OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Paxton, Moragh"

Browsing by Author "Paxton, Moragh"

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Open Access
An exploration of teaching and learning in an isiXhosa communicative language skills course in a medical school
(2016) Tyam, Nolubabalo; Paxton, Moragh
This thesis reports on research conducted into the teaching and learning of an isiXhosa Communication Skills course as a Second Language (SL) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The research was an exploration of an isiXhosa language teaching pedagogy with a particular focus on learning and teaching and the usage of isiXhosa in the isiXhosa Communications Skills classroom. In doing this research, I wanted to know what could be the cause of these attitudes. Questions that need to be considered in developing this pedagogy are: What are the benefits of its usage in the classroom? What are the language pedagogies that the teachers are struggling with? The study was carried out with second year medical students. In this study, questionnaires were distributed to 63 research subjects. Four classroom observations were carried out and 12 students were interviewed. I observed that teachers as a group had characteristic pedagogical styles and approaches. The teachers were using more teacher-centred method, relying heavily on the use of textbooks, focused more on the teaching of pure isiXhosa language and used less varied techniques of instruction and engagement. There was little evidence of learner-centred teaching and incorporation of more communicative, interactive lessons and activities that help students for speaking competence. Students had strong positive attitudes towards learning isiXhosa communication skills. The students' views from the interviews and classroom observations point towards broadly issues of learning second language and pedagogy in learning and teaching. Students seemed to be concerned and frustrated with the fact that they cannot speak in isiXhosa with the patients. They felt that learning isiXhosa was essential for their future careers, and the ability to speak isiXhosa would be beneficial for their work. The students' interviews reinforced the conclusions that I drew from the classroom observations and yielded insights into how teachers teach a Second Language.
Open Access
How do we play the genre game in preparing students at the advanced undergraduate level for research writing?
(Taylor & Francis, 2011) Paxton, Moragh
The study described in this article sets out to understand the barriers and affordances to successful completion of the short research thesis required in many advanced undergraduate courses or Honours programmes. In the study, the genre features of students' research projects and the criteria used to assess them were analysed and both students and supervisors were interviewed. The article focuses on one particular student from the case study and the findings provide in-depth insights into the complexities of genre acquisition in one particular department at a South African university, where writing and knowledge of the genre are often not taught, but must be acquired through a form of apprenticeship. The article concludes by raising some questions about how research genres can best be mediated in developmental contexts, where the teaching of writing may not be valued.
Open Access
An investigation into how teachers interpret and implement the curriculum in the further education and training phase in the English first additional language classroom
(2010) Sacks, Judith; Paxton, Moragh
The focus of this research is to examine how teachers interpret and implement the curriculum in an English First Additional classroom. The three sub-questions are (1) what are the theories and aims behind the two prescribed theoretical approaches (the communicative language approach and the text-based approach) as set out in the National Curriculum Statement? (2) how do teachers understand, interpret and use these two approaches? (3) do teachers assist students to develop the appropriate abstract cognitive academic language that is specific for the discipline? This is an interpretive, qualitative study. The data were collected from 27th of July to the 17th of August 2009 in a township school in the Western Cape. To develop thick description and explanations on the findings, the research techniques used were classroom observation, discourse analysis and interviews. In order to avoid any natural bias, and to contribute to the credibility of the study, 'triangulation' was used. The three components were: an examination of the English First Additional Language National Curriculum Statement; classroom observation and interviews. Forty-four lessons of three teachers were observed and recorded, supplemented with detailed field-notes. (In the final analysis, only two teachers' lessons were closely examined as the limited space in this minor dissertation was not sufficient for the detail the analyses presented.) To broaden the perspective, the teachers were interviewed in order to understand their views, theories and experiences. The main tool used to investigate teachers' interpretation and implementation of the curriculum was classroom discourse analysis. This study describes how teachers in one township school interpret and implement the curriculum. The classroom observations showed how the practical realities of teaching were often at odds with what the teachers claimed they were doing when discussing the curriculum on a theoretical level. The tools of discourse analysis allowed for a detailed investigation of the teaching and learning taking place. It appears that the teachers revert to traditional methods and pedagogies with which they were taught and so are unaware of these discrepancies between their understanding of the curriculum and their practice. Teachers are dealing with challenging and complex realities in the class, including huge work load, continuous assessment of large classes and recent influxes of underprepared students from the Eastern Cape. While the teachers were experienced and passionate about their work, there were several features of their teaching that hindered effective implementation of the curriculum. Some of the main hindrances were a traditional initiation-responseevaluation/ feedback method; the use of chorusing in the class and a lack of full theoretical understanding of the prescribed pedagogies. The paper ends with recommendations for teacher professional development, focusing on theorised practice that could lead to better implementation of the curriculum.
