Browsing by Author "Bengesai, Annah Vimbai."

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Critiquing representation : the case of an academic literacy course in an engineering faculty in a South African university.
(2012) Bengesai, Annah Vimbai.; Mgqwashu, Emmanuel Mfanafuthi.
What does it mean to be academically literate? Responses to this question have led to an explosion of research in the field of applied linguistics, yet the diversity of definitions proposed in the literature for the concept of literacy per se indicate that it continues to defy consensus. Literacy, and specifically by extension academic literacy, must thus be recognised as a contested field, with different meanings for different people and inevitable tensions between those taking positions on or affected by its practical implications. Accepting its contested status, this study sought to explore student representations of academic literacy, academic staff representations of academic literacy and associated academic staff representations of students insofar as these touch on specific concerns of academic literacy in an engineering faculty. The purpose of this exploration was to determine how these representations permeate academic practice and inform pedagogical practice and attitudes to learning. This led to the research thesis, that dominant discourses produce certain practices which can lead to social exclusion/inclusion of students. Such a thesis, allows for an examination of institutional practices of teaching and learning. To do this, I employed a multidisciplinary approach drawn from applied linguistics, sociology and philosophy. Consequently, I drew on theories from James Paul Gee, Pierre Bourdieu, Basil Bernstein and Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger to understand the socio-cultural context where representation occurs. An understanding of these discourses and epistemologies also necessitated an approach that probed participants‘ versions of reality. Consequently, this research was premised within a Critical Realist ontology whose central tenet is the recognition of tripartite framework of reality. Within this framework, reality is comprised of the domains of the real, actual and the empirical. The domain of the empirical relates to perceptions of experiences, while the actual is concerned with events that produce these experiences. The real is the domain of generative mechanisms, which if activated, produce the events and experiences in the other domains. Data was collected to correspond to these domains, with critical focus on the analysis of underlying mechanisms which reproduce social reality. To establish how the real relates to the other domains, Fairclough‘s critical discourse analysis was adopted.
The influence of family background on high school completion for males and females in South Africa.
(2016) Bengesai, Annah Vimbai.; Nzimande, Nompumelelo Barbara.
High school completion is an important transition leading on to post-secondary education and by implication into the labour market. In South Africa, a matriculation certificate- obtained at the end of secondary schooling is a prerequisite for access to diploma and degree programmes in institutions of higher learning. Several studies have also pointed to higher economic returns for people with a high school leaving certificate and more so, those with a post-secondary qualification. Hence, people who do not graduate from high school have bleak economic prospects and are likely to earn less than those who do. This study sought to explore factors that underpin the observed association between familial resources and high school completion. Specifically, the study examined whether the differences in high school completion are accounted for by family background factors such as family structure and income, while controlling for demographic factors such as age, race and, place of residence and the interaction with sex. The empirical analysis adopted a retrospective methodology and uses data from the third wave of the National Income Dynamics Study collected in 2012, a longitudinal household survey that was implemented by the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU). The sample consisted of 1821 young people aged 18, 19 and 20 who had successfully completed the interview. Acknowledging that the factors under investigation play out differently for both male and females, the inquiry further sought to interrogate the association between males and females and among males and females. Logistic regression models were fitted to estimate the likelihood of completing high school. The results illustrated that that there are many sources of variation in matric completion. Age, gender, race, residence, household income each have both an independent and joint effect on matric completion. Most notably, family structure behaved differently for the males and females. There was a strong discernible effect on matric completion for the male population for co-resident and lone parent structures, while for the females, residing with both or one parent had no advantage over non-residence with both parents. In fact, females living with one or both parents were less likely to have matric relative to those who live with neither parent.
An investigation into postgraduate students’ experiences of academic writing: a case study of a university in Nigeria.
(2020) Akinmolayan, Emmanuel Seun.; Bengesai, Annah Vimbai.
The process of producing academic text, especially at the postgraduate level is challenging for non-native speakers of the English Language. Although there is a robust body of literature globally which has sought to understand this phenomenon; the same cannot be said about Nigeria, as academic writing in general and postgraduate academic writing seems to be an underexplored area. The available research has tended to focus on school literacy, grammar and diction with little attention being paid to the situatedness of academic writing as a form of literacy. Thus, there remains an apparent gap in the status of knowledge in this field in Nigeria, which this study sought to fill by examining postgraduate students‟ experiences of writing as a form of academic literacy. Specifically, the study explored how academic literacy and academic writing is conceptualised in two departments within a Nigerian University. The study was framed within a socio-cultural view, which sees academic literacy, including research writing as a socially situated practice. Theoretically, Gee‟s typology of d/Discourses, Bourdieu‟s cultural capital and Lave and Wenger‟s Communities of practices were used to understand students‟ experiences. Using a multi-paradigmatic approach, and Critical Discourse Analytical frame, this study revealed that there was no systematic focus on research writing in this university. The focus was rather on thesis as a product. When the process of writing was addressed, it was mainly in a deficit mode where students‟ deficiencies were addressed. In addition, the study also found the dominance of the traditional supervision model. Even though, some students indicated that they found this to be useful, the argument made in this study is that the approach does little to move students from the disciplinary periphery to an expert status in a community of practice. Therefore, it is recommended that, in line with advancements elsewhere, newer supervision models be adopted, which move away from the focus on the thesis, to a pedagogy of training students to be competent writers.
