Browsing by Author "Clarence-Fincham, Jennifer Anne."

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An ethnographic investigation into the teaching of writing in an African secondary school in the Pietermaritzburg area.
(2000) Hart, Michael Travers.; Harley, Keneth Lee.; Clarence-Fincham, Jennifer Anne.
This study is an ethnographic investigation into the teaching of writing in an African secondary school in the Pietermaritzburg area. It arose out of my awareness that schooling distributes literacy unequally and negatively affects learners' abilities to participate effectively in society. This inequality of access is prevalent in South African schools in the aftermath of apartheid education policy. The purpose of the research is to explore these issues of access and to gain an understanding of the factors that shape learners' knowledge, skills and attitudes around writing. The need to gain a rich understanding of these factors indicated that a long-term, indepth ethnographic study was appropriate. Accordingly I taught grade eleven classes at a school for two and a half years to understand the context in which teachers and learners operated. The core of the data came from Literate Life Histories that I collected by means of interviews with six learners. This was triangulated with data from interviews with teachers, classroom observation, analysis ofsyllabuses, teacher guides and examinations, participant observation of matriculation examinations, and analysis of student work. The data shows that inappropriate teaching, assessment and texts deprives learners ofaccess to effective literacy. Systemic constraints of syllabuses, teacher guides and large classes shape teachers' practices. As a result, learners experience a narrow range of genres, no explicit teaching or assessment around genre conventions, and inaccessible texts. Learners thus view writing as a grammar exercise, have little confidence in their ability to communicate via writing, do not see writing as a process of refinement, and have little knowledge of how genre, tenor, field and mode shape written texts . These findings point to the need for the rehabilitation of writing in the schools and teacher training. This will require attention to syllabuses, assessment practices and the adequate supply of appropriate textbooks.
Exploring changing identities : a case study of Black female technikon students' understanding of themselves as users of English, and as users of other languages.
(2002) Hodgson, Lesley Marion.; Clarence-Fincham, Jennifer Anne.
This dissertation, a qualitative case study, investigates issues of language and identity among sixteen young black women studying at Technikon Natal. I examine the ways in which identities are structured by discourses of which language practices are an important part. The research participants' need to learn English is also interrogated against a scenario of South Africa during and post-apartheid. In Chapter 1, I give historical background on the educational structures and legislation which affected my research participants before 2000, and then briefly describe their present context of study. The literature on which my dissertation is based is reviewed in Chapter 2. Humanist theories of motivation for second language learning, for example, Gardner's (1985), are rejected in favour of Norton Peirce's (1995) notion of investment in second language learning, which builds on Bourdieu's (1977 - 1991) concepts of capital, and views the second language learner as inseparable from her social world. However, the emphasis in Chapter 2 is given to some of the central ideas of poststructuralist thinking, particularly those pertaining to the undermining of totalising theories, and those arguing in favour of multiple subjectivity. Chapter 3 contains both my research methods, which were mainly social constructionist, as well as the broad discourse analysis techniques I deployed for my data analysis. Notable in Chapter Four, in which I present and analyse my findings, is the power of ethnic discourses to govern the use of their own and other languages by their subjects. Significant, too, are the shifts in subjectivity which individuals experience as they integrate new discourses into their lives. Amongst my conclusions in the final chapter is the notion that, from a poststructuralist perspective, code switching may allow the simultaneous display of more than one identity; that the use of English by black South Africans is fraught with contradictions, and that indigenous African languages appear vulnerable to the pressure from powerful English discourses. I also discuss the limitations of this research and make recommendations for future research, and end with the particular insights into language and subjectivity I have gained as a lecturer in my current teaching context.
Ghosts between two fires : an exploration of the impact of primary and secondary discursive practices on the construction of the subjectivities of a group of Coloured high school students in Pietermaritzburg.
(2002) Mathey, Michelle.; Clarence-Fincham, Jennifer Anne.