Open Access
Italian undergraduate students comprehending economics and business texts in English as a foreign language : a case study of language-conceptual transfer strategies used in reading domain-specific texts
(2009) Samson, Christina Muriel; Young, Douglas; Paxton, Moragh; Rochford, Kevin; Dunne, Tim
This study, within the Vygotskyian constructivist socio-cultural developmental framework, investigates the interdependence of general and domain-specific conceptual knowledge, cognitive and metacognitive strategies, attitude, motivation and context in the process of bidirectional ItalianΓåöEnglish transfer in Italian undergraduates comprehending domain-specific texts in the Faculty of Economics, University of Florence, Italy. The method adopted is primarily qualitative, with quantitative support.
Open Access
Knowledge and knower structures and recontextualising logics in an accounting curricular framework
(2021) Lubbe, Ilse; Paxton, Moragh; de Jager Phillip
Accountants require specialised knowledge, competencies and skills to deliver quality services. In the modern business environment, this can take the form of financial accounting, reporting, planning and decision-making. This thesis identifies the need for change in the accounting curriculum to meet the requirements of the professional accountant of the future. In response to this need, a framework is developed for the design of a holistic academic curriculum in accounting that includes knowledge, competencies and skills. By drawing on the sociology of knowledge, this study identifies the production sites and analyses the knowledge and knower structures of accounting, and describes how knowledge is rearranged and transformed to become pedagogic discourse. These findings, including the design of the framework, are illustrated using a case study of specialised accountancy knowledge. The study contributes to the field of accounting education in that the framework demonstrates the design principles required to achieve an incremental and integrated approach for the selection, ordering and pacing of specialised accounting knowledge.
Metadata only
Research and development in an ICL project: a methodology for understanding meaning making in economics
(WAC Clearinghouse, 2011) Paxton, Moragh;
This article focuses on the methodology for an academic literacies research project in an Integrated Content and Language (ICL) collaboration in economics and the ways in which the findings from the research contributed to further development and expansion of the ICL endeavour. The research was conducted independently rather than collaboratively and the paper reflects on the reasons for this. Experience from the project suggests the research methodologies and epistemologies in the two collaborating fields of economics and academic literacies lack congruence and points to the complexities of conducting collaborative research when research paradigms are so different.
