Argumentation is widely regarded as both a productive path and a critical objective of education. However, poor performance remains a serious problem at all ages in assessments of expository writing in which students are asked to make an argument in support of a claim. An apprenticeship model is proposed as a mechanism in the development of skill in dialogic argumentation, with this skill serving as a bridge to individual written argument. In a multi-week intervention, young adolescents were paired with a series of both more skilled and similarly skilled partners, anonymously, in conducting one-on-one electronic dialogs on controversial issues. A comparison group was included who engaged in the same intervention and assessments, but their dialogic partners were confined to similar ability peers. The more skilled adult partner displayed skilled forms of counterargument and use of evidence to support claims as well as frequent questioning with respect to the partner’s statements and meta-talk about the discourse itself. Effects on students’ individual argument skill on a new topic were assessed by means of both a (solitary) individually constructed dialog and an individual essay. In both the dialogs and essays, the experimental group showed greater skills in using evidence to support a claim, generating advanced counterarguments, and constructing integrative critical arguments coordinating two contrasting claims, relative to the comparison group. These results lend support to the power of apprenticeship in individual argument skill development. Both groups also advanced in individual dialogic argument skills following their engagement in argumentation, a result thereby demonstrating the passage of higher-order intellectual skills from a social to individual level. Besides their educational implications, the theoretical significance of these results in relation to both an apprenticeship model and a dialogical model of argument skill development was discussed.

Writing-to-learn strategies have been administered in the past to enrich student learning. The purpose of this study was to see if K-W-L prompts in science journal writing could benefit student content knowledge within biology. Two high school biology classes were provided with learning journals. The journals given to the students during the treatment unit were provided with K-W-L question prompts to guide student learning while during the comparison unit students were given an open ended writing assignment. Pre and posttests were administered to determine student-learning gains. Student motivations and opinions of the treatment were collected through student interviews. The combined results were used to determine to what extent could K-W-L prompts in science journal writing influence comprehension of content knowledge. This study found there to be no difference in student learning gains when utilizing the K-W-L literacy strategy versus another free-writing activity. When scored, student K-W-Ls total scores did correlate to student success on unit tests. This opens up the potential for K-W-Ls to serve as an adequate tool for formative assessment. Here the K-W-L could be expanded to enrich student question asking, potentially aid students learning English, and potentially be used by students without teacher scaffolding.

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Linguistics)

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

A thesis submitted to the Wits School of Education Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, 2017. / This thesis investigates the potential of an externally initiated and facilitated professional learning community (PLC) to influence and possibly change teachers’ beliefs and practices with regard to the teaching of writing in South African senior phase English home language classrooms. The main research question is: What factors enable and / or constrain the development of a PLC which has as its focus the teaching of writing. Questions related to the main question are (1) What is enabling or constraining about the contexts in which teachers work in public schools? (2) What, if any, impact do teachers’ life histories and current identities have on their take up of professional development opportunities in a PLC which focused on the teaching of writing? (3) In the context of South African public education, to what extent is a PLC a suitable vehicle for developing teachers’ understanding of and enactment of writing pedagogies? I chose to undertake an action research project and participated in the process of establishing PLCs as both a researcher and a facilitator. The main sources of the data analysed are transcribed audio-recordings of meetings with teachers, transcribed interviews with each teacher participant, lesson observations (for only some of the teachers) and journal notes. The unexpected challenges encountered in finding teachers willing to participate in a sustained professional development initiative are described and critically reflected on and findings in relation to each of the research questions are presented and discussed. A key finding is that societal culture and context fundamentally shaped the inception, development and sustainability of PLCs (Hairon and Dimmock, 2012) at the center of the study. It is argued that many South African teachers’ participation in a PLC is likely to be constrained by their personal and professional life histories and by the passive and compliant identity created for teachers by the lasting effects of the apartheid educational philosophy of fundamental pedagogics and by the currently increasingly prescriptive approach to teaching and assessment adopted by the provincial and national departments of education. Such an identity is likely to impact on teachers’ confidence and sense of agency to devise and drive their own professional growth agenda. The study found that the ethos of the schools in which teachers teach is also likely to be influential in enabling or constraining whether, and if so, how, teachers choose to participate in a PLC. An implication of this finding is that there is a need to acknowledge the impact of contexts on teachers’ attitudes and values, and to structure PLC activities to challenge existing assumptions and create a dissonance that will enable current knowledge to be reconstructed (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). The teachers who participated in the study used similar, traditional approaches to the teaching of writing which involved the presentation of ‘set prescriptions’, with an emphasis on grammatical correctness and the final product rather than on writing as a process of thinking, drafting, reflecting and redrafting. In instances where teachers adopted strongly deficit discourses about learners, they tended to resort to low level drill and skill instruction (Ball and Ellis, 2008). I argue that providing opportunities for teachers to engage thoughtfully and critically on their understanding and enactment of writing pedagogy in their contexts and classrooms over an extended period of time in a PLC could contribute to the disruption of deficit discourses and to the reconstruction of writing pedagogies. Key words: professional learning communities; societal culture; context; teacher life histories; teacher identities; dissonance; deficit discourse; teacher agency; writing pedagogies / LG2018

