| 1. |
- Airey, John, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Dealing with Contemporary Challenges in University Education: Response Strategies of South African Physics Lecturers to Students’ Lack of Representational Competence
- 2013
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Recently, both South Africa and the United States have undertaken reviews of the physics education being offered in their respective countries in higher education institutions (CHE-SAIP report, 2013; NRC report, 2013). These reviews came about as a consequence of concerns that have arisen regarding the appropriateness of curricula and the quality of the education that is currently being offered by our universities.In the light of these two reviews what becomes critical is how physics departments, specifically individual physics lecturers, adapt their teaching practices in response to the competencies of their students.Many studies have shown that in order for meaningful learning to occur in university science subjects such as physics, lecturers need to give more consideration to challenges that arise from the different communication forms such as written and oral language, diagrams, graphs, mathematics, apparatus, laboratory routines, etc. that are typical to the educational environment.This seminar will discuss results arising from a set of comprehensive interviews undertaken with physics lecturers from South Africa and Sweden in relation to how they deal with these challenges, which we are calling challenges of representational competence. The aim of this presentation is to contribute to a better understanding of how the development of representational competence in physics students is currently being faced and to open a discussion about appropriateness and quality in the teaching and learning of university physics.Funding from the Swedish National Research Council and the South African National Research Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.ReferencesAberg-Bengtsson, L., & Ottosson, T. (2006). What lies behind graphicacy? Relating students' results on a test of graphically represented quantitative information to formal academic achievement. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 43(1), 43-62.Airey, J. (2009). Science, Language and Literacy. Case Studies of Learning in Swedish University Physics. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 81. Uppsala Retrieved 2009-04-27, from http://publications.uu.se/theses/abstract.xsql?dbid=9547Airey, J. (2011a). The Disciplinary Literacy Discussion Matrix: A Heuristic Tool for Initiating Collaboration in Higher Education. Across the disciplines, 8(3).Airey, J. (2011b). Talking about Teaching in English. Swedish university lecturers' experiences of changing their teaching language. Ibérica, 22(Fall), 35-54.Airey, J. (2012). “I don’t teach language.” The linguistic attitudes of physics lecturers in Sweden. AILA Review, 25(2012), 64–79.Airey, J. (2013). Disciplinary Literacy. In E. Lundqvist, L. Östman & R. Säljö (Eds.), Scientific literacy – teori och praktik (pp. 41-58): Gleerups.Airey, J., & Linder, C. (2006). Language and the experience of learning university physics in Sweden. European Journal of Physics, 27(3), 553-560.Airey, J., & Linder, C. (2008). Bilingual scientific literacy? The use of English in Swedish university science programmes. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 7(3), 145-161.Airey, J., & Linder, C. (2009). A disciplinary discourse perspective on university science learning: Achieving fluency in a critical constellation of modes. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 46(1), 27-49.Airey, J., & Linder, C. (2011). Bilingual scientific literacy. In C. Linder, L. Östman, D. Roberts, P.-O. Wickman, G. Ericksen & A. MacKinnon (Eds.), Exploring the landscape of scientific literacy (pp. 106-124). London: Routledge.American Association of Physics Teachers. (1996). Physics at the crossroads Retrieved from http://www.aapt.org/Events/crossroads.cfmBogdan, R. C., & Biklen, S. R. (1992). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory and methods. (2 ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc.Brookes, D. T. (2006). The role of language in learning physics. (PhD), Rutgers, New Brunswick, NJ. Council on Higher Education and the South African Institute of Physics. (2013). Review of undergraduate physics education in public higher education institutions Retrieved from http://www.saip.org.za/images/stories/documents/documents/Undergrad_Physics_Report_Final.pdfCreswell, J. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approache. Thousand Oaks, CA:: Sage.Crotty, M. (1989). The foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. Sydney: :Allen & Unwin.Deslauriers, L., Schelew, E., & Wieman, C. (2011). Improved learning in a large-enrollment physics class. Science, 332(6031 ), 862-864.Domert, D., Airey, J., Linder, C., & Kung, R. (2007). An exploration of university physics students' epistemological mindsets towards the understanding of physics equations. NorDiNa, Nordic Studies in Science Education(3), 15-28.Dufresne, R., Gerace, W. J., & Leonard, W. (1997). Solving physics problems with multiple representations. The Physics Teacher, 35(5), 270-275.Eriksson, U., Linder, C., Airey, J., & Redfors, A. (in press). Who needs 3D when the Universe is flat? Science Education.European Commission Expert Group. (2007). Science education now: A renewed pedagogy for the future of Europe. Brussels: European Commission.Fredlund, T., Airey, J., & Linder, C. (2012). Exploring the role of physics representations: an illustrative example from students sharing knowledge about refraction. European Journal of Physics, 33, 657-666.Gilbert, J. K., & Treagust, D. F. (Eds.). (2009). Multiple Representations in Chemical Education. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.Johannsen, B. F. (2007). Attrition in university physics. A narrative study of individuals reacting to a collectivist environment. (Licentiate thesis), Uppsala University, Uppsala. Kohl, P. B., & Finkelstein, N. D. (2008). Patterns of multiple representation use by experts and novices during physics problem solving. Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research, 4(010111), 1-13.Kohl, P. B., Rosengrant, D., & Finkelstein, N. D. (2007). Strongly and weakly directed approaches to teaching multiple representation use in physics. Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research, 3(010108), 10.Lemke, J. L. (1998). Teaching all the languages of science: Words, symbols, images, and actions Retrieved from http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/papers/barcelon.htmMeltzer, D. E. (2005). Relation between students' problem-solving performance and representational format. American Journal of Physics, 73(5), 463-478.National Research Council. (2013). Adapting to a Changing World --- Challenges and Opportunities in Undergraduate Physics Education. Committee on Undergraduate Physics Education Research and Implementation. Board on Physics and Astronomy Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.Northedge, A. (2002). Organizing excursions into specialist discourse communities: A sociocultural account of university teaching. In G. Wells & G. Claxton (Eds.), Learning for life in the 21st century. Sociocultural perspectives on the future of education (pp. 252-264). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.O’Connor, M. K., Netting, F. E., & Thomas, M. L. (2008). Grounded theory: Managing the challenge for those facing institutional review board oversight. Qualitative Inquiry, 14(1), 28-45.Ragout De Lozano, S., & Cardenas, M. (2002). Some Learning Problems Concerning the Use of Symbolic Language in Physics. Science and Education, 11(6), 589-599.Rosengrant, D., Etkina, E., & van Heuvelen, A. (2007). An overview of recent research on multiple representations. American Institute of Physics Conference proceedings January 30 2007, 883, 149-152.Rosengrant, D., van Heuvelen, A., & Etkina, E. (2009). Do students use and understand free-body diagrams? Physical Review Special Topics-Physics Education Research, 5(1:010108).Scherr, R. E. (2008). Gesture analysis for physics education researchers. Physical Review. Special Topics: Physics Education Research, 4(010101), 1-9.Seymour, E., & Hewitt, N. (1997). Talking about leaving: Why undergraduates leave the sciences. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Sherin, B. L. (2001). How students understand physics equations. Cognitive Instruction, 19, 479-541.Tang, K.-S., Tan, S. C., & Yeo, J. (2011). Students' multimodal construction of the work-energy concept. International Journal of Science Education, 33(13), 1775-1804.Treagust, D. F., Tsui, C.-Y., & (Eds.). (Eds.). (2013). Multiple representations in biological education. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.Tytler, R., Prain, V., Hubber, P., & Waldrip, B. (Eds.). (2013). Constructing Representations to Learn in Science. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.van Heuvelen, A. (1991). Learning to think like a physicist: A review of research-based instructional strategies. American Journal of Physics, 59(10), 891-897.van Heuvelen, A., & Zou, X. (2001). Multiple representations of workenergy processes. American Journal of Physics, 69(2), 184-194.van Someren, M., Reimann, P., Boshuizen, H. P. A., & de Jong, T. (Eds.). (1998). Learning with multiple representations. Amsterdam: Pergamon.
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| 2. |
- Airey, John, et al.
(författare)
-
Problematising Disciplinary Literacy in a Multilingual Society : The Case of University Physics in South Africa
- 2013
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Ingår i: 21st Annual Conference of the Southern African Association for Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa, 14 - 17 January, 2013.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Over a decade has passed since Northedge (2002) convincingly argued that the role of the university lecturer should be viewed as one of leading students on excursions into the specialist discourse of their field. In his view, disciplinary discourses have come into being in order to create and share disciplinary knowledge that could not otherwise be appropriately construed in everyday discourse. Thus, Northedge’s conclusion is that in order for disciplinary learning to occur, students will need explicit guidance in accessing and using the specialist discourse of their chosen field. Building on this work, Airey (in press) argues that all university lecturers are, at least to some extent, teachers of language—even in monolingual settings. A radical approach to this claim has been suggested by Wickman and Östman (2002) who insist that learning itself be treated as a form of discourse change.In an attempt to operationalise Wickman and Östman’s assertion, Airey (2011b) suggests that the goals of any undergraduate degree programme may be framed in terms of the development of disciplinary literacy. Here, disciplinary literacy is defined as the ability to appropriately participate in the communicative practices of a discipline. Further, in his subsequent work, Airey (2011a) claims that all disciplines attempt to meet the needs of three specific sites: the academy, the workplace and society. He argues that the relative emphasis placed on teaching for these three sites will be different from discipline to discipline and will indeed vary within a discipline depending on the setting. In the South African setting two questions arise from this assertion. The first is: For any given discipline, what particular balance between teaching for the academy, the workplace and society is desirable and/or practicable? The second question follows on from the first: Having pragmatically decided on the teaching balance between the academy, workplace and society, what consequences does the decision have for the language(s) that lecturers should be helping their students to interpret and use? In order to address these two questions we conducted an interview-based case study of the disciplinary literacy goals of South African university lecturers in one particular discipline (physics). Thus, our overarching research question is as follows: How do South African physics lecturers problematise the