Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The study aimed to investigate the kind of knowledge privileged when student teachers use Information Communication Technologies in facilitating learning in science subjects. The assumptions were that future student teachers, through their pedagogic practices, may either reproduce or interrupt educational inequalities. The ability to interrupt inequalities is conditioned by the manner in which these student teachers have been inducted into the field of teacher education and this process includes the ability to manipulate technological resources to facilitate epistemological access. This concept originally coined by Morrow in the 1980s looked at black students seeking entry to university. Since then the concept was used to signify the importance of knowledge in the curriculum. In this study, the exploration of epistemological access goes beyond physical or formal access and includes meaningful access to knowledge. The semantics dimension of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) proposed by Maton was used, with a particular focus on semantic density (SD) as a theoretical framework. Maton argues that semantic density can vary across teaching practices and contexts. The study assumes that student teachers, through their pedagogic practices, may either reproduce or interrupt educational inequalities

Based on students’ declining reading comprehension there is a need to develop systematic explicit instruction in teaching reading. This study is based on theories of metacognition, reading comprehension, reading instruction and Legitimation Code Theory and has the reading triangle as a model for teaching expository texts. The model has been tested in one class with eighth-grade students. The students have estimated their own reading comprehension and how they worked before, during and after reading an expository text, both before and after work with the reading triangle. The students in this survey have been taught and have worked with texts based on three levels of the reading triangle. The materials in the study are students’ self-assessments, texts with underlining and comments and interviews with the students and their teacher. The results show that the model, the reading triangle, as a part of an approach to develop literacy, with modelling and metacognitive textual conversations, can contribute to an understanding of the students’ reading process and knowledge of how global and local aspects of texts – such as purpose, text structure and choice of words – are connected with and influence reading comprehension. The study shows that the link between local and global levels must be explicit, since a focus on details can be detrimental to the overall understanding of texts. The use of the reading triangle in the classroom can also help the teaching move between the concrete and the abstract, enabling students to use the acquired knowledge and insights in new texts and reading situations.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Framed by the South African imperative of widening epistemological access to undergraduate science studies, this research takes the form of a case study to investigate the educational affordances of an extended introductory physics course. Using theoretical tools from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) (Maton, 2014a) – in particular, semantic gravity and semantic density – the study characterizes the pedagogical practices and student learning in this Extended course, in relation to a Mainstream course in the same Physics Department. Data was collected through classroom observations, observations of student groups working on Mechanics physics tasks, and interviews with students. Two external languages of description were developed in order to translate between the LCT concepts of semantic gravity and semantic density and the empirical data from the physics context. The first language of description was used to characterize the semantic shifts in pedagogical practices, using a Concrete-Linking-Abstract continuum. The second language of description drew on physics education research on representations (Knight, 2007; Van Heuvelen, 1991a) tasks. Semantic profiles (Maton, 2013) were then constructed to show the semantic shifts in the pedagogical practices and in lecturers’ and students’ approaches to physics tasks. The study has shown that the extra curriculum time enabled different pedagogical practices. The Extended course showed a steady progression in pacing, initially with a less compressed semantic profile, while the Mainstream course showed a consistent compression. The Extended course showed a greater prevalence of the Linking level, with more time spent at the Concrete level and greater semantic flow. The courses also exhibited different communicative approaches, with students in the Extended course more engaged in making the semantic shifts together with the lecturer. The Extended course used more real-life illustrations as a starting point, whereas the Mainstream course tended to use verbal problem statements. Looking particularly at how problem tasks were dealt with, the study suggested that the lecturers’ pedagogical practices in dealing with physics tasks influenced the way in which the students tackled these tasks. The semantic profiles showed a more rapid shift up the semantic continuum in the Mainstream pedagogy and student work, while in the Extended pedagogy and student work, the semantic profiles indicated that more time was spent initially unpacking the concrete problem situation and explicitly shifting up and down the semantic continuum. In terms of methodological contribution, this study has demonstrated the usefulness of LCT tools for characterizing pedagogical practices and student learning in a physics context. Furthermore, the study has linked LCT to physics education literature and to research on epistemological access and academic literacies in a novel way. It has modified Maton’s form of semantic profiling, through introducing the following: a more detailed time scale, gradations of semantic strength on the semantic continuum, and coding for interactive engagement in pedagogical practices. The study thus has important implications for how curriculum and pedagogical practices might better support epistemological access to disciplinary knowledge in the field of physics, not only at the Extended course level but for introductory physics courses more generally.