Identity issues have been a sensitive area for many people who are classified as Coloured in South Africa. In the past, this could have been ascribed to the effects of apartheid ideology, which resulted in different responses from the people in this racial group: some accepted the inferior status in a fatalistic manner and made the best of a bad situation; others attempted to remove themselves from this group and passed over into the white population group on the basis of their similar physical attributes while others rejected the appellation by fighting against the derogatory and negative images that categorised them as Other, in an attempt to transform social prejudices. The identity issues of young Coloured learners at a high school in Pietermaritzburg came to my attention during a period when I attempted to establish a more meaningful relationship with the learners that I taught. Incorporating dialogue journals as a pedagogical tool in this respect, I unwittingly opened up Pandora's box. The many complexities of adolescent lives were openly revealed to me by the grade 9s and 10s in my care, in the hope that I would help them to resolve their problems. However, the issue that disconcerted me the most, was the Discourse of the home. I realised that a great disparity existed between the Discourses of the home and the school, and resolved to pursue this matter further during the course of the Masters degree that I had undertaken. Using a number of methods to obtain data, and applying a Foucauldian, social constructionist view of discourse to the analysis, I discovered that there were many factors that impacted on the learners' identities. The Discourses that were evident in the texts were often contradictory in nature, and the resultant inter-discursive conflict was a problem for many of the participants who battled to obtain acceptance into these Discourses. The Discourse of the home, the school, friends and gangs were the most prominent in the findings, and the participants' struggles to gain acceptance into them impacted on their sense of seltbood in positive and negative ways, which are revealed in the course of this dissertation. The findings are crucial for educators who agree with Gee (1990, 1996) that all good teaching is ultimately a moral act. English teachers, in particular, are given the responsibility of exposing their learners to different Discourses and their respective conventions in order to empower them. This can only be done by creatively using texts and producing appropriate learning materials which can be used to unpack and deconstruct the values and 'ways of being, saying and doing' (Gee 1990, 1996) that are implicit in these texts. On the one hand, this familiarises learners from Dominant Discourses with the practices of a variety of cultures and races and helps them to acknowledge and accept differences. On the other hand, it validates the identities of the learners who are part of the minority groups, preventing them from feeling marginalised and regarded as Other. Finally, I concluded that parents also need to take responsibility for their children constructing powerful or displaced identities. The Discourse of the home, in the final analysis, is the foundation of the children's lives and is crucial in apprenticing into, and gaining mastery over the dominant social Discourses. The concerns over Coloured identity are not yet laid to rest, even within the lives of our post-apartheid children: indeed, the struggle for identity is never truly complete since identity is always changing and transforming to accommodate newer and better ways of being. However, the educators, parents and others in authority can play a pivotal role in addressing these issues, helping to validate the very tenuous sense of selthood that many of these youngsters are holding on to. Nortje (1973) describes this vulnerability as 'growing between the wire and the wall' - a very difficult place to be, but not impossible to grow out of and flourish into subjects who revel in the constructions of multiple identities, enabling them to participate in the activities of their various Discourses in empowering and validating ways.
An investigation of the impact of working in an international school context on the identities of English-speaking teachers at the International English School in Italy.
(2006) Fotheringham, Rosemary Grace.; Clarence-Fincham, Jennifer Anne.