development of disciplinary literacy in their students?The data collected forms part of a larger international comparative study of the disciplinary literacy goals of physics lecturers in Sweden and South Africa. A disciplinary literacy discussion matrix (Airey, 2011a) was employed as the starting point for conducting in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 20 physics lecturers from five South African universities. The choice of these five universities was purposeful—their student cohorts encompassing a range of different first languages and cultural backgrounds. The interviews were conducted in English, lasted between 30 and 60 minutes, and were later transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were then analysed qualitatively. This involved “working with data, organizing it, breaking it into manageable units, synthesizing it, searching for patterns, discovering what is important and what is to be learned, and deciding what you will tell others” (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992:145).The main finding of this study is that all the lecturers mentioned language as being problematic in some way. However, there were a number of important differences in the ways the lecturers problematise the development of disciplinary literacy both across and within the different university physics departments. These differences can be seen to involve on the one hand, the lecturers’ own self-image in terms of whether they are comfortable with viewing themselves as language teachers/literacy developers, and on the other hand, their recognition of the diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds of their students. The differences will be illustrated and discussed using transcript excerpts. These findings are in contrast to parallel data collected in Sweden. In that particular (bilingual) setting, language was viewed as unproblematic, and the most striking characteristic was the very similarity of the responses of physics lecturers (Airey, in press). It is thus suggested that the differences in findings between Sweden and South Africa are a product of the latter’s diverse multilingual and multicultural environment. One pedagogical conclusion is that, given the differences in approach we find, inter- and intra faculty discussions about undergraduate disciplinary literacy goals would appear to have the distinct potential for reforming undergraduate physics. Similarly, an administrative conclusion is that a one-size-fits-all language policy for universities does not appear to be meaningful in such a diverse multilingual/multicultural environment.Finally, it should be mentioned that our choice of physics as an exemplar in this study has important implications for the interpretation of the findings. Drawing on Bernstein (1999), Martin (2011) suggests that disciplines have predominantly horizontal or hierarchical knowledge structures. Here it is claimed that physics has the most hierarchical knowledge structure of all disciplines. Thus, the findings presented here should be taken as illustrative of the situation in disciplines with more hierarchical knowledge structures (such as the natural and applied sciences). Kuteeva and Airey (in review) find that the issue of the language of instruction in such disciplines is viewed as much less problematic than in disciplines with more horizontal knowledge structures (such as the arts, humanities and, to some extent, social sciences). See Bennett (2010) for a provocative discussion of language use in such disciplines.
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| 3. |
- Airey, John, et al.
(författare)
-
Problematising Disciplinary Literacy in a Multilingual Society: The Case of University Physics in South Africa.
- 2013
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Problematising Disciplinary Literacy in a Multilingual Society:The Case of University Physics in South Africa John Airey1,3 Anne Linder1, Nokhanyo Mayaba 2 & Paul Webb21 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Sweden.2 Centre for Educational Research, Technology and Innovation, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa.3 School of Languages and Literature, Linnæus University, Swedenjohn.airey@physics.uu.se, anne.linder@physics.uu.se, nokhanyo.mayaba@nmmu.ac.za, paul.webb@nmmu.ac.zaAbstractOver a decade has passed since Northedge (2002) convincingly argued that the role of the university lecturer should be viewed as one of leading students on excursions into the specialist discourse of their field. In his view, disciplinary discourses have come into being in order to create and share disciplinary knowledge that could not otherwise be appropriately construed in everyday discourse. Thus, Northedge’s conclusion is that in order for disciplinary learning to occur, students will need explicit guidance in accessing and using the specialist discourse of their chosen field. Building on this work, Airey (in press) argues that all university lecturers are, at least to some extent, teachers of language—even in monolingual settings. A radical approach to this claim has been suggested by Wickman and Östman (2002) who insist that learning itself be treated as a form of discourse change.In an attempt to operationalise Wickman and Östman’s assertion, Airey (2011b) suggests that the goals of any undergraduate degree programme may be framed in terms of the development of disciplinary literacy. Here, disciplinary literacy is defined as the ability to appropriately participate in the communicative practices of a discipline. Further, in his subsequent work, Airey (2011a) claims that all disciplines attempt to meet the needs of three specific sites: the academy, the workplace and society. He argues that the relative emphasis placed on teaching for these three sites will be different from discipline to discipline and will indeed vary within a discipline depending on the setting. In the South African setting two questions arise from this assertion. The first is: For any given discipline, what particular balance between teaching for the academy, the workplace and society is desirable and/or practicable? The second question follows on