Open Access
Student negotiation of an undergraduate accounting assessment
(2017) Hyland, Tarryn; Paxton, Moragh; Le Roux, Kate
In South Africa (SA), access to the accounting profession is characterised by inequality, resulting from a multitude of socio-economic and historical issues. Assessment serves as the primary gate-keeping mechanism of the profession. However, more than twenty years after the end of apartheid, pass rates remain skewed by factors such as language and race. Accounting education research offers some quantitative studies which investigate diversity in academic performance by school-leaving results or by race, for example, and a number of studies which consider language in the accounting curriculum. The quantitative studies, however, do not provide insight into the complex socio-cultural issues operating in accounting education, and the work on language in accounting education is largely focused on action research projects and the documentation of communication interventions. While some accounting education studies acknowledge that specific disciplinary conventions exist, these practices are not analysed or described. This study asks the question: how do students negotiate undergraduate accounting assessments? To explore this problem, the academic communication practices in a second-year accounting assessment at a wellestablished, English-medium university in SA are investigated by analysing what is valued in accounting assessments, what students are doing in the assessment event, and why. Academic literacies research and a theory of language as social practice, including the work of Theresa Lillis and Norman Fairclough, are used to develop the theoretical framework of this study. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used to analyse the assessment texts, explore the dominant disciplinary practices in accounting higher education and explain the power behind professional accounting education discourse. This study outlines elements of the valued disciplinary literacy, such as the genres of accounting assessments and the accounting discussion answer, and specialised test-taking reading practices, including how to identify the valued task response. The overarching feature of the dominant disciplinary practices is its linguistic complexity, largely shaped by professional accounting institutions. To investigate students' literacy practices, the answer texts of three students from different backgrounds are analysed using CDA, together with ethnographic data from "talk around text" (Lillis, 2008: 355) and "literacy history" (Lillis, 2008: 362) interviews with students. This study shows that students with language practices aligned to the valued professional education discourse have power in the assessment, while English additional language students from poorer schooling backgrounds in particular struggle to grasp and demonstrate the valued discourse. This study contributes to research on language practices and student experiences in a professional curriculum. It is my hope that the insights offered by this paper can be used to improve teaching and learning by encouraging educators to be aware of, and facilitate access to, the dominant accounting disciplinary practices. Educators need to acknowledge the diverse language practices of students, make explicit the complex elements of the valued disciplinary practices in the teaching and provide opportunities to develop students' knowledge of business and legal concepts, for example, which are recontextualised in the accounting curriculum. Until these steps are taken to make the epistemology of the discipline clearer, access to the accounting profession will remain unequal.
Open Access
Student voice as a methodological issue in academic literacies research
(Taylor & Francis, 2012) Paxton, Moragh
Academic literacies research has been identiﬁed as an emerging but signiﬁcant ﬁeld in higher education. This article extends the discussions around methodology in academic literacies research by drawing on the current text and context debates in sociolinguistics and linguistic ethnography. It uses illustrations from a recent academic literacies research project to reﬂect on methodology and to emphasise the importance of a prolonged engagement with participants' writing practices and experiences as well as the collection and analysis of a range of types of data to allow the researcher to become more familiar with the context. Methods such as allowing students to interpret their own writing, classroom observation and students' written literacy histories gave the researcher real insights into the way students made connections to their own familiar contexts in order to learn. The research also highlighted the manner in which communication between students and teaching staff can break down because teachers misinterpret student utterances when they do not understand or know the contexts that the students are drawing on. At the same time, however, the researcher sounds some caution about the use of dialogue in ethnographic methodologies because communication is a two-way process and allocation of linguistic resources has been unequal. Therefore, where students' resources do not match the context, they may struggle to communicate with the interviewer and to interpret their written texts. In these cases, interviewees who are ﬁrst language speakers from privileged schooling backgrounds may be able to contextualise and interpret their writing more fully than interviewees who are speakers of English as a second or foreign language and who come from poorer rural schools.
Open Access
Students' interim literacies as a dynamic resource for teaching and transformation
(Taylor & Francis, 2007) Paxton, Moragh
This article explores the notion of 'interim literacies' by drawing on data from a research project which used linguistic and intertextual analysis of first year student writing in economics to investigate the intersection of academic discourse and student voice. This research has provided a rich set of data to illustrate the ways in which first year student texts are built from a range of past and present discourses, discourse strategies and genres. Students make meaning by reworking past discourses, appropriating and adapting new discourses to make them their own. The article goes on to develop the notion of interim literacies by refining criteria for deciding what interim literacies are and what they are not. The notion of interim literacies is used to move away from a 'deficit' view of English second language writers in the university and it is argued that an analysis and understanding of interim literacies can contribute to teaching and to transformation. The article concludes by providing evidence of the ways in which this research project has impacted on teaching and curricula in the university course where the project was undertaken.