This qualitative research aims to identify the threshold concepts in financial instruments using Meyer and Land's Threshold Concept Framework (2005) and applies the dimension of Semantics and Legitimation Code Theory (Maton, 2014) to analyse whether semantic gravity and semantic density are stronger or weaker in the threshold concepts. The analysis points to five threshold concepts in the financial instruments module. It further aims to explore whether African, Coloured and Indian students' exposure to these threshold concepts results in troublesome knowledge and/or transformation in understanding and thinking in a second-year Accounting course at a South African university. Triangulation is used to confirm the authenticity and consistency of the data emerging from the identification of the threshold concepts. Using Semantics, this research illustrates that the five threshold concepts possess weaker semantic gravity due to the abstract nature of the threshold concepts and stronger semantic density is present due to the complex and dense terminology inherent in financial instruments. Evidence from a general survey, interviews and summative assessments conducted with students registered for an Accounting course shows that exposure to the threshold concepts resulted in troublesome knowledge and/or transformed understanding. Identifying the threshold concepts could make specialised Accounting knowledge more explicit to students and exploring the knowledge experienced as troublesome and the transformed understanding experienced provides room for debate around pedagogy and curriculum reform.

Thesis (Doctor of Radiography)--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2020 / Radiation therapy has undergone significant changes with regard to new medical imaging technologies, including computerised tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Practitioners now have access to technologies that provide anatomical information in an infinite selection of views. Earlier advances in three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy (3D-CRT) allowed for the site of treatment to be accurately located. Intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) enabled practitioners to accurately focus the ionising radiation beam, while modulating the intensity of the dose being administered. Currently, using image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT) methods, radiation therapists can track the effectiveness of treatment in real-time to provide better protection for the organs and tissue that are not targeted for treatment. The changes described above have fundamentally changed radiation therapy practice, and thus have implications for the training of radiation therapists. This thesis argues that without a deep understanding of the science underpinning the advancements in radiation therapy techniques, practitioners will be unlikely to achieve the necessary level of accuracy and consistency in treatment. Radiation physics concepts, such as sources and types of ionising radiation, ionisation, the isocentre and the Inverse Square Law underpin competent and safe practice. Threshold concepts, such as those listed above, have been identified as concepts that pose difficulty to students due to its complexity and the increased levels of cognitive challenge required to master a threshold concept. In applied disciplines, such as radiation physics, threshold concepts are strongly associated with competent practice. This study focused on the first year radiation physics curriculum and addressed the overarching research question: What is the relationship between threshold concepts in the radiation physics curriculum and radiation therapy practice? The study was guided by a translation device that combined two conceptual frameworks namely the Threshold Concept Framework and Legitimation Code Theory’s (LCT) Semantics dimension. LCT is a knowledge base theory that explains the complexity of knowledge structures. The Semantics dimension provided an explanation of the difficulty of concepts and proposed five pedagogies for the cumulative learning of complex concepts. A case study research design and methodology guided the research process. Data for the study comprised curriculum documents, and semi structured focus group and individual interviews with students, academic staff and clinical educators. The data were analysed using a translation device to show the semantic profile of curriculum documents, pedagogies and participants’ different understandings of the threshold concepts in radiation physics. The study found that threshold concepts in radiation physics underpin competent and safe practice. An external language of description was developed to identify the characteristics of threshold concepts. A virtual clinical environment was proposed as one of the pedagogies to aid mastering of threshold concepts through visualisation of the unseen by facilitating students’ understanding of threshold concepts for competent and safe radiation therapy practice. The study showed that students’ mastery of threshold concepts in radiation physics is critical for practice.

To prepare students for the complex, multidisciplinary problems they will face outside of the classroom, current reform initiatives advocate for the integration of content and practices from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in the science classroom. One approach, integrated STEM, uses the engineering design process as a vehicle for learning. However, these lessons can be challenging for students, so it is essential that science educators employ various teaching practices to scaffold student learning. One way to achieve this is through the use of written and oral discourse that promotes meaning-making. The studies in this dissertation utilize Legitimation Code Theory as an analytical framework to create semantic profiles of an integrated STEM unit and middle school teachers’ implementation of integrated STEM lessons. Specifically, we analyze the semantic gravity, or the extent to which meaning is rooted within the context it is acquired in, to map and identify semantic patterns that may promote or constrain meaning-making. The results of these studies indicate that Legitimation Code Theory can be a useful tool for developing and examining integrated STEM curricular materials, evaluating teacher discourse during the implementation of integrated STEM lessons, ascertaining how teachers are integrating multiple disciplinary discourses, and identifying areas where teachers may benefit from additional support as they learn to implement integrated STEM. Keywords: integrated STEM, legitimation code theory, discourse.

