This is the presentation by Lynn Quinn and Jo-Anne Vorster presented at the Heltasa annual conference at the Free State University in November 2014.

1. Practising what we preach in a
course on teaching for lecturers
Lynn Quinn & Jo-Anne Vorster
Heltasa 2014

2. Diversity
• Range of institutional types
• English not 1st language
• Range of disciplinary qualifications (diploma
to PhD)
• Few have any teaching qualifications
• Multiple fields and disciplines (Certificates to
PhDs; practice-based, professional, academic)
• Structural and cultural conditions of home
institutions  influences kind of T & L

3. Contextual changes similar to those lecturers
face …
We emphasise the need to accommodate the
diverse needs of students in the education
process to ensure that it is “aligned with the
students’ legitimate learning needs” (Scott
2009:10)
Are we practicing what we preach?

4. Assessment
• Struggling to enter alien discourse community
• Need to demonstrate in writing enhanced
practice through engagement with course
processes
Are we practicing what we preach and ensuring that
participants are able to demonstrate their learning
adequately in writing?
Reflective tools (Stierer 2008) to better understand
participants’ challenges. Key features of written
discourse:

5. Criticality
Reflexivity
Praxis
Critically reflexive practitioner

6. Criticality
• Use ideas, theories and
concepts from HES to
think differently about
their context and with a
critical orientation
• Reading of texts
• Academic argument

7. Criticality
• Difficulty in moving from summarising ideas in
texts to reviewing ideas
• Tendency to provide verbatim
reproduction/plagiarism
• Tend to draw from a narrow range of theories
• Understand criticality to mean criticising or
finding fault rather than evaluating,
comparing, contrasting
• Difficulty in constructing logical academic
arguments (description rather than analysis)

8. Reflexivity
“a growing recognition of
the important relationship
between self-awareness
and learning, and
between personal values
and professional practice”
(Stierer 2008:39)

9. Reflexivity
• Reluctance to use ‘I’ and write in the active voice;
• Avoid discussing practice; lack of confidence in
practice
• Difficult to critique practice without becoming
defensive
• Only able to describe contextual constraints
• Intention to learn and shift practice not always
evident
• Anecdotes, storytelling and examples – difficulty in
moving to principles
• Tendency to be prescriptive or normative

10. “Academic practices are premised on conscious
reflection on the ends, objects and means of activity
(Anderson 1993) and involve forms of reasoning,
analysis, modes of investigation and self reflection
which enable the critical examination of established
truths, taken-for-granted assumptions and knowledge
handed down by tradition. Thus a truly responsive
pedagogy must enable students to grasp the point of
the practice and to develop the powers to work
towards it” (Slonimsky & Shalem 2004:83)

11. Praxis: linking theory and practice
Bringing together
criticality and
reflexivity
Think and write about
teaching and learning
in ways which will lead
to improved or
transformed practice

12. Praxis
• Difficulty in linking concepts, theories and ideas to
their practice
• Difficulty in understanding how various concepts
form a complex structure of meaning (e.g. learning
as both a social and an individual process)
• Difficulty with ‘display writing’ and demonstrating a
move away from commonsense understandings
• Difficulty with structuring and effective movement
between theory and practice in writing

13. The curriculum and the pedagogy
of the course do not provide
sufficient opportunities for all
participants to develop the
criticality, reflexivity and praxis
required by the assessment of the
course.

14. Curriculum & pedagogy for fostering
criticality, reflexivity and praxis?
• Each of these ways of engagement with theory and
practice needs to be taught more explicitly,
systematically, and separately (initially) to enable
participants to integrate these processes in writing
• Ensuring sufficient ‘time on task’ consistently across
the course (Gibbs).
• More explicit use of LCT: Semantics (Maton in Vorster
& Quinn 2012)

15. Legitimation code theory: semantics
Concepts of semantic gravity (SG) and semantic
density (SD) to understand how we introduce
theories and concepts
SG: degree to which meaning relates to context
(concrete/abstract)
SD: degree to which meaning is condensed
within symbols, so this is related to complexity
(Maton in Vorster & Quinn 2012)

16. SG-SD+
SG+
SD-Abstract
concepts/
common words
used with their
common meaning
Real world
examples/
common words
used with their
common meaning
Abstract
concepts/
specific brief
terms or
symbols
Real world examples/
specific brief terms or
symbols

17. Curriculum planning
(teaching & assessment)
• Consciously moving between higher and lower SD
and weaker and stronger SG (sematic wave)
• Ensure that students are developing deeper
understanding of complex theories and concepts
and are able to apply these to their contextual
realities in meaningful ways
• Require participants to constantly articulate
understandings verbally and in writing and
ensure constant feedback

18. “… unpacking and then
repacking complex
concepts” (Maton)

19. Changes in mode and pedagogy
‘Issue’ Ideas
Much larger classes Tutorial groups (trained tutors & mentors)
Week long contact sessions More writing and reading during contact
sessions
Little/no preparation prior to the contact
sessions (less reading)
Compulsory tasks in preparation for
sessions (own practice as well as guided
reading tasks)
Less preparation between sessions (less
reading)
Compulsory scaffolded tasks for module
assignment
Peer and tutor feedback
Less writing Much more writing focusing specifically on
critique, reflexivity, praxis.
Exemplars of writing
Less feedback More feedback from facilitators, tutors and
peers