perspectives, anxieties and experiences, especially after their teaching practicals. In this way, knowledge is built collaboratively. Although rudimentary theory is incorporated in the curriculum, the class focuses mostly on the practical aspects of Digital Literacies within the specific context of the high school English Classroom. Numerous methods for Digital Literacies integration, whether for the students’ own use or for their learners’, are scrutinized and critically evaluated.
Open Access
Enabling Capabilities in an Engineering Extended Curriculum Programme
(Bloomsbury Press, 2017-09) Craig, Tracy S; Bangeni, Bongi; Kapp, Rochelle
Open Access
English as a weapon of power : a double-edged sword
(2005) Pamegiana, Andrea; Young, Douglas; Kapp, Rochelle
This mini-dissertation explores the effects of the growth of English as an international and an intranational lingua franca with a focus on the South African debate about language and socio-economic empowerment. This exploration is carried out through an extended review of some of the theories that have challenged the notion that the spread of English is empowering for the majority of the world's population. I refer to these theories as the "critical discourse" about the power of English and argue that within this discourse there is a tendency to be exceedingly dismissive of the idea that the spread of English can in any way empower native speakers of other languages. I refer to this tendency as the "critical model" for looking at the power of English and analyze three metaphors that are often used as tropes to exclude from the "critical discourse" arguments that can be made for using English as a weapon of empowerment. These metaphors characterize English as a "linguistic poacher" that threatens endangered language species with extinction, as a "gatekeeper" that excludes the masses from socio-economic mobility, and as a "colonizer of the mind," or a mechanism that imposes Western-centric values. I argue that while it is important to be aware of these negative effects, the critics of English should not rely too heavily on negative constructions of this language, lest they create theories that are marred by epistemological fallacies that have negative pedagogical and political consequences. Epistemologically, sealing the border of a discourse can lead to tautological arguments that rely excessively on determinism and essentialism. Pedagogically, being exceedingly critical of the power of English can create obstacles in finding ways to teach this language effectively.
Open Access
Harnessing agency: towards a learning model for undergraduate students
(Taylor & Francis, 2013) Pym, June; Kapp, Rochelle
This article describes a successful academic development programme in a Commerce faculty at a relatively elite, historically white university in South Africa. The writers argue that the programme has managed to achieve good results in recent years by moving away from deficit models of academic development for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The article draws on five years of data to illustrate how students' home discourses have influenced their negotiations of institutional discourses. It is argued that many of the students have shown considerable agency in gaining admission to university despite their social backgrounds, but experience a crisis of confidence and self-esteem in the new environment. The article describes how the new model of academic development has responded to this context by providing a more flexible approach to the curriculum, which attempts to harness students' agency as well as foster a sense of belonging to a learning community. Also described are the range of interventions that have been put in place specifically to develop a culture of learning and to promote social connectedness, identity and agency.
Open Access
A longitudinal study of students' negotiation of language literacy and identity
(Taylor & Francis, 2011) Kapp, Rochelle; Bangeni, Bongi
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.
Open Access
Multimodal Pedagogy for English Teachers Lecture Series
(2017-03-01) Campbell, Ed
Recent research has tended to emphasise the digital proficiency of university students. Nevertheless, studies have shown that, in countries with stark economic divides, it is problematic to assume that all students are “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001:1). There is a danger that students who are “digital strangers” may be disadvantaged because they are unable to utilise technology effectively in their academic work (Czerniewicz & Brown, 2013:1). It is therefore important that the engagement with digital technologies should be integrated into classrooms in higher education contexts. The concept of the digital stranger extends to teacher education. Providing space for engagement with ‘the digital’ by pre-service teachers is complex due to the dual purpose for its integration: (1) professional teachers are expected to integrate digital resources in their classrooms, while (2) they have to enable their learners to engage with digital technologies in ways that will be expected of them in the 21st Century. Engaging with digital technologies has therefore become crucial to teachers’ professional development. The shift from ‘digital literacies’ to ‘multimodal pedagogy’ The resources you are about to view were used in the 4th year of an on-going project aimed at integrating ‘digital literacies’ into English teacher education. Typically, this integration would consist of 4 to 6 contact sessions forming a course component within an English teaching method course (part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Education professional qualification), culminating in the students completing a digital classroom resource, or a digital story video. During the classes, we started suspecting that the strong focus on ‘the digital’ could be counter-intuitive, because foregrounding it too much de-contextualises it; in the 21st Century, ‘the digital’ has become entangled within an array of other practices, some of which are not necessarily digital per se. We have also realised that calling a course component ‘digital literacies’, might have caused upfront resistance, resulting in lessons focusing on the alleviation of anxieties, rather than fostering creativity, which has been our core intention since the project’s inception. We therefore redesigned ‘digital literacies’, resulting in a brand new ‘multimodal pedagogy’ curriculum: a way of integrating the digital in literacy teacher education that focuses much more on its intertwinement with multiple other practices - a more realistic depiction of digital technology use in teaching, foregrounding creativity and effective communication through a meta-awareness of modal affordances in the classroom, as opposed to just ‘using digital technologies’.
