OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Shay, Suellen"

Browsing by Author "Shay, Suellen"

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Open Access
An analysis of how knowledge is differentiated in a vocationally based curriculum for a new profession
(2015) Halliday, Linda; Shay, Suellen
Inspired by Muller’s (2009) ‘Forms of Knowledge and Curriculum Coherence’ and his theories relating to types of knowledge and curricula differentiation, this study interrogates knowledge in a vocational qualification, asking how it is differentiated in a vocationally based curriculum intended for a new ‘fourth generation’ profession (as opposed to ‘first generation’ professions such as medicine or engineering). The study specifically examines and compares two recontextualising processes; a vocational, unit-standards-based qualification intended for the fitness profession and its curriculum that is designed to meet the qualification’s requirements. The analysis reveals the type of knowledge developed in both. According to Muller (2009), market-related shifts have given rise to many new professions – fourth generation professions - which he claims lack the epistemic foundation of traditional disciplines. To meet the growing demand for these emerging professions, institutions of higher education are being asked to make knowledge and skills more accessible through a range of sector-based, vocational and higher education pathways, leading to clearly-defined outcomes. According to Wheelahan (2007), reducing knowledge to observable outcomes or competencies simply produces a ‘fragmented and atomistic view of knowledge’. Thus, the concern is about knowledge and the call from many educational sociologists is for ‘powerful knowledge’; that increases access, encourages cumulative learning and enables its transferability (Young, 2008a, Wheelahan, 2007). Acknowledging the socio-epistemic nature of knowledge, this study focuses on the epistemic, exploring different types of knowledge in a vocationally based higher education setting. Working within the recontextualising field of Bernstein’s (2000) Pedagogic Device, the study explores types of knowledge and the organising principles that constitute knowledge practices within a South African vocational educational setting. Of particular interest to the study are ways in which conceptual knowledge increases through a process of concept-integration, and whether or not such knowledge informs practice. The analysis calls upon Maton’s (2000) Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), specifically LCT Semantics, to explore meanings in curriculum texts in order to identify different types of knowledge. In using LCT Semantics, conceptual and practice-based knowledge is identified and graded according to differing levels of conceptual complexity and context-dependence. While the analysis exposes a range of theoretical knowledges, from simple to relatively complex concepts which emanate from the disciplines that form exercise science, it also explains the nature of contextually based knowledge, shaped by the demands of vocational practice (Muller, 2009, Shay, 2013). This study reveals that, despite the segmental nature of its unit-standards-based qualification, it is possible for vocational curricula to ensure concept-building, while being informed by its vocational requirements.
Open Access
Anonymous examination marking at University of Cape Town: the quest for an 'agonizing-free zone'
(Unisa Press, 2006) Shay, Suellen; Jones, Barbara
Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of social practice, the author challenges common-sense notions of objectivity and subjectivity which inform assessment practice, and argues for assessment as a socially situated interpretive act. A case study of an engineering community of practice at a South African university illustrates the multiple subjectivities that shape assessors' interpretations of student performance. This case study contributes to an understanding of academic professional judgment as a 'double reading' - an iterative movement between different modes of knowledge which comprise the objective and the subjective. The author concludes with a brief discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of this for how academic communities of practice come to judge and how these judgments are validated.
Open Access
Assessment and the quality of educational programmes: what constitutes evidence?
(University of the Free State, 2005) Shay, Suellen; Jawitz, Jeffrey
In a climate of growing accountability for Higher Education, there is an increased demand on assessment to play an evaluative role. National, professional and institutional quality assurance systems expect that the assessment of student performance can be used to evaluate the quality of teachers, learners, programmes and even institutions for the purposes of programme review, programme accreditation and institutional audits. While affirming the role of assessment as a catalyst for the improvement of teaching and learning, this paper problematises the use of assessment for evaluative purposes. Drawing on an Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) accreditation exercise, we illustrate the limitations of particular forms of assessment data as evidence of quality. The paper argues for assessment as a socially situated interpretive act and for validation as the on-going process of strengthening the alignment between our assessment tasks, procedures and outcomes, and the educational, political and social purposes which our assessment systems claim to serve. The central argument of the paper is that key source of assessment evidence for quality assurance purposes is to be found in the strength and effectiveness of programme validation systems.