Many educational researchers (e.g. Jansen 2001) argue that not enough is known about how teachers view their careers and identities as teachers and how they adapt to new educational policies and teaching situations. Researchers (e.g. Woods and Jeffrey 2002) have argued that a consideration of identity issues is of crucial importance when investigating the experiences of teachers in any institutional setting. The purpose of this research study is to investigate the impact of working in an international school context on the identities of English-speaking teachers at the International English School (IES) in Italy. The research aims to identify the issues of identity experienced in the new institutional context, to examine the identity work and strategies engaged in by the teachers and to analyse what kind of reconstruction of their identities has taken place. Three main theoretical perspectives have informed the research. Firstly, poststructuralist theories critique an essentialist view of identity as universal or stable and argue that it is socially constructed and open to continual change. This view of identity works with an understanding that the research participants construct identity rather than report on a pre-existing identity. Secondly, critical theory emphasises the political nature of identity and that it is always linked to power relations in particular sites of practice. Thirdly, theories and research on 'teacher identity' and 'teacher strategy' from the field of education have been drawn on. Three studies from the sociology of education provide a fine-grained analysis of how teacher strategies operate in particular sites of practice and show how strategies are always linked to issues of identity. Insights from the literature on international education suggest that cross-cultural issues are key for teachers relocating to an international school context. Qualitative research methods were chosen. The case study was the main method used: the International English School (IES) formed the case with seven English-speaking teachers at the school as the research participants. Mapping, interviewing and field observation were used to collect the data. The research participants constructed maps of themselves at IES as well as of their career history, and in-depth interviews were conducted. Finally, an on-site field visit took place at the school and included lesson observation of each research participant. The data was analysed thematically using grounded theory. The findings show that the research participants' experiences at IES affected their identities in profound ways and that they experienced a fragmentation of identity. In order to respond to the issues of identity they experienced, the teachers engaged in identity work and particular strategies which allowed them to reinforce or reconstruct their identity as teachers. Each teacher experienced a reconstruction of his or her teacher identity differently. However, the majority of the teachers maintained their vision of education and the teacher identity they wished to subscribe to, although these would have to be realised outside the school. None of the teachers was prepared to invest their long-term commitment or careers in the school. The reconstruction ignored both the international and intercultural factors. None of the teachers defined themselves as international teachers with an international career path and the majority of teachers did not become significantly more interculturally literate through their experiences at IES.
A study of the perceptions of the language-in-education policy held by Zulu speaking parents in a former model C senior primary school.
(2002) Winterbach, Anne Judith.; Clarence-Fincham, Jennifer Anne.
This study investigates the perceptions of Zulu speaking parents of the new language-in-education policy. The context for the study, which is explained in Chapter one, is an ex-Model C senior primary school in KwaZulu-Natal. Chapter two consists of a review of the literature and examines South African language policy before 1989 as well as early ANC language policy up to the present language-in -education policy of additive multilingualism. The research entails a critical examination of the popularity of English as a language of learning (hereafter referred to as LOL), weighed against the need to maintain and sustain indigenous languages. There is also a focus on the current debate surrounding language policy and the notion that, historically, language policy has never been a neutral issue. Chapter three describes the research methodology. A qualitative approach was used, drawing on the interpretive paradigm. Some quantitative data, however, was necessary to support the research. Data was drawn from a sample comprising 30 Grade 4 Zulu speaking parents at a former Model C school, who completed a questionnaire. Interviews were conducted to probe and clarify the responses to the questionnaire. Three main issues were addressed: parents' reasons for choosing an English school; any concerns they might have over the neglect of culture; and their knowledge of the new language-in-education policy. Chapter four describes how these three broad issues were tested against the perceptions of two other participants, namely the Principal of the school (Mr B) and an outside educator (Dr L). Conclusions are discussed in Chapter 5. A key finding that emerges from the study is that parents do not favour an English only policy; they want both unfetted access to English and the assurance that their indigenous language and culture will be safeguarded. However, these findings need to be discussed in the context of rapid social change and it was concluded that parents were not well informed about the new language-in-education policy of additive multilingualism, and the options that this affords them. The government needs to disseminate information more efficiently if the new language-in-education policy is to impact on the decisions that parents make regarding their children's education.
Teaching academic writing in a South African context : an evaluation of the drafting-responding process used to develop the academic writing of students in a first year media course at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
(2006) Crouch, Alison.; Clarence-Fincham, Jennifer Anne.
