Browsing by Author "Kotta, Linda"
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- ItemOpen AccessContradictions in the situational logic of the university: implications for student success(2014) Kotta, Linda; Case, Jenni; Luckett, KathyNearly sixteen years into the new democracy, student success at South African universities continues to be differentiated along lines of race. The tendency has been to define the problem in terms of student deficit. This article suggests that this is a limited view of a complex problem. The study investigates the case of a South African universitys engineering department and its historical struggle with the success of black students. It is an exploration of students progression through a design course and the associated pedagogical realities. Using a social realist approach, this study shows that the higher education environment is a complex of necessary contradictions which create a situational logic for agents. In the process of navigating the inconsistencies of a system in which academic development and quality assurance work against each other, it seems that black students get caught in the middle, with deleterious consequences for the countrys transformative agenda.
- ItemOpen AccessLearning as acquiring a discursive identity through participation in a community: improving student learning in engineering education(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Allie, Saalih; Armien, Mogamat Noor; Burgoyne, Nicolette; Case, Jennifer M; Collier-Reed, Brandon I; Craig, Tracy S; Deacon, Andrew; Fraser, Duncan M; Geyer, Zulpha; Jacobs, Cecilia; Jawitz, Jeff; Kloot, Bruce; Kotta, Linda; Langdon, GenevIn this paper, we propose that learning in engineering involves taking on the discourse of an engineering community, which is intimately bound up with the identity of being a member of that community. This leads to the notion of discursive identity, which emphasises that students' identities are constituted through engaging in discourse. This view of learning implies that success in engineering studies needs to be defined with particular reference to the sorts of identities that students develop and how these relate to identities in the world of work. In order to achieve successful learning in engineering, we need to recognise the multiple identities held by our students, provide an authentic range of engineering-related activities through which students can develop engineering identities and make more explicit key aspects of the discourse of engineering of which lecturers are tacitly aware. We include three vignettes to illustrate how some of the authors of this paper (from across three different institutions) have applied this perspective of learning in their teaching practice.