from the first: Having pragmatically decided on the teaching balance between the academy, workplace and society, what consequences does the decision have for the language(s) that lecturers should be helping their students to interpret and use? In order to address these two questions we conducted an interview-based case study of the disciplinary literacy goals of South African university lecturers in one particular discipline (physics). Thus, our overarching research question is as follows: How do South African physics lecturers problematise the development of disciplinary literacy in their students?The data collected forms part of a larger international comparative study of the disciplinary literacy goals of physics lecturers in Sweden and South Africa. A disciplinary literacy discussion matrix (Airey, 2011a) was employed as the starting point for conducting in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 20 physics lecturers from five South African universities. The choice of these five universities was purposeful—their student cohorts encompassing a range of different first languages and cultural backgrounds. The interviews were conducted in English, lasted between 30 and 60 minutes, and were later transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were then analysed qualitatively. This involved “working with data, organizing it, breaking it into manageable units, synthesizing it, searching for patterns, discovering what is important and what is to be learned, and deciding what you will tell others” (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992:145).The main finding of this study is that all the lecturers mentioned language as being problematic in some way. However, there were a number of important differences in the ways the lecturers problematise the development of disciplinary literacy both across and within the different university physics departments. These differences can be seen to involve on the one hand, the lecturers’ own self-image in terms of whether they are comfortable with viewing themselves as language teachers/literacy developers, and on the other hand, their recognition of the diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds of their students. The differences will be illustrated and discussed using transcript excerpts. These findings are in contrast to parallel data collected in Sweden. In that particular (bilingual) setting, language was viewed as unproblematic, and the most striking characteristic was the very similarity of the responses of physics lecturers (Airey, in press). It is thus suggested that the differences in findings between Sweden and South Africa are a product of the latter’s diverse multilingual and multicultural environment. One pedagogical conclusion is that, given the differences in approach we find, inter- and intra faculty discussions about undergraduate disciplinary literacy goals would appear to have the distinct potential for reforming undergraduate physics. Similarly, an administrative conclusion is that a one-size-fits-all language policy for universities does not appear to be meaningful in such a diverse multilingual/multicultural environment.Finally, it should be mentioned that our choice of physics as an exemplar in this study has important implications for the interpretation of the findings. Drawing on Bernstein (1999), Martin (2011) suggests that disciplines have predominantly horizontal or hierarchical knowledge structures. Here it is claimed that physics has the most hierarchical knowledge structure of all disciplines. Thus, the findings presented here should be taken as illustrative of the situation in disciplines with more hierarchical knowledge structures (such as the natural and applied sciences). Kuteeva and Airey (in review) find that the issue of the language of instruction in such disciplines is viewed as much less problematic than in disciplines with more horizontal knowledge structures (such as the arts, humanities and, to some extent, social sciences). See Bennett (2010) for a provocative discussion of language use in such disciplines.Funding from the Swedish National Research Council and the South African National Research Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.References:Airey, J. (2011a). The Disciplinary Literacy Discussion Matrix: A Heuristic Tool for Initiating Collaboration in Higher Education. Across the disciplines, 8(3).Airey, J. (2011b). Initiating Collaboration in Higher Education: Disciplinary Literacy and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Dynamic content and language collaboration in higher education: theory, research, and reflections (pp. 57-65). Cape Town, South Africa: Cape Peninsula University of Technology.Airey, J. (in press). I Don’t Teach Language. The Linguistic Attitudes of Physics Lecturers in Sweden. AILA Review, 25(2012), xx-xx.Bennett, K. (2010). Academic discourse in Portugal: A whole different ballgame? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9(1), 21-32.Bernstein, M. (1999). Vertical and horizontal discourse: An essay. British Journal of Sociology Education, 20(2), 157-173.Bogdan, R. C., & Biklen, S. R. (1992). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory and methods. (2 ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc.Kuteeva, M., & Airey, J. (in review). Disciplinary Differences in the Use of English in Swedish Higher Education: Reflections on Recent Policy Developments Studies in Higher Education.Martin, J. R. (2011). Bridging troubled waters: Interdisciplinarity and what makes it stick. In F. Christie & K. Maton (Eds.), Disciplinarity (pp. 35-61). London: Continuum International Publishing.Northedge, A. (2002). Organizing excursions into specialist discourse communities: A sociocultural account of university teaching. In G. Wells & G. Claxton (Eds.), Learning for life in the 21st century. Sociocultural perspectives on the future of education (pp. 252-264). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.Wickman, P.-O., & Östman, L. (2002). Learning as discourse change: A sociocultural mechanism. Science Education, 86(5), 601-623.
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