Masters Degrees (Languages and Arts Education)

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Developing reading strategies in higher education through the use of integrated reading/writing activities : a study at a university of technology in South Africa.
(2006) Bharuthram, Sharita.; Balfour, Robert John.
Higher education in South Africa faces severe challenges due to the under preparedness of many students entering the system. Research (Perkins 1991; Pretorius 2000, 2005; Balfour 2002) has shown that many students who enter higher education do not have the required academic literacy knowledge and strategies to engage meaningfully with the relevant texts in their disciplines. A major obstacle to students’ success is their limited reading strategies. A significantly large number of students are not able to read at the appropriate grade and/or age level. Yet, reading is one of the most important academic tasks encountered by students. This thesis focuses on the use of reading strategy interventions together with integrated reading/writing activities to enhance reading comprehension. The study is located at the Durban University of Technology, using as participants the students who were registered on the first year extended Dental Technology programme in 2004. The interventions are implemented through an action research project. The piloting phase of the interventions reveals the need for an understanding of the students’ backgrounds in, amongst others, their reading and writing practices, attitudes, approaches to learning, and motivational factors. Consequently, the action research project was conducted in parallel with an ethnographic inquiry into students’ reading worlds and practices. Given that reading and writing are complementary processes whereby the enhancement of the one has a positive effect on the other, the ethnographic inquiry also explores students’ attitudes and practices towards writing. Using the ideological model (Street 1984) and, in particular, the new literacy approach to teaching and learning as a framework for the thesis, I argue that the students’ early childhood and schooling experiences of reading and writing impact on their current attitudes and practices. I further suggest that for children from disadvantaged backgrounds learning and retaining literacy is more difficult than for children from advantaged, middle class backgrounds. The ethnographic inquiry involved a series of interviews with students, as well as a questionnaire to ascertain students’ attitudes and practices towards reading and writing. In addition, a questionnaire was designed for lecturers to obtain their attitudes and practices towards reading and writing in their disciplines. A major finding of the ethnographic inquiry was that the majority of participants in the study come from a background that can be described as traditionally oral in the sense that it is one in which very little or no emphasis is placed on reading. For some participants story telling was a more common form of interaction or communication with the elders. Also, the majority of participants come from lower socio-economic backgrounds where the purchasing of reading materials is considered a luxury. In addition, for many of the English additional language students, their school environment and experiences were not adequate enough to foster the need for reading and/or any engagement in reading. Based on my research, as well as the findings of other researchers, I argue that reading strategy interventions are essential in order to raise awareness and promote the use of reading strategies so as to enhance the learning (reading) process. The review of literature on reading development and the findings from the interviews indicate that the explicit teaching of reading strategies is essential for students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds (Heath 1983; Delpit 1986; Cope and Kalantzis 1993). To this end the action research component of the study was implemented through the explicit teaching of three reading strategies, namely, identifying the main idea in a paragraph, using context clues to guess the meaning of unknown words in a text, and summarization. The focus of the intervention was on the process and on raising students’ levels of metacognitive awareness. The approach is novel in two ways. First, via the process approach to reading the chosen reading strategies were initially taught independently to the students using the explicit explanation approach which involved scaffolded tasks involving explanations, modeling (using the think-aloud protocol), practice, and transfer exercises. Thereafter, using the cognitive apprenticeship approach, students were taught to use all three strategies simultaneously during reading. Second, discipline specific materials were used as reading sources during the interventions which were conducted with integrated reading/writing activities. Data was collected by means of a language proficiency pre-and post-test, a reading strategy pre-and post-test, worksheets, student reflective pieces, portfolios, and observations. An analysis of the pre-and post-test data showed that the reading strategy interventions were highly successful. Students performed better in the reading strategy post-test than in the pre-test. Furthermore, their performance was better than that of a control group of students who were registered for the first year mainstream programme and who wrote only the reading strategy post-test. A marked improvement was also noted in the language proficiency post-test. These results stress the need for the teaching of reading strategies through integrated reading and writing activities.
An investigation into the use of genre theory as an approach to teaching writing at Park High School in Durban.
(2002) Bayat, Ayesha.; Balfour, Robert John.