Open Access
Assessment at the boundaries: service learning as case study
(Taylor & Francis, 2008) Shay, Suellen
This article explores the value systems which inform assessment practices in higher education, specifically how particular forms of knowledge valued in the curriculum shape and constrain assessment practices. The data for this article is drawn from two courses which participated in a service learning research and development project at the University of Cape Town. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein, the article argues that the location of these courses—within the field of higher education and a particular kind of institution, faculty and department—shapes their assessment systems, practices and outcomes in certain ways. What is valued in this field (Bourdieu) is a form of knowledge production which requires students 'to step out of the particularities'. This form of knowledge operates as a regulative discourse, constituting what counts as legitimate. Using the assessment system as a 'window', this article explores how these service learning courses constitute and are constituted by the regulative discourse of the field. While the constraints of the field are powerful, this project offers some hopeful signs of forms of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment that, at the very least, name and challenge these underlying value systems.
Open Access
The assessment of complex tasks: a double reading
(Taylor & Francis, 2005) Shay, Suellen
Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of social practice, the author challenges common-sense notions of objectivity and subjectivity which inform assessment practice, and argues for assessment as a socially situated interpretive act. A case study of an engineering community of practice at a South African university illustrates the multiple subjectivities that shape assessors' interpretations of student performance. This case study contributes to an understanding of academic professional judgment as a ‘double reading' - an iterative movement between different modes of knowledge which comprise the objective and the subjective. The author concludes with a brief discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of this for how academic communities of practice come to judge and how these judgments are validated.
Open Access
The assessment of undergraduate final year projects : a study of academic professional judgment
(2003) Shay, Suellen; McCormick, Kay; Hall, Martin
The premise of this study is that the assessment of student performance is an interpretive process. This raises a fundamental validity question: on what basis do academic communities evaluate the soundness of their interpretations? The central problem which this study explores is how academic assessors validate their interpretations of student performance on complex tasks. I explore this problem by focusing specifically on the assessment of final year undergraduate projects through two case studies of disciplinary communities of practice, one in the Humanities faculty and the other in the Engineering faculty of a South African university. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of social practice on the one hand, and the methods of critical discourse analysis and ethnography on the other, I construct a theory and method of inquiry which illumines aspects of assessment as an interpretive process, aspects which have been obscured by traditional approaches to assessment. This analysis privileges the context of assessment, the inevitability of difference in assessment interpretations and the equally inevitable effects of power. My methodological approach identifies four elements which constitute social practice- social structure, conjuncture. event and text. These constitutive elements operationalize into a series of analytical stages which expose different aspects of social practice. My approach is consistent with Fairclough's method of critical discourse analysis, although I also include ethnographic methods.
Open Access
Becoming an academic : a study of learning to judge student performance in three disciplines at a South African university
(2007) Jawitz, Jeffrey Paul; Shay, Suellen; Case, Jenni
This study seeks to understand how new academics learn to judge student performance in complex assessment tasks, i.e. tasks that allow students substantial initiative and latitude in their response. It was conducted at a research intensive historically white university in South Africa and involved case studies in three academic departments. Thirty one academics were interviewed across the three departments. The analysis of these cases was conducted in two parts, using a framework developed from Bourdieu's theory of practice and Lave and Wenger's situated learning theory. In the first part, I analysed the academic workplace in each case and identified three different configurations of communities of practice that formed key dimensions of the fields within which these departments were situated. In the second part, I applied the concepts of habitus and legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) to understand how new academics engaged with the communities of practice in their departments and learnt how to judge student performance of complex assessment tasks. The study revealed limitations in the explanatory power of social learning theory in contexts where the stability of communities of practice was uncertain, where there were no opportunities for LPP and where knowledge was deemed to reside in the individual rather than to be distributed in the community. In contrast to the view that learning in the workplace is informal and unstructured, in each of the case studies it was possible to identify a learning to judge trajectory, which, in some cases more than others, provided a structured "learning curriculum" (Wenger, 1998) for new academic staff. Learning to judge student performance happened through participation in a series of assessment practices along this trajectory. The experience of following a learning to judge trajectory was closely associated with the identity trajectory of each individual academic and depended on three factors: the particular configuration of communities of practice within each field, the capital valued within this configuration, and the nature of the capital that the newcomer brings into the department. However, the existence of these trajectories did not mean that learning was unproblematic, as they appeared to support the dominant relationships of power within each field and posed particular challenges for those individuals who embarked on alternative trajectories.