The provision of written lecturer feedback at the draft stage of a draft-response-redraft process is an extensively used tool in the process genre approach to teaching academic writing. It is also regarded as an important vehicle for mediating access to the academic discourse community for students. This study has as its foundation the view that knowledge and learning is socially constructed and therefore, it is believed that the process of learning academic writing is closely related to a process of acculturation into the world of academic discourse (Quinn, 2000). There is a need to be aware that while students need these skills to succeed in the academic context, we need to be critical of the process of apprenticeship that takes place. Research has shown that although the process genre approach is widely used, the effectiveness of the intervention and the precise impact of this on the students and their essay writing skills have yet to be fully explored. This study uses a case study methodology, including an analysis of usable feedback points (Hyland, 1998) to evaluate the effectiveness of the draft-response-redraft process in facilitating the acquisition of academic writing skills and mediating access to the academic discourse community. The effectiveness of written lecturer feedback on student essays at the draft stage for twelve students doing a first year level tertiary Media Course (with the teaching of academic writing skills as a stated outcome) is explored. A survey of the responses of ninety students doing the course and a focus group discussion with nine students provide a context for a more detailed case study of the essays and responses of twelve students. These students were selected in order to obtain a range of age, gender, mother tongue, schooling background and marking lecturer in the data. The findings show that written feedback is perceived by the students to be valuable and most feel positive about participating in a draft-feedback-response process. However, the relationship between feedback points and improvement is not clear. Individual student factors and the dynamic interaction that takes place make every case unique. The evidence in this study supports the theory that re-writing facilitates improvement (Fathman and Whalley, 1990; Polio et al 1998 and Robb et al 1998) and shows that even brief or sketchy feedback does stimulate revision and can result in writing improvement, although whether this process assists in the long-term development of academic writing skills is the subject for another study. This study supports research which indicates that the dynamic interaction between lecturer and student in the draft-response-redraft process can facilitate the acquisition of academic literacy and mediate access to the academic discourse community. The data did, however, highlight aspects of the process that need to be implemented in order for the positive potential of the learning experience to be fully realised.
Voices in a university : a critical exploration of black students' responses to institutional discourse.
(1998) Clarence-Fincham, Jennifer Anne.; Van der Hoven, Anton.; Janks, Hilary.
The context for this study is the period leading up to and the four years since the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994. It is a critical exploration of black students' responses to university discourses as they begin their degrees, and an analysis of the extent to which Critical Language Awareness can be used to facilitate a greater understanding of institutional conventions and practices. It includes a brief consideration of students' school experiences and then explores their perceptions of the university as a whole as well as of individual texts. The way in which language encodes asymmetrical power relations and is used to construct students' subjectivities within the institution is of central concern. The research methodology adopted here is critical action research. The study consists of two research cycles, a short pilot study and a longer eight week language teaching programme. This second cycle was carried out in 1991 at the University of Natal during a time marked by unprecedented political fluidity and the establishment of new institutional and social structures. The impact of these changes has been felt at every level as racial separation, uniformity and ethnic homogeneity, which were once dominant social norms, have been replaced by the movement towards an integrated social order defined by its diversity, difference, and multiplicity. Because the research process is inseparable from its socio-political context, a theoretical perspective which attempts to theorise multiplicity and contradiction has been adopted here. Insights from postmodern thought are therefore central to this work and have facilitated the interrogation and, at times, the rewriting of many aspects of critical social theory, critical pedagogy and critical action research. The immediate context for this study is Learning, Language and Logic, a first-year course whose primary aim is the acquisition of academic literacy. Over a period of four years, the two action research cycles were developed and integrated into the curriculum. The first was a short intervention during which students analysed three university texts and the second, central cycle was an eight week programme which introduced them to the central principles of Critical Language Awareness. It was designed to provide students entering the university with the opportunity to explore unfamiliar aspects of the university environment and to analyse a range of texts drawn from its discourses. The primary method of analysis of the data was Critical Discourse Analysis but a content analysis of some of the data was also undertaken. The results of this research provide a strong indication that the integration of the principles of Critical Language Awareness into a first year course in academic literacy adds a crucial dimension to students' understanding of the university environment. It provides them with linguistic insights from which they can further develop the ability to analyse their educational context, to respond critically to academic texts and to understand the roles that they can play within the university.