Open Access
Negotiation of learning and identity among first-year medical students
(Taylor & Francis, 2013) Badenhorst, Elmi; Kapp, Rochelle
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.
Open Access
The politics of English : a study of classroom discourses in a township school
(2001) Kapp, Rochelle; Young, Doug; Herrington, Anne
This is an ethnographic study, which investigates discourse practices in English subject classrooms at Mziwethu Senior Secondary, a Western Cape township high school, where the subject is taught as a second language. The data were collected between October 1997 and March 1999. Working within a critical theory framework, my assumptions are (1) that classroom discourse practices reflect and construct outside realities and (2) that motivation to learn a language, and classroom language practices are intimately connected to power relations outside the classroom, as well as to social identity. These assumptions are embedded in my thesis title. Alongside Pennycook (1998), Kumaravadivelu (1999) and Canagarajah (1999), I believe that it is not possible to analyse English language practices in colonial and post-colonial contexts without a consideration of the history and national politics of English in that country. But, as all these writers emphasise, politics also extends to the contemporary local context in which the learning takes place, the roles and relationships in the classroom, and to literacy practices.
Open Access
Positioning (in) the discipline: undergraduate students' negotiations of disciplinary discourses
(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Kapp, Rochelle; Bangeni, Bongi
This paper is drawn from a longitudinal case study in which the authors have tracked the progress of 20 Social Science students over the course of their undergraduate degrees at a historically 'white' South African university. The students are all from disadvantaged educational backgrounds and/or speakers of English as a second language. The paper draws on post-structuralist and post-colonial theory to trace the process by which students position and reposition themselves in relation to disciplinary discourses over the course of their senior years. The students both absorb and resist the values of their disciplines. The authors argue that the process of writing in their disciplines is also a process of working out their own identities as they try to reconcile their home discourses with those of the institution and their peers, or in some cases, confirm or shed their home identities.
Open Access
Pre-service teachers' perceptions and practices: integrating digital literacy into English education
(2016) Campbell, Eduard; Kapp, Rochelle
Teachers are increasingly expected to use digital resources to facilitate learning. Recent research in Higher Education has indicated the existence of a digital divide among students. With the changing role of the English teacher as a facilitator of critical skills and the traditional centrality of literacy to the English classroom, digital literacy has an integral place in English teacher education, despite its absence from the current South African English curriculum. However, integrating digital literacy is challenging and often resisted by teachers. This qualitative case study provides a detailed description and analysis of how pre-service English teachers perceived their own, their learners' and other teachers' digital literacy practices, and how these perceptions relate to their own practices. The study is informed by post-structuralist theory, drawing on the New Literacy Studies (NLS), which views literacy as embedded in social practice, imbued with power and highly dependent on context. It is believed that gaining a deeper understanding of perceived and actual digital literacy practices within specific contexts could lead to an in-depth knowledge of how digital literacy may be integrated in teacher education. The case comprises four English Method students at a relatively elite South African university who were enrolled for the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) professional qualification. The participants viewed their own proficiency in digital literacy as limited. The data were gathered from four sources: the participants' detailed lesson plans where digital literacy has been integrated; their reflections upon these lesson plans; questionnaires providing background on their biographies and experiences with technology and a focused group interview. The study found that the participants associated some digital resources with their own and their learners' private lives and therefore did not recognize the value of these resources as educational tools. In addition, the participants experienced the internet as overwhelming and conflated digital literacy with 'Internet Literacy'. They did not find good examples of practice from other teachers at the schools where they undertook their teaching practicals. The way they perceived their learners' practices could have serious consequences for how they facilitate learning and negotiate power differentials in the classroom. Drawing on these findings, the thesis ends with a framework for the integration of digital literacy into teacher education. The framework draws on insights from Authentic Learning, New Literacy Studies and constructivist notions of learning to propose a carefully-scaffolded model which starts with students' own internet practices and provides models and authentic tasks in order to show them the affordances of digital literacy for promoting learning in the English classroom.