Open Access
Teachers' beliefs: understanding the thinking of secondary mathematics teachers as a starting point for improved professional development
(2015) Muller, Sara Louise; Paxton, Moragh
This thesis explores the beliefs of mathematics teachers working in a rural school in South Africa. This is premised on the argument that understanding the beliefs of teachers is a necessary, even if insufficient, prerequisite to designing effective teacher development programmes. I postulate that take-up rates of new content and teaching methods are low due to unmanaged cognitive conflict with pre-existing beliefs about the nature of teaching. A broad review of the literature on beliefs as a concept is conducted to establish theoretical grounding for the study of beliefs as an abstract object of analysis (Green, 1971; Nespor, 1987; Pajares, 1992). I particularly refer to Ernest's (1989) models of mathematics epistemology, and Adler's (2001) dilemmas of teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms. Multiple studies of mathematics teachers' beliefs are drawn upon to relate beliefs to classroom practice. Qualitative data on two mathematics teachers working in a rural school in the Eastern Cape was gathered over the period of a month, using ethnographic methods as outlined by Thompson (1992) for gathering evidence of beliefs. Primary data, which consisted of pre-interviews, multiple lesson observations and stimulated-recall post-interviews, was analysed for evidence of teacher beliefs. Secondary data, in the form of a researcher journal and socio-economic information about the school, was also gathered to provide rich context data in which to situate the teachers' work. Particular attention was paid to teacher beliefs about teaching and learning, mathematics and language. Further evidence for beliefs was then obtained through close examination of an observation extract using classroom discourse analysis. The main finding of this thesis was that not only does a school's context provide logistical constraints to curriculum implementation and pedagogical change, but that the worldviews of teachers affect their interpretation of the curriculum (Chapman, 2002). Significantly, a relationship between the mathematics epistemology a teacher holds and their ability to admit language as a critical pedagogical factor is suggested. I conclude that detailed understanding of what teachers believe may provide a productive approach for teacher development programmes that aim to effect change.
Open Access
Tensions between textbook pedagogy and the literacy practices of the disciplinary community: a study of writing in first year economics
(Elsevier Ldt, 2007) Paxton, Moragh
This paper describes aspects of a research project which used linguistic and intertextual analysis of student writing to investigate the relationship between the academic curriculum and student voice in a first year economics course at a South African university. I argue that the discourses and practices of first year university economics textbooks provide a model of literacy practices which contradict many of the literacy practices of the discipline of economics. The first year economics textbook in particular, rather than exposing students to a variety of arguments and encouraging the development of critical reading skills appropriate for academic contexts, tends to be single voiced. This gives the impression of consensus in the discipline and it may encourage rote learning and plagiarism. This argument is supported with data from a research project.
Open Access
Understanding the experiences of students who enter the MBChB programme from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds and either succeed or fail in passing the first semester
(2008) Gunston, Geney; Paxton, Moragh
This qualitative study was conducted during 2005 in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town. Drawing on the theoretical framework of the New Literacy Studies and, in particular, Gee's notion of Discourse acquisition, I sought to better understand the issues that impacted on success for students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds who entered the MBChB programme.
Open Access
When police become postgraduates : an intertextual analysis of research proposals in the MTech Policing degree at an ODL university
(2015) Ndlangamandla, Sibusiso Clifford; Paxton, Moragh; Thesen, Lucia
This research poses the question: How do professional and academic discourse practices amongst MTech Policing postgraduate students intersect in the research proposal at an Open Distance Learning (ODL) institution? The research proposal is chosen as the site for investigation because it is a contested, 'gatekeeping mechanism' which can be challenging for many students, and for their supervisors. This is a particular challenge in the current rapidly changing postgraduate sector, in which there is increased mobility between workplace domains and the university, as students return to study on a part-time basis. The study is located in the field of academic literacies, which challenges deficit framing of student writing through the analysis of both texts and their social practices. It uses critical discourse analysis (CDA), with ethnographic framing, in order to explore and describe how professional practices in policing in post-apartheid South Africa are recontextualised in academic writing. A cross section of proposals was analysed using analytical tools such as intertextuality and interdiscursivity. In the university setting, interviews were conducted with supervisors and workshops on research methods were observed. In order to understand workplace-based practices, students were interviewed at their sites of work across the country. A hybrid curriculum model was introduced to understand the intersection of the professional, workplace, and university domains suggested by Lee et al. (2000). The findings suggest that the way students draw on the workplace, both intertextually and interdiscursively in their academic texts, results in tensions and discourse clashes between the workplace and academic knowledge practices. Whereas the academy values reflection, critical consciousness, and theoretical knowledge, the policing context puts a primary value on practice-based knowledge, compliance with rules, and the police sub-culture. Through dialogue with the researcher, students' interpretations of their texts revealed their workplace and professional identities, notions of genre and discourse, and at times unequal power relations between different institutions. The tensions were most evident in the different audiences for which students were writing, and in the way students identified key concepts for their proposal, and how they negotiated ethics permission. The policing context was more prominent than the academic setting. However, students also show agency and strong awareness of audience through their recontextualisation strategies and hybridity in the writing of the proposal genre. This had an impact on transitions between discourse communities and on the intersection of discourses in postgraduate academic literacies. This research shows the contribution of CDA and ethnographic framing, in combination with a hybrid curriculum model, in uncovering the nature of the tensions that students experience in writing their research proposals. This has potential for informing supervisors and writing instructors in the ODL context by providing a better understanding of the challenges that students face. The study concludes with strategies for teaching academic literacies to MTech policing students.