Open Access
Beyond social constructivist perspectives on assessment: the centring of knowledge
(Taylor & Francis, 2008) Shay, Suellen
Over the past few decades assessment has been heralded for its key role in the improvement of teaching and learning. However, more recently there have been expressions of uncertainty about whether assessment is in fact delivering on its promised potential. Against this backdrop of uncertainty and circumspection this paper offers a critical reflection on higher education assessment discourses with a particular focus on the discourse of criterion referenced assessment. The central argument is that while the social constructivist perspective has significantly illuminated our understanding of assessment, inadvertently the very object of assessment-knowledge has been eclipsed. I propose that a fruitful way forward for our assessment practices is the centring of disciplinary forms of knowledge as an explicit component of the object of our assessment. Drawing on sociologists of education - Basil Bernstein and Karl Maton - I stake out some of the theoretical ground for reconceptualising the relationship between knowledge and assessment.
Open Access
Conceptualising design knowledge and its recontextualisation in the studiowork component of a design foundation curriculum
(2012) Steyn, Diane; Shay, Suellen; Carter, Francis
Universities of Technology have traditionally prepared students for the world of work and their close ties with industry directly impact on vocational curriculum, which has to impart subject knowledge and specialized knowledge valued by industry, whilst simultaneously encouraging the acquisition of vocational identity. This study of a Design Foundation Course’s curriculum is located at a University of Technology which is currently undergoing a process of re-curriculation, which has initiated a process of examining subject knowledge and its structuring in various course’s curricula. In the light of these developments, an examination of the nature of design knowledge and the role of the foundation curriculum in the transfer of core disciplinary knowledge to underprepared students appeared both timely and necessary.
Open Access
Conceptualising differentiated forms of knowledge : the Medical (MBChB) curriculum of the University of Cape Town
([2010]) Louw, Graham; Shay, Suellen
Two major features characterise the change to the Medical curriculum at the University of Cape Town, which occurred in 2002, namely: a traditional didactic approach to teaching was replaced by a problem-based learning programme, and the traditional biomedical model was replaced by a bio-psychosocial model, unofficially referred to as a bio-psychosocial / spiritual model by the staff. The change to the curriculum necessitated a lengthy process of planning and design, implementation, and continuous review. Crucial to this on-going process of curriculum review is a better understanding of how disciplinary knowledge is recontextualised into educational knowledge. This study is an investigation into the concepts of differentiated forms of knowledge that inform the Medical (MBChB) curriculum of the University of Cape Town (UCT). The object of this research project is to classify, describe and compare the forms of knowledge present in two selected subject areas, each made up of specific specialities (disciplines), within courses in Years 2 and 3 that form a major portion of the programme. Using the concepts of - hard and - softâ€– sciences (Natural Sciences versus the Humanities), two subjects were identified that fell into different quadrants of Biglan's classification of subjects (Biglan, 1973a,b). The two subjects chosen were Chemical Pathology and Culture, Psyche and Illness. Data were collected from course documentation, interviews with members of staff, and examples of assessments. These data were then analysed using Maton's legitimation code theory, which identifies four legitimation codes based on the Epistemic Relation (ER) and the Social Relation (SR), namely a Knowledge Code, a Knower Code, a Relativist Code, and an Ã‰lite Code. These four categories were used to determine what is valued in the two subjects, using the relative strength or weakness of each of ER, SR, classification and framing.