Open Access
Repetition overused as an academic writing strategy : a case study of Xhosa-English second language speakers
(2011) Alexander, Ebrahim; Kapp, Rochelle
This study uses close linguistic analysis to investigate how a group of Xhosa English Second Language (XESL) Speakers use repetition as a discourse strategy in their written academic work. The study analyses the nature of their repetition and draws on critical theory to situate repetition in its socio-cultural context.
Open Access
Shifting language Attitudes in a linguistically diverse learning environment in South Africa
(Taylor & Francis, 2007) Bangeni, Bongi; Kapp, Rochelle
This paper draws on post-structuralist theories on language and identity to explore the shifting language attitudes of 15 'black' students over the course of their undergraduate studies at a historically 'white' South African university. All the students speak an indigenous language as their first language. Those students who have been educated in racially mixed schools are relatively at ease in the environment and are able to straddle racial and linguistic boundaries. Those who have been educated in working-class, ethnically homogenous schools enter the institution with a strong desire to preserve their home languages and home identities. For them, English is equated with 'whiteness'. The paper describes the process through which this equation is questioned as English and institutional discourses become more dominant in students' lives, and as relationships with their home communities become strained. By the time the students enter their senior undergraduate years, a shared speech code emerges. The authors argue that this code signals students' dual affiliation to English (and the cultural capital it represents) and to their home identities. In mixing languages across boundaries of school background and across traditional ethnic barriers, the code also signals students' shared group identity as first-generation university students in post-Apartheid South Africa.
Open Access
“So I have to be positive, no matter how difficult it is”: a longitudinal case study of a first-generation occupational therapy student
(2014) Janse van Rensburg, Viki; Kapp, Rochelle
Introduction: This article describes and analyses the learning journey of Zinhle, a first-generation university student from an impoverished rural village who studied occupational therapy at a relatively elite South African university. Using educational theory on learning, identity and reflexivity, the article describes Zinhle’s multiple transitions as she experienced academic failure and success. Method: Qualitative longitudinal analysis was used in a single case study to analyse four interviews conducted with Zinhle over the course of her undergraduate years. Each semi-structured interview was spaced a year apart to allow Zinhle to reflect on her experiences of the previous academic year. Data were analysed inductively by the two researchers. Ethical approval was obtained prior to the study. Results: The data illustrated her high levels of agency and reflexivity in responding to failure and in repositioning herself by re-evaluating how to engage with the new discipline, make use of resources and develop new learning strategies. The data revealed that this process entailed uncovering the norms and values of the discipline of occupational therapy which she experienced as tacit, as well as unlearning the de-contextualised, rote-learning practices that had characterised her schooling. Shifts in her subject position were indicative of her view of herself as a “rural girl” as well as an agent for change in her community. Conclusion: Zinhle’s impoverished home and school circumstances both hindered and enhanced her learning as an occupational therapy student. Her mode of advanced reflexivity enabled her to succeed and to adopt a position as an agent for change. The data also revealed that some impediments in teaching and learning structures hindered Zinhle’s learning journey. The data raise the question of how the discipline might engage with and adapt the structural aspects of the curriculum and environment that hinder epistemological access and retention of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Open Access
Students’ negotiation of practice education in occupational therapy: a case study
(2018) Ramafikeng, Matumo Catherine; Kapp, Rochelle; Ramugondo, Elelwani
