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- Airey, John, et al.
(författare)
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A Disciplinary Discourse Perspective on University Science Learning : Achieving fluency in a critical constellation of modes
- 2008
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Ingår i: Journal of Research in Science Teaching. - : Wiley. - 0022-4308 .- 1098-2736. ; 46:1, s. 27-49
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this theoretical article we use an interpretative study with physics undergraduates to exemplify a proposed characterization of student learning in university science in terms of fluency in disciplinary discourse. Drawing on ideas from a number of different sources in the literature, we characterize what we call “disciplinary discourse” as the complex of representations, tools and activities of a discipline, describing how it can be seen as being made up of various “modes”. For university science, examples of these modes are: spoken and written language, mathematics, gesture, images (including pictures, graphs and diagrams), tools (such as experimental apparatus and measurement equipment) and activities (such as ways of working—both practice and praxis, analytical routines, actions, etc.). Using physics as an illustrative example, we discuss the relationship between the ways of knowing that constitute a discipline and the modes of disciplinary discourse used to represent this knowing. The data comes from stimulated recall interviews where physics undergraduates discuss their learning experiences during lectures. These interviews are used to anecdotally illustrate our proposed characterization of learning and its associated theoretical constructs. Students describe a repetitive practice aspect to their learning, which we suggest is necessary for achieving fluency in the various modes of disciplinary discourse. Here we found instances of discourse imitation, where students are seemingly fluent in one or more modes of disciplinary discourse without having related this to a teacher-intended disciplinary way of knowing. The examples lead to the suggestion that fluency in a critical constellation of modes of disciplinary discourse may be a necessary (though not always sufficient) condition for gaining meaningful holistic access to disciplinary ways of knowing. One implication is that in order to be effective, science teachers need to know which modes are critical for an understanding of the material they wish to teach.
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| 2. |
- Airey, John, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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A Semiotic Analysis of the Disciplinary Affordances of the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram in Astronomy
- 2014
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Ingår i: The 5th International 360 Conference, Encompassing the multimodality of knowledge, May 8-10 2014, Aarhus University, Denmark. - Aarhus : Aarhus University. ; , s. 22-
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- One of the central characteristics of disciplines is that they create their own particular ways of knowing the world through their discourse (Airey & Linder 2009). This process is facilitated by the specialization and refinement of disciplinary-specific semiotic resources over time. Nowhere is this truer than in the sciences, where it is the norm that disciplinary-specific representations have been introduced and then refined by a number of different actors (Airey 2009). As a consequence, many of the semiotic resources used in the sciences today still retain some traces of their historical roots. This makes the aquisition of disciplinary literacy (Airey, 2013) particularly problematic (see Eriksson et al. 2014 for an example from astronomy). In this paper we analyse one such disciplinary-specific semiotic resource from the field of Astronomy—the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. We audit the potential of this semiotic resource to provide access to disciplinary knowledge—what Fredlund et al (2012) have termed its disciplinary affordances. Our analysis includes consideration of the use of scales, labels, symbols, sizes and colour. We show how, for historical reasons, the use of these aspects in the resource may differ from what might be expected by a newcomer to the discipline.We suggest that some of the issues we highlight in our analysis may, in fact, be contributors to alternative conceptions and therefore propose that lecturers pay particular attention to the disambiguation of these features for their students.
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| 3. |
- Airey, John, et al.
(författare)
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Bilingual Scientific Literacy
- 2011
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Ingår i: Exploring the landscape of scientific literacy. - London : Routledge. - 9780203843284 - 9780415874359 - 9780415874366 ; , s. 106-124
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Airey, John, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Developing Students’ Disciplinary Literacy? : The Case of University Physics
- 2018
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Ingår i: Global Developments in Literacy Research for Science Education. - Cham, Switzerland : Springer. - 9783319691978 - 9783319691961 ; , s. 357-376
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this chapter we use the concept of disciplinary literacy (Airey, 2011a, 2013) to analyze the goals of university physics lecturers. Disciplinary literacy refers to a particular mix of disciplinary-specific communicative practices developed for three specific sites: the academy, the workplace and society. It has been suggested that the development of disciplinary literacy may be seen as one of the primary goals of university studies (Airey, 2011a).The main data set used in this chapter comes from a comparative study of physics lecturers in Sweden and South Africa (Airey, 2012, 2013; Linder, Airey, Mayaba, & Webb, 2014). Semi-structured interviews were carried out using a disciplinary literacy discussion matrix (Airey, 2011b), which enabled us to probe the lecturers’ disciplinary literacy goals in the various semiotic resource systems used in undergraduate physics (i.e. graphs, diagrams, mathematics, language).The findings suggest that whilst physics lecturers have strikingly similar disciplinary literacy goals for their students, regardless of setting, they have very different ideas about whether they themselves should teach students to handle these disciplinary-specific semiotic resources. It is suggested that the similarity in physics lecturers’ disciplinary literacy goals across highly disparate settings may be related to the hierarchical, singular nature of the discipline of physics (Bernstein, 1999, 2000).In the final section of the chapter some preliminary evidence about the disciplinary literacy goals of those involved in physics teacher training is presented. Using Bernstein’s constructs, a potential conflict between the hierarchical singular of physics and the horizontal region of teacher training is noticeable.Going forward it would be interesting to apply the concept of disciplinary literacy to the analysis of other disciplines—particularly those with different combinations of Bernstein’s classifications of hierarchical/horizontal and singular/region.