On exploring the role of an academic literacy module in developing postgraduate students' academic writing practices in a school of education: a qualitative case study.
(2015) Akinmolayan, Emmanuel Seun.; Mgqwashu, Emmanuel Mfanafuthi.; Bengesai, Annah Vimbai.
This thesis examines the impact of the Understanding Academic Literacy (UAL) module in the development of students’ academic writing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The pedagogical approach of this module and its impact are also investigated. The research project responds to three research questions: How is writing taught in the Understanding Academic Literacy module? Why is writing taught in the way it is taught in the UAL module? What impact does the way writing is taught in Understanding Academic Literacy have on students’ written work within the module? Using a qualitative case study approach, data was gathered through interviews, classroom observation and document analysis. Interviews were conducted with five students from different writing backgrounds in terms of linguistic and cultural capital. The lecturer of the module was also interviewed. In addition, three different periods of classroom observation were transcribed and analysed, along with documentary evidence, including the UAL course outlines, and students’ written tasks. All these were synthesised to describe and explain how students were initiated through scaffolding into the written discourse of postgraduates. Although perceived as a mystifying language by newcomers, academic writing remains an indispensable tool in postgraduate study. The provision of a module to inform, initiate and socialise students into this specific writing mode is therefore a matter of importance. This is the motive informing the UAL module. However, that most students continued to find academic writing difficult (Harris, Graham, and Mason, 2013) despite the existence of such modules provides the rationale for this study. The study assesses how the UAL has socialised students into academic writing, considers the reasons for the choice of this form of socialisation and its impact. The aim is to investigate whether the purpose of the UAL in respect of students’ academic writing at postgraduate level is being achieved. This study maintains that the ideological model of NLS defines an appropriate way for theorising the introduction of students to academic writing in the 21st century (Street, 2001, 2008, and Lea and Street, 2008), with emphasis on Gee’s (2007) distinctions between primary/secondary discourses and d/Discourses. But the data obtained from the various research instruments revealed that students were still initiated technically. As a result, students only develop a study-skills approach to writing. Although some aspects of the module showed elements of the ideological approach, most of the pedagogical evidence indicated that the module limited students to the intellect and product (autonomous) approach to writing. It is proposed that participation and interaction with experts and peers within the disciplinary community will enhance appropriate socialisation into academic writing, viz. secondary discourse (and Discourse). To achieve this, the academic writing tuition should be distributed across all disciplines and include tutorial sections, which will contribute to an atmosphere in which students’ academic identity can be developed appropriately.
Pedagogic practices in an academic writing module for undergraduate education students: a phenomenological case study.
(2014) Merisi, Peter Oluwaseum.; Mgqwashu, Emmanuel Mfanafuthi.; Bengesai, Annah Vimbai.
Academic writing has been described both internationally and nationally as a major challenge the higher institution entrant students are faced with. In the South African context, many studies have indicated that the Black South African students who constitute the larger part of the student population in the (Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) who are affected the most; the reason being that they are second language users of English, the language of instruction. However, recent studies have revealed that academic writing problem is not only limited to the L2 users, but that the L1 users also have problem writing academically. Scholars the world over have found that students‟ inability to write academically has been the major contributor to their underperformances at the HEIs. Thus, academic writing, arguably, goes beyond a mere acquisition of writing skills, but the acquisition of academic discourse. The Academic Literacy for Undergraduate Students (ALUGS) module, formerly referred to as Academic Literacy in English (ALE), was introduced at the university under study to cater for this writing challenge. Surprisingly, students have been experiencing a high rate of failure even within the module itself- good intensions going wobbly! It is against this background that this study was conducted to explore the effectiveness of the pedagogy at use in the teaching of the ALUGS module. Hence, the purpose of the study was to explore how writing was being taught within the ALUGS module; why was it taught the way it was taught, and; what impact does the way writing was taught have on students‟ writing practices within the module. The study was located within an interpretive paradigm, and employed a qualitative approach in the analysis of the research data. Semi-structured interviews, observations and documentary evidences were the research instruments used in generating the research data. Theoretically, drawing from the social theories of learning, this study was framed by the New Literacy Studies (NLS), dwelling largely on Gee‟s discourse theory and Street‟s autonomous and ideological models of literacy. Findings from the study revealed that the approach being used focus more on the teaching of writing skills rather than the acquisition of academic discourses. It was also found that there was no training for tutors before they were engaged in the teaching of the module, and as a result, they ended up teaching different things in their tutorials. Findings further revealed that what students learned in the ALUGS module have little or no relevance to what they were taught in their various disciplines. Consequently, it was found that both students and lecturers are looking forward to having an academic writing module designed to be discipline-specific rather than a generic one. Thus, it was recommended that the academic writing module should be housed within each discipline to cater for the disciplinary writing needs of the students, and that the curriculum and the course materials should be redesigned.