This study looked at the effect of written and oral comments on students' writing. The research hypotheses were that the use of oral comments would improve the overall quality of the students papers, increase the length more, and cause more changes in content than the use of written comments. On the other hand, the use of written comments would cause a greater decrease in grammatical errors in the students' papers than oral comments. The tests used to evaluate these hypotheses were the holistic writing scale used by the Test of Written English (TWE), a word count, a content percentage scale developed by the researcher, and an adaptation of Brodkey and Young's Composition Correctness Score (1981). The procedures used in the study were as follows: Three different classes were used. Each class was randomly divided in half. After the students had written the first draft of an essay assignment given by their teacher, they were assigned to either the written or the oral group. Students in the written comments group received written comments only on their papers. Students in the oral conference group had conferences with their teachers about their papers. Then the students wrote a second draft of their papers. At this point, the process was repeated; students wrote a second paper. After this first draft, those students who had received written comments on the first paper had oral conferences, and those who had had oral conferences received written comments were revised based on these comments.

This dissertation studies the impact of using the Scaffolded Literacy Strategies as developed by Dr. David Rose, in a South African Special Needs school. The central aim of the study was to establish the efficacy of this approach and whether it would have any effect on the levels of literacy and comprehension of the learners at the / Thesis (M. Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

This dissertation reports on a study to determine the effects of using the Learn to Read: Reading to Learn approach (R2L), as developed by Dr David Rose, on BCom4 Access Level students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The aim of the study was to examine the effects of the approach on learners‘ reading abilities and subsequent ability to write and structure texts according to the conventions required by the particular academic context (genre). Forty-six students who registered for the first year BCom4 Access English Language and Development Programme in 2011 participated. All these students come from disadvantaged backgrounds, where there has been a lack of both access to and a culture of reading. The intention of the intervention, if it proved successful in improving the academic literacy levels of participants, was to recommend the implementation of the R2L approach across the additional disciplines of BCom4. An Action Research approach was used, as well as a Case Study, beginning in February 2011 and ending November 2011. The participating students were taught to read selected texts and scaffolded in independent writing of the texts using the six stages of the R2L teaching cycle. Out of the original 46 students, ten were closely tracked. Various data were collected and analysed during the study period. The data from tracked students included pre- and post-intervention reading assessments; a questionnaire; assessments from written texts in the form of assignments, tests and examinations; and data from a focus group interview. Data collected from the entire study group includes written and verbal feedback concerning the effects of the approach. In addition, feedback from other lecturers within the BCom4 course was also recorded and described. The quantitative findings indicate that reading levels of the students increased between one and three levels over the study period, in keeping with the claims that R2L makes about its own efficacy. Comparisons were made of overall results for term and examination marks over both semesters. These consisted of written assignments and tests. The results showed that there was a general decrease in the marks achieved in the first semester of between 2 and 11% in semester scores and between 5 and 18% in the examination scores. This may have been due to the increase in the level difficulty of writing tasks throughout the year. The written assignments of the students also under-went detailed analysis, which indicated a significant improvement in writing at both the macro and micro levels of text, namely referencing, staging, grammar, spelling and punctuation. On a qualitative level, students and academic staff have noted beneficial effects of the approach in terms of the improvement of the reading and comprehension of texts in English as well as in related disciplines such as economics and mathematics. These findings correlate with R2L claims that it is able to improve the literacy performance of students between two and four levels across a one year period. This improvement is independent of the previous literacy history of students and can be applied across the curriculum, from foundational to tertiary education levels. The implications of these findings lead to recommendations that R2L continue to be developed and adapted for South African conditions and that it should be implemented across all modules within the Bcom4 Access programme at UKZN. In order to achieve its full potential in improving academic literacy, the R2L approach needs to function across the curriculum and not just remain in the domain of foundational or English language educators. The seriousness of the poor educational system in South Africa demands that all educators begin to see themselves as teachers of continued reading, whether their disciplines are Mathematics, Science or English language teaching. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.