There are persistent problems with the graduation rates of black Occupational Therapy students. The transition from classroom to the practice-based component of occupational therapy education is particularly challenging, and yet, very little research has been conducted on students’ learning in this area. This study explores learning processes in practice education as experienced by African language speakers studying occupational therapy in a relatively elite English medium university in South Africa. The thesis draws on poststructuralist theory to describe and analyse the complex ways in which three students experience, interpret and act within the multiple teaching and learning spaces that characterise the transition to practice education. A single instrumental qualitative case study design was adopted and semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and document reviews were conducted. Methods of analysis included discourse analysis, thematic analysis and genre analysis. The findings show the complexity of the process of negotiating access to the occupational therapy practice education discourse. This process was marked by navigation of issues that stem from language, curriculum, pedagogy and identity. Three themes emerged that signal creative ways in which participants navigated these issues. These are; enacting primary and previous secondary discourses, negotiating and re-negotiating identities and discovering curriculum expectations through trial-and-error. The findings question commonplace assumptions that language is the reason why African language speakers struggle with the transition from theory to practice. While language is central to learning, the study illustrates the multiple ways in which aspects of practice and the relationship between theory and practice are implicit. The study also shows ways in which varying expectations, past experiences of learning and mismatches between curriculum aims, pedagogy and assessment impact on how students learn. The study also highlights the ways in which the resources that students bring into the academy such as their multilingualism and life experiences, are often under-valued within the practice education context. These findings will be useful in guiding the development of curriculum and pedagogic practices that embrace and value diversity. This thesis recommends a shift of perspective in understanding learning in the practice context that conceives of students as social beings engaged in social practices.
Open Access
Successful students’ negotiation of township schooling in contemporary South Africa
(University of the Free State, 2014-09) Kapp, Rochelle; Badenhorst, Elmi; Bangeni, Bongi; Craig, Tracy S; Janse van Rensburg, Vicki; le Roux, Kate; Prince, Robert; Pym, June; van Pletzen, Ermien
This article draws on data from a larger longitudinal qualitative case study which is tracking the progress of students over the course of their undergraduate degrees at a South African university. For this paper, we used background questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with 62 first-year students from working-class, township schools who were first registered for Extended Degree Programmes in 2009. The article draws on post-structuralist theory on learning and identity to describe and analyse the participants’ perspectives on how they negotiated their high school contexts. We analyse the subject positions in which participants invested, as well as how they negotiated their way through social networks and used resources. Our data illustrate the ways in which students had to carry the burden of negotiating their way through home, school and neighbourhood spaces that were generally not conducive to learning. Nevertheless, participants consciously positioned themselves as agents. They were resilient, motivated and took highly strategic adult decisions about their learning. We argue that a focus on how successful students negotiate their environments challenges the pathologising paradigm of “disadvantage” that characterises research and debates in higher education. It also offers an additional lens for admissions processes and for providing appropriate intervention strategies in the tertiary setting.
Open Access
There's a hippo on my stoep': constructions of English second language teaching and learners in the new national senior certificate
(Stellenbosch University, 2011) Kapp, Rochelle; Arend, Moeain
The focus of this paper is an analysis of the conceptualisation of language teaching and the construction of learners in the new National Senior Certificate grade 12 curriculum and examinations taken by students for whom English is an additional language. The paper examines the values, attitudes and beliefs, as well as the required levels of cognitive engagement and notions of reading and writing. The authors argue that the curriculum represents a significant improvement on the previous version. However, there is a considerable mismatch between the Curriculum Statement and the examination papers. The curriculum emphasis on the role of language as a tool for critical, independent thinking is not evident in the examination papers, which reinforce traditional gender norms and essentialised notions of Africa. The examination papers are cognitively undemanding, requiring only the most basic understandings of texts. The authors argue that, by making it possible to pass at a very basic level, the examination system in effect obscures the contradiction that although the majority of learners have to use English as a first language across the curriculum, the language itself is taught as a second language.

Browsing by Author "Kapp, Rochelle"

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