‘Nothing so practical as good theory’: Legitimation Code Theory in higher education
- Winberg, Christine, McKenna, Sioux, Wilmot, Kirstin
- Authors: Winberg, Christine , McKenna, Sioux , Wilmot, Kirstin
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/445850 , vital:74437 , ISBN 9781003028215 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003028215-1/nothing-practical-good-theory-christine-winberg-sioux-mckenna-kirstin-wilmot
- Description: Universities are grappling with multiple shifts that have made the processes of supporting student learning and enabling the professional development of academic staff ever more challenging. Common sense approaches abound but do little to address the complexities of the issues being faced in our institutions. This book brings together a rich collection of studies that uses a powerful common framework, Legitimation Code Theory, to attend to these concerns about higher education studies. The chapters provide specific real world examples of how this framework acts as conceptual lenses, analytical tools and as teaching resources to open conversations about how it is we come to know and what it is that is deemed worth knowing. In Part I ‘Student Learning across the Disciplinary Map’, the authors explore ways of understanding and supporting student achievement across different disciplinary contexts – from STEM disciplines and fields to the Arts and Humanities – and at different levels – from introductory higher education courses to doctoral-level studies. Part II, ‘Professional Learning in Higher Education’, takes an in-depth look at academic staff development in higher education. Each chapter in the book focuses on pertinent issues in higher education practice, from how to support an increasingly diverse student body, to how to support university teachers in contexts of rapid change and growth. This chapter provides an introduction to the conversation and offers an entry into the LCT tools used in this collection: Specialization, Semantics and Autonomy.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Winberg, Christine , McKenna, Sioux , Wilmot, Kirstin
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/445850 , vital:74437 , ISBN 9781003028215 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003028215-1/nothing-practical-good-theory-christine-winberg-sioux-mckenna-kirstin-wilmot
- Description: Universities are grappling with multiple shifts that have made the processes of supporting student learning and enabling the professional development of academic staff ever more challenging. Common sense approaches abound but do little to address the complexities of the issues being faced in our institutions. This book brings together a rich collection of studies that uses a powerful common framework, Legitimation Code Theory, to attend to these concerns about higher education studies. The chapters provide specific real world examples of how this framework acts as conceptual lenses, analytical tools and as teaching resources to open conversations about how it is we come to know and what it is that is deemed worth knowing. In Part I ‘Student Learning across the Disciplinary Map’, the authors explore ways of understanding and supporting student achievement across different disciplinary contexts – from STEM disciplines and fields to the Arts and Humanities – and at different levels – from introductory higher education courses to doctoral-level studies. Part II, ‘Professional Learning in Higher Education’, takes an in-depth look at academic staff development in higher education. Each chapter in the book focuses on pertinent issues in higher education practice, from how to support an increasingly diverse student body, to how to support university teachers in contexts of rapid change and growth. This chapter provides an introduction to the conversation and offers an entry into the LCT tools used in this collection: Specialization, Semantics and Autonomy.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Writing groups as transformative spaces
- Wilmot, Kirstin, McKenna, Sioux
- Authors: Wilmot, Kirstin , McKenna, Sioux
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/${Handle} , vital:44576 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2018.1450361"
- Description: Curriculum transformation is a central concern for higher education in response to rapidly expanding technologies, globalisation and the widening diversity of the student and staff body. This is particularly true for South Africa, which is still grappling with inequalities and pressure for social redress in its universities. Early responses to supporting students took the form of add-on, ‘deficit-model’ approaches which understood poor student retention and success rates as emerging from students’ lack of neutral literacy ‘skills’. Recent initiatives have begun to adopt more socio-cultural understandings of literacy that seek to challenge traditional power structures and cultivate horizontal peer-orientated spaces for learning with a focus on practice rather than on product. Writing groups, as spaces for academic writing development, embrace this orientation and are argued to provide a transformative framework that foregrounds proactive student learning and experience, while still accommodating disciplinary learning through peer engagement. Drawing on the successful implementation of such forms of support at a research-intensive university, this paper argues that writing groups can play a critical role in both personal (student) transformation and broader curriculum transformation. Data include anonymous questionnaires and surveys with participants and coordinators of the writing groups. An inductive, constant comparative analysis indicated that students feel empowered in this space to develop not only their writing practices but also their transforming identities as scholars. Writing groups were found to provide ‘safe spaces’ where academic practices can be made explicit and where they can be challenged. The paper therefore argues that writing groups can play a small but key role in broader transformation efforts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Wilmot, Kirstin , McKenna, Sioux
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/${Handle} , vital:44576 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2018.1450361"
- Description: Curriculum transformation is a central concern for higher education in response to rapidly expanding technologies, globalisation and the widening diversity of the student and staff body. This is particularly true for South Africa, which is still grappling with inequalities and pressure for social redress in its universities. Early responses to supporting students took the form of add-on, ‘deficit-model’ approaches which understood poor student retention and success rates as emerging from students’ lack of neutral literacy ‘skills’. Recent initiatives have begun to adopt more socio-cultural understandings of literacy that seek to challenge traditional power structures and cultivate horizontal peer-orientated spaces for learning with a focus on practice rather than on product. Writing groups, as spaces for academic writing development, embrace this orientation and are argued to provide a transformative framework that foregrounds proactive student learning and experience, while still accommodating disciplinary learning through peer engagement. Drawing on the successful implementation of such forms of support at a research-intensive university, this paper argues that writing groups can play a critical role in both personal (student) transformation and broader curriculum transformation. Data include anonymous questionnaires and surveys with participants and coordinators of the writing groups. An inductive, constant comparative analysis indicated that students feel empowered in this space to develop not only their writing practices but also their transforming identities as scholars. Writing groups were found to provide ‘safe spaces’ where academic practices can be made explicit and where they can be challenged. The paper therefore argues that writing groups can play a small but key role in broader transformation efforts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
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