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| 6. |
- Airey, John
(författare)
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Disciplinary literacy
- 2013
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Ingår i: Scientific literacy: teori och praktik. - Malmö, Sweden : Gleerups Utbildning AB. - 9789140684431 ; , s. 41-58
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- I detta kapitel läggs fram ett nytt begrepp, disciplinary literacy, som ett alternativ till scientific literacy. För varje ämne, disciplinary literacy inriktar sig mot kommunikativa praktiker inom tre miljöer: akademin, arbetsplatsen och samhället och definieras som förmågan att delta i dessa ämnesrelaterade kommunikativa praktiker på ett lämpligt sätt. Frågeställningen för kapitlet är om det kan vara givande att betrakta främjandet av studenters disciplinary literacy som ett av de huvudsakliga målen med universitetsstudier. Tillämpningen av begreppet illustreras genom material hämtat från ett forskningsprojekt där högskolelärare i fysik från Sverige och Sydafrika diskuterar de lärandemål de har för sina studenter.
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| 7. |
- Airey, John
(författare)
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Estimating undergraduate bilingual scientific literacy in Sweden
- 2009
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Ingår i: International CLIL Research Journal. - 1797-948X. ; 1:2, s. 26-35
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper reports ongoing research results from the first Swedish study to be carried out into the relationship between the teaching language and disciplinary learning at university level. The study explores the ability of Swedish science students to spontaneously describe and explain, in both Swedish and English, the concepts they met in their course lectures.The work reported here is a first attempt to evaluate a number of techniques that together may be used to estimate spoken bilingual scientific literacy. Transcripts of students using both English and Swedish to describe a science concept are analysed using three categories: fluency, involuntary codeswitching, and disciplinarity. These categories are then cross-referenced with the language in which the disciplinary concept was originally taught (Swedish, English, or both languages).The study finds that for some students, spoken scientific literacy in English is indeed a problem. Here, it has been suggested that these problems may be transitory, and more work is needed to ascertain whether this is indeed the case.
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| 8. |
- Airey, John, 1963-
(författare)
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From stimulated recall to disciplinary literacy : Summarizing ten years of research into teaching and learning in English
- 2015
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Ingår i: English-Medium Instruction in European Higher Education. - Berlin : Walter de Gruyter. - 9781614515272 - 9781614517252 ; , s. 157-176
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter summarizes my research work in Swedish higher education in the area of teaching and learning in English. Sweden makes for a particularly interesting case study since there are high levels of English competence in the general population and a large percentage of university courses have traditionally been taught through the medium of English.The work I have done falls into three broad categories: University learning in English, University teaching in English and Disciplinary differences in attitudes to English language use.Over the years I have used a range of data collection techniques including video recordings of lectures, semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and stimulated recall. The research work is almost exclusively qualitative in nature adopting a case study approach.
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| 9. |
- Airey, John
(författare)
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"I don't teach language" : The linguistic attitudes of physics lecturers in Sweden
- 2012
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Ingår i: AILA Review. - : John Benjamins Publishing Company. - 1461-0213. ; 25:1, s. 64-79
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- From a disciplinary discourse perspective, all university courses can be said to involve content and language integrated learning (CLIL) even in monolingual settings. Clearly, however, things become much more complex when two or more languages are involved in teaching and learning. The aim of this paper is to introduce readers to the linguistic situation in Swedish universities, where two languages - English and Swedish - are commonly used in the teaching and learning of a number of disciplines. The paper describes the linguistic landscape of Swedish higher education and presents an illustrative case study from a single discipline (physics) with a hierarchical knowledge structure (Bernstein 1999). Semi-structured interviews were carried out with ten physics lecturers from four Swedish universities. The lecturers were asked about their disciplinary language-learning expectations for their students. These interviews were analysed using qualitative methods inspired by the phenomenographic approach. Six main themes resulting from the analysis are presented and discussed. From a CLIL perspective, one recurring theme is that none of the lecturers saw themselves as teachers of disciplinary Swedish or English. The paper concludes by discussing the generalizability of the findings to other disciplines with similar (hierarchical) knowledge structures.
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| 10. |
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