Open Access
Conceptualizing curriculum differentiation in higher education: a sociology of knowledge point of view
(Taylor & Francis, 2012) Shay, Suellen
Sociologists of education rooted in social realism have for more than a decade argued that knowledge matters in education, there are different kinds of knowledge, not all forms of knowledge are equal and that these differentiations have significant implications for curriculum. While this argument has made an important contribution to both theoretical and policy debate, the implications for curriculum have not been sufficiently addressed. In other words, a theory of differentiated knowledge has not translated into an adequate theory of differentiated curriculum. Drawing on Basil Bernstein's work on knowledge differentiation and Karl Maton's Legitimation Code Theory, this paper offers an empirically derived emerging framework for conceptualizing differentiated higher education curricula with a particular interest in occupationally and professionally oriented curricula. The framework illuminates the principles underlying curriculum differentiation, thus enabling a richer conversation about epistemological access and progression.
Open Access
A critical engagement with research into higher education
(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Shay, Suellen; Ashwin, Paul; Case, Jeniffer
The aim of this special issue is to promote a critical dialogue about research into higher education with a specific focus on higher education development. Echoing Clegg's argument (in this issue), we argue that higher education development as a profession is coming of age. For an emerging field of practice, it seems appropriate that we critically examine the knowledge which informs these practices and that we interrogate the theoretical frames of reference and methodological approaches which have shaped what we know and how we come to know. The papers in this special issue are coupled around four broad areas of research in higher education: student learning, academic development, knowledge and curriculum and institutional change. Each couple consists of a 'lead' paper and a 'response' paper, all of which emerged from the Higher Education Close Up 4 (HECU 4) Conference held in Cape Town, South Africa in June 2008. With respect to each of the areas, the 'lead' papers were intentionally selected to raise questions about what is currently known in each of their areas.
Open Access
Curriculum formation: a case study from History
(Taylor & Francis, 2011) Shay, Suellen
Drawing on the work of Bernstein and Maton and using a case-study approach, this study explores the formation of an undergraduate history curriculum at the University of Cape Town. This article focuses on two periods of curriculum formation referred to as history as canon and history as social science. With respect to these two curriculum periods the findings reveal the privileging of different kinds of historical educational knowledge, as well as the promotion of different student identities. The article also argues for the need for a more fine-grained conceptual framework for the study of knowledge and curriculum in higher education. The article concludes by highlighting the importance of this kind of research as pressure for curriculum reform intensifies in South Africa.
Open Access
A curriculum framework for flexible engineering degrees in South Africa
(Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (Scotland), 2014-09-23) Grayson, Diane; Collier-Reed, Brandon I; Pearce, Howard; Shay, Suellen
South Africa produces too few engineers to meet its development needs. The number of graduating engineers is slowly increasing, but is still only about 2000 per year, serving a population of over 50 million. Data from the Council on Higher Education (CHE 2013) show that for the 2005 cohort of BEng students nationally only 25% obtained an engineering degree in the regulation time of four years, with another 19% taking five years. In a study for the Engineering Council of South Africa on improving throughput (Fisher 2011), one suggestion was to increase curriculum flexibility to better cater for the needs of a diverse student population. As part of a CHE project, we developed exemplar curricula for engineering degrees designed to take either four or five years to complete. In this paper we describe the underpinning principles that guided the design and illustrate how they are applied in curriculum exemplars for a mechanical engineering degree.
Open Access
Curriculum reform in South Africa: more time for what?
(2016) Shay, Suellen; Wolff, Karin; Clarence-Fincham, Jennifer
In 2013 the Council on Higher Education (CHE) released a proposal for the reform of South Africa’s undergraduate degree arguing that all current 3-year degrees and diplomas, as well as 4-year Bachelor’s degrees be extended by one year with an additional 120 credits. This paper argues that the structure proposed provides the conditions for a different kind of curriculum that enables epistemic access and development. The paper firstly offers a set of theoretical tools for conceptualising this enabling curriculum structure. Secondly, drawing on the CHE exemplars, the paper makes explicit the general curriculum reform principles that underpin the enabling structure. Finally, the paper describes how these reform principles translate into qualification-specific curriculum models which enable epistemic access and development. This research is an important contribution to the next phase of curriculum reform in South Africa, what we refer to as a ‘new generation’ of extended curricula.
Open Access
Educational development as a field: are we there yet?