The transition to democracy in South Africa has resulted in systemic efforts to ensure equality education for all. However, despite such endeavours to address inequities, inequalities still remain regarding not only resources but also classroom pedagogies. One aspect of classroom pedagogy is the teaching of writing. The writing proficiency of mainly non-mother tongue learners seldom surpasses that of mother tongue speakers of English. Writing is seldom explicitly taught. Moreover, factual texts are almost never taught in schools although they are one of the most powerful genres in society. Systemic transformation in South Africa is often driven by global trends that focus on functional literacy. The Outcomes Based Curriculum is such an initiative with its emphasis on skills, values, critical thinking, and learner centeredness. The current process writing approach in our schools, within the framework of Outcomes Based Education, does not address the needs of all learners. The focus on grammar, correctness, and creative outpourings of self -reflective essays, advantages the learner familiar with the cultural heritage discourse. It disempowers those who are from different cultural or linguistic backgrounds. Writing is a social practice, and in order to write effectively learners have to uncover the generic conventions that configure different genres. In schools this translates into an explicit pedagogy of writing underpinned by theory. This thesis attempts to seek an alternate approach to the teaching of writing in a multicultural classroom, using the genre approach. The research was collaboratively planned and implemented as an action research intervention, at a multicultural school in Durban. The aims were to change learner attitudes to writing, use genre theory to teach learners explicitly about linguistic and generic conventions, produce a factual group text, and to transform my own practice. The first part of the thesis describes the rationale for the research within the context of transformation, issues of democracy education, and multiculturalism as a challenge to educators teaching English primary language. The second part examines the theories that inform this research especially genre theory, critical language awareness, functional grammar, and critical literacy. The implementation of the project in carefully planned and explicit stages is the subject of the third part of the thesis. It also describes how field notes, questionnaires, and the leaflets were used for data collection in the field of research. The fourth section addresses the action research intervention at Park High within a ten-day cycle, together with an integrated analysis of data collected and the findings. The final section of the thesis examines the limitations of the project together with recommendations for improved practice in the writing classroom. The findings indicate that learners value explicit pedagogies and that learning about generic conventions improves confidence and competence. The findings further suggest that learning about genres and generic conventions is a lengthy and difficult process. However, this process has the potential to transform implied pedagogies for both mother tongue and non-mother tongue learners in a post-apartheid society.
Suggesting Lozanov : suggestopedia and creative writing at a high school in Durban, South Africa.
(2007) Kusner, Charles.; Balfour, Robert John.
Suggestopedia (also sometimes referred to as "Accelerated Learning") is a teaching methodology that claims to remove barriers to learning rather than teach students how to learn. Developed by Bulgarian psychotherapist and medical doctor Georgi Lozanov (1926- ), it utilizes a detailed, three-phase cycle of teaching in which about 75% of teaching time is devoted to "Activations", games and activities in which students rehearse material previously presented in unique "Concert Sessions" (which make up the other 25% of contact time). Suggestopedia highlights factors often forgotten in the classroom: the design of an "optimum" learning environment, high expectations of success from the teacher, the use of music and art, the importance of enjoying the learning process, and the fostering of an atmosphere of "relaxed alertness". The method has been used with some success, particularly in the teaching of foreign languages. Ostensibly based on the way we learn naturally, Suggestopedia has developed a number of incarnations, in some cases because Lozanov's work was not freely available in the West during the Cold War. This dissertation outlines the salient features of both Suggestopedia and some of its incarnations. Additionally, it suggests ways in which the method may be utilized in the high school English classroom in South Africa. In particular, it describes an intervention in which elements of Suggestopedia were used to teach creative writing in a multilingual environment. In short, this intervention involved the creation of a traditional two page creative "essay" inspired by, inter alia, the teacher's high expectations, the meditative atmosphere created by music, and the posters in the students' peripheral vision. A total of 158 Grade 9 and Grade 11 (mainly isiZulu speaking) students in an "ex-model C" school wrote, edited, and submitted such essays, the main criterion of success being whether each essay was deemed by the teacher to be of a sufficiently high standard to be reproduced here. The project, based on a qualitative research design using the process approach to writing and a Suggestopedicbased pedagogy, elicited many engaging pieces of writing from students. The spirit of their writing as well as the writers' own comments about the process will hopefully suggest the genius and versatility of the Lozanov methodology.
The use of critical literacy theories as an approach to teaching as a home language to learners at a Durban secondary school utilising community newspapers.
(2009) Pather, Saloshini.; Balfour, Robert John.
As a former journalist and a columnist for the very first community newspaper in Chatsworth: the Chatsworth SUN, which is no longer in circulation, and a teacher of English Home Language at secondary school level for twenty years, my research project combines an interest in print media with my efforts to promote a pedagogy in which issues of inclusion, access, and identity are addressed. The impetus for this study was a research assignment I conducted in 2002 for the "Introduction to Research Methods" module of this degree. I carried out a survey at my school that aimed at ascertaining the media habits among a class of Grade 10 learners. The survey revealed important information regarding 'newspaper reading habits' . Almost every learner read the weekly community newspapers or 'knock and drop' publications circulated free of charge to almost every household in Chatsworth, south of Durban, where the majority of learners, of Indian descent, resided. In some cases these were the only publications that learners read. In 2003, I therefore decided to involve the same learners in a research project for the dissertation component of the degree. The Project would allow the learners to become active and critical participants in the media culture that is omnipresent in their lives. Interesting perspectives on issues of identity, ethnicity, and gender would emerge from this heterogeneous sample, which included five African learners, in the deconstruction of community newspapers that targeted Indian readers. Community newspapers, by virtue of their convenience of access, are potentially very influential publications and the research project provided the opportunity to assess and change attitudes to the discourses that arise from reading such newspapers. Particularly important are the ideologies, hegemonies and issues of power found in the language of these community newspapers, as well as the technological and production processes involved. Hence, the main objective of my study was to narrow the divide that exists between educational experience and the real world. I demonstrate this in the thesis through the interactive application of Critical Literacy theories to printed texts by learners who deconstruct, critique, and subvert taken-for-granted assumptions that result from submissive interpretation ofmedia like the community newspapers.

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Browsing Masters Degrees (Languages and Arts Education) by Author "Balfour, Robert John."