Open Access
Writer's stance in disciplinary discourses: a developmental view
(Taylor & Francis, 2008) Paxton, Moragh; Van Pletzen, Ermien; Archer, Arlene; Arend, Moeain; Chihota, Clement
An approach to writer's stance will differ depending on whether one looks at it from an analytic theoretical perspective or a developmental perspective. This article describes a training activity in the Writing Centre at the University of Cape Town which led the authors to evaluate the concept of writer's stance as used in corpus studies against the way it is used by academic literacy practitioners working in developmental fields. Corpus analysts tend to construct a general and theoretical conceptualisation of writer's stance, while academic literacy practitioners who work in complex developmental fields focus on what actually happens (or needs to happen) when individual readers or writers grapple with texts within particular social environments such as academic disciplines.
Open Access
Xhosalising English? Negotiating meaning and identity in economics
(Taylor & Francis, 2010) Paxton, Moragh; Tyam, Nolubabalo
As yet, very few South African studies have explored multilingual learning contexts in order to develop a better understanding of the role that students' diverse primary or hybrid languages play in meaning making in English medium universities.This paper will report on a project which set out to investigate code-switching practices in informal learning groups in the university and to distinguish the forms and functions of these code-switching practices. A particular focus has been to gain insights into the ways in which concepts transfer from one language to another in order to develop thinking on language and learning in multilingual contexts and extend theories of conceptual transfer. The particular focus of this paper is the pedagogic and social functions of this hybrid language and how its use might be tied to questions of identity. We look particularly at the way the tutor in the peer learning group used code-mixing to negotiate different identities in dealing with first a rural and then an urban group of students. We will also illustrate by means of our data ways in which English is being appropriated and Xhosalised, particularly by the urban group of students in order to negotiate meaning, identity and status on this campus and in the wider community.
Open Access
"You would be a master of a subject if taught in Xhosa": an investigation into the complexities of bilingual concept development in an English medium university in South Africa
(Common Ground Publishing, 2007) Paxton, Moragh
This paper reports on a research project which set out to explore what happens when students at an English medium university in South Africa are given opportunities to negotiate conceptual understanding in their primary languages. The project employed a range of methods, including concept translation, multilingual tutorial groups, interviews and a survey questionnaire to develop a richer understanding of the possibilities for multilingual teaching and learning in English medium tertiary education settings in South Africa. By allowing the student voices in the bilingual tutorial discussions to illustrate the complex difficulties that students face when they negotiate understanding of new concepts in their primary languages, this paper develops a textured understanding of multilingual concept formation. In addition, the study has provided valuable insights into students' attitudes to multilingual teaching and learning which highlight the very complex relationships between language, learning and identity. Therefore this research should add to the body of research that has begun to emerge on shifting language attitudes and identity negotiation in the multilingual tertiary education context of South Africa (de Kadt 2005, Bangeni and Kapp, in press). The paper concludes by looking at ways in which English medium institutions can offer scaffolded support to ESL speakers who are learning through the medium of English.

Browsing by Author "Paxton, Moragh"

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