(Taylor & Francis, 2012) Shay, Suellen
This paper contributes to the critical engagement about educational development and its status as a field. The critique focuses in particular on our knowledge and the nature of our knowledge-building. The paper argues that unless we strengthen our knowledge base we will not emerge as a professional field able to engage rigorously and systematically with the problems of higher education. Drawing on social realist work that builds on the ideas of Basil Bernstein, a framework is offered for conceptualizing knowledge differentiation and the implications of different types of knowledge for knowledge-building. The paper concludes with suggestions on how educational development might strengthen its knowledge-building capacity.
Open Access
An exploration into the interpretive frameworks of assessors in an interior design moderation event
(2008) Lewis, Mari; Shay, Suellen
How do multiple perspectives enable or disturb the reaching of sound classifications? The question underlying the study arose out of the ostensibly conflicting paradigms that a multi-disciplinary assessor panel imputed to an interior design moderation event. The study seeks to understand how disciplinary specialisations shape their judgements. Given assessors' plausible susceptibility to their individual schemas, the study explores the manner by which a heterogeneous social milieu approximates sound assessment practices and identifies legitimate interior design productions. For the study, the multi-disciplines were explicated as an organised community of individually-embodied social practices upon which coherent discourse and the exercise of power were dependent. Bourdieu's social theory is drawn upon to make sense as to how the theoretical constructs of capital and habitus are located within particular disciplinary groups and, how they are reproduced as the recursive internalisations endemic to individual specialisations. Capital and habitus are used to position the individually specialised assessors within the field. The specialist positions are premised as sites of opposition where dispositions are coterminous with position taking and competition for legitimacy. In this way, the study interrogates whether the act of assessment may be a function of how assessors operationalise their social practices. The assessor values and their corresponding knowledge and attitudes were seen as constituting the means by which appraisals and classifications were being made and calibrated. This necessitated a qualitative analysis of the complex aggregations of values and behaviours, typical of the socially differentiated panel. Primary to the investigation was the need to penetrate the actual moderation debates to access the tacit habitus and pervasive power that lay embedded and thus obscured from scrutiny. These deliberations represent a symbolic, structuring system - produced and interpreted against a common social field. For this reason four moderation cruces, seen as illumining the assessors' habitus that their particular capital resources advocated, were identified as relevant samples. The analysis hones into what the assessors draw on in order to make sense of the productions, i.e. their primary informants, or as encapsulated by Shay, their interpretive frameworks.
Open Access
From Gatekeepers to Gateways: Courses Impeding Graduation Annual Report 2019
(University of Cape Town, 2020) Shay, Suellen; Collier-Reed, Brandon; Hendry, Jane; Marquard, Stephen; Kefale, Kende; Prince, Robert; Steyn, Sanet; Mpofu-Mketwa, Tsitsi; Carstens, Rondine
The Courses Impeding Graduation (CIG) Project is a research and development initiative of the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED) addressing the problem of high failure rates in courses that are obstacles to student retention and progression. This report report lays out the background, aims, objectives, and outcomes of the project in 2019, with a particular focus on first-year Mathematics courses in the Faculty of Science, examining which students are at higher risk of failing these courses. The report includes student perspectives gathered through focus groups.
Open Access
Judging essays : factors that influence markers
(2006) Olckers, Lorna; Shay, Suellen
This thesis is an exploration of assessment with particular focus on the marking of essay assignments and the validity or soundness of that process.
Open Access
Judging essays: the challenge of interpretation
(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Shay, Suellen; Ocklers, Lorna
In the past decade there has been increasing interest in assessment as a social practice. There is a growing recognition that assessment, particularly of complex tasks, is a judgment which is socially-situated and thus contingent on a variety of factors which constitute the assessment event. Drawing on the hermeneutical tradition, this article explores the interpretive processes of essay markers in two Health Science courses at the University of Cape Town, with a particular focus on markers' judgements about language. The analysis exposes multiple 'circles' of influence on markers' professional judgements, including the texts (both the written product and the student writer), the marker's interpretive framework, the interpretive community and the wider institutional discourses. The article contributes to a better understanding of the crucial role of the interpretive community in the validation of assessment interpretations.