The project has been implemented as teacher driven action research, where subject-specific reading was studied in classroom practitioners and analyzed by using Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). The purpose was, partly to research which linguistic domains the teachers used in the part detailed reading in Reading to Learn (R2L) and how the discursive movement looked, and partly if progression could be seen during a school year and in that case, how it affected the educators’ teaching.    Participating in the study were four teachers working in a Swedish gymnasium: a chemistry teacher and a teacher of social studies, who were working in academic preparatory programs and a teacher in Swedish as a second language and a teacher in history in one of the introductory programs. The leader of the project and author of this study is also a teacher and colleague to the participants. Totally, twelve observations of detailed reading were implemented: three observations each teacher during one academic year.    The most prominent characteristic of the project was how the teachers, by becoming aware of the linguistic domains, changed their way of using detailed reading and by using the discursive movement, they were able to make semantic waves. The experience of the teachers was that through the action research they received new tools to develop their subject-specific reading and therefore the students’ language and knowledge increased which contributed to a higher object achievement. Notable was that all students seemed to benefit from detailed reading, even the high performing and/or the students with Swedish as their native language.    The result of this study may be relevant to studies on how to augment classroom practices to better implement the subject-specific reading which may lead to change for both teachers and students, regardless of students’ language and knowledge level, stage, or subject.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / It has been noted by Lin (2013) that studies on multilingual talk, as illustrated by code switching in the classroom, have been repetitive and descriptive, and have for a while not been underpinned by substantially new or different questions (Lin, 2013:15). First, many of the studies in the literature have, for instance, concluded that there is a functional allocation of languages (FAL) in multilingual classroom teacher talk (e.g. Baker, 2012; Martin, 1996; Probyn, 2006, 2014; Jegede, 2012; Modupeola, 2013; Salami, 2008), such that language „a‟ is used for presentational knowledge, and language „b‟ is used for explanatory knowledge, and these claims have not been subjected to sustained scrutiny. Secondly, codeswitching and translanguaging increasingly have been the dominant and exclusive frameworks used, and this has limited the kinds of insights that can be obtained or the kinds of questions that can be posed. Thirdly, where the effects of multilingual teacher talk on students‟ understanding or knowledge are at all captured in studies, such effects have either been based on researcher intuition or have not been the object of sustained empirical demonstration. Fourthly, many studies have assumed merely that it is the configuration of languages that produces claimed effects of multilingual teacher talk, and attention has hardly been paid to repetition of content or to knowledge structure. Fifthly, it is not often the case that studies or findings are presented in a nuanced form that takes into account the possible effect of different subject types, school types or levels of study. Sixthly, and overall, many studies making claims on the effect of teacher‟s code-switching or trans-languaging on students‟ knowledge do not theoretically engage with knowledge, beyond the distinction between presentational and explanatory forms of knowledge, thus illustrating what Maton (2013) regards as “knowledge-blindness” (that is, the paradox of limited engagement with knowledge structures in pedagogical research making knowledge claims). As a result, little is known about how specific units of knowledge are encoded according to categories in a theory of knowledge, how knowledge encodings interface with languages, and how composite knowledge structures-language profiles can be visualised. This study draws on Legitimation Code Theory Semantic and Terminology Theory in order to investigate the interface of language and knowledge in multilingual teacher-talk in science and business studies classrooms in Yola, North-Eastern Nigeria. This focus should make it possible to answer questions such as the following which, though important, have not often been posed on account of the limited engagement in the research on classroom multilingualism with theories of knowledge: a) to what extent is it appropriate to claim that there is a functional allocation of language in multilingual teacher-talk (in which language „a‟ is used for so-called presentational knowledge, and language „b‟ for explanatory knowledge)?; b) what kinds of encodings of knowledge occur in a set of science and business studies lessons?; c) given documented visual patterns of knowledge dynamics emerging from recent research in the sociology of knowledge (e.g. semantic waves, semantic flatlines both high and low, downward shift and upward shift), (Maton: 2013, 2014a, 2014b), what knowledge profiles are observable and how does language use in multilingual teacher-talk map onto these patterns?; d) how are any observed differences in the composite knowledge-language profiles to be explained?; and e) what effects do various language-knowledge profiles have on students‟ understanding of the lesson and on their demonstration of their knowledge? Data for the study was derived from transcripts of audio-recorded multilingual teacher-talk in two subjects (integrated science and business studies) as taught in grades seven and nine in four secondary schools (two private and two public schools) in Yola, North-East Nigeria. Findings show, among others, that it is not always the case that the official classroom language (English) is used for introductory discourses, and the non-official classroom languages are used for explanatory discourses. Findings further reveal that it is not primarily the functional allocation of languages that explains perceptions or empirical claims of enhanced student understanding. We also observed that the number of content iterations, combined with knowledge structures, is an important factor that enhances or explains the performance of students. While this research has paid a lot of attention to teacher talk in the classrooms in two sites in Yola, North-East, Nigeria, where the use of Hausa and Fulfulde languages by the students is mainly in the spoken form, it would be interesting for future research to replicate this type of study in an environment where the non-official language of the classroom is perhaps used more frequently in reading and writing.