Search

This is a case study of multimodal and authoritative meaning making in grade 5 isiZulu, English, and Natural Sciences lessons in a quintile 1 primary school in KwaZulu-Natal, uMzinyathi Municipality in Nqutu. This study investigated the nature of classroom discourse in each of the subject areas and the opportunities learners have for participation in multimodal classroom discourse. This study is grounded in the socio-cultural approach, language and literacy as a social practice, and multimodality. Furthermore, this study adopted case study, and linguistic ethnography as a methodology. There are three major findings. First multimodality is not inherently pedagogically transformative, its success is determined by how multimodality is used, and integrated with the educator's pedagogy. Second, the presence and the use of multimodality and translanguaging does not compensate for monolingual assessments. That is, even though the isiZulu, English, and natural sciences educators were translanguaging and employing multiple modes of communication in the classroom, the written discourse was strictly monolingual in isiZulu/English. For example, learners were expected to write isiZulu class activities in monolingual isiZulu, and to write English and natural class activities in monolingual English, following bilingual oral classroom talk. Last, there is a similar communicative pattern across isiZulu, English, and natural sciences lessons. That is, the educators' pedagogical discourse was authoritative and interactional to a limited extent even in the isiZulu lessons where most learners are believed to be speaking isiZulu as their home language. In connection to this, knowledge and multimodal artefacts are presented as fixed, and learners are not given an opportunity to engage them fully nor to question, even in the isiZulu lessons where the language of instruction correlates with most learner's home language.

"Well-developed Reading and Viewing skills are central to successful learning across the curriculum" (Department of Basic Education, 2011: 10). Previous sociocultural research as well as the South African Department of Basic Education has shown the importance of reading- both in terms of achievement and general student well-being. However, the South African curriculum seems to provide little in the way of detailing how to foster a culture of reading in schools and what this reading should look like. As a result, I became interested in schools in the Western Cape area that seemed to have a good reading culture to see what they did to foster reading. It became clear that such schools made the move to incorporating reading for pleasure into the school day and curriculum. One of the ways was through daily Sustained Silent Reading periods (SSR-periods). Cattus Primary, a primary school in an affluent Western Cape suburb, had both a strong reading culture and held daily SSR-periods and it became the site of the case study. The case study focused on one class of Grade five students, their teacher and the librarian in a Western Cape suburban school who were observed, interviewed and (in the case of the students) given a questionnaire to determine what happened during the mandatory, daily SSR-periods. The focus, during observation and interviews, was on how SSR was enacted, the participants' sentiments regarding reading, how their actions contradicted or supported these sentiments and finally the role of the library with reference to the SSR-periods. Observing and analysing through the lens of the sociocultural perspective and new literacy studies (NLS) of literacy events, I discovered that although SSR-periods were being held, literacy events like the SSR-periods are not reducible to observable parts of literacy because "they also involve values, attitudes, feelings and social relationships" (Barton, 2006: 7-8). I discovered that identity performance, attitudes towards reading as well as the teacher's involvement played a major role in the SSR-periods success and more so the reader/student's motivation to read during these periods. Furthermore, the library played a crucial role in school reading culture and could be used as a supplementary to the SSRperiod, or as a third space (Moje et al 2004).

The Namibian school system subscribes to a separatist language policy and ideology that advocates the use of monolingual English as Medium of instruction (MO1) as well as conducting all written assessments from Grade 4 and beyond in English. Despite Namibia being a multilingual country, the Namibian monolingualist Language in Education Policy (LiEP) makes no provision to accommodate multilingual practices and to fulfill the linguistic needs of learners from linguistically diverse backgrounds, who lack proficiency in English. The language separatist ideologies sanctioned in the Namibian LiEP as well as in science written assessments need further consideration in order to embrace language as an open system that is fluid, evolving, and hybrid. Given the complexities of the language policy and pedagogical challenges of language of instruction choices in the Namibian classrooms, I wanted to investigate how primary school Science teachers and learners meet the demand of the Namibian curriculum of Learner Centered Education (LCE) and the ideologies of monolingualism advocated in the Namibian Language in Education Policy. I undertook a small-scale, ethnographically informed case study approach to examine the nature of discourse employed by a Grade 4 teacher and his learners (aged 10- 12) in a bilingual Namibian classroom as they engaged in science classroom discourse, exploring how these specific discourses support or constrain learners' opportunities to construct scientific meaning. I combined various theoretical resources from a sociocultural approach to language as social practice, Bakhtinian heteroglossia and dialogism, neo-Vygotskian ideas of what constitutes the learning of scientific concepts, together with the recent theorising of dynamic bi/multilingualism to understand this phenomenon in depth. The data include video and audio recordings of lessons, field notes, learning materials, policy document, photographs , interviews, written work (drawing and writing) as well learners' written science assessments. The data was analysed through sociocultural discourse and multimodal analytical methods. This study's findings suggest that in contrast with dialogic practices, monologic practices were dominant, as evidenced by the constrained Initiation Response Feedback (IRF) discourse structure. This suggests that English monolingual policy places constraints on bilingual learners to use their multiple linguistic recourses flexibly and thereby silenced their voices in the classroom. This implies that the struggle to break away from rote leaning towards conceptual understanding through exploratory talk remains elusive for the Namibian bilingual learners. Therefore, I suggest that one cannot argue for dialogism or for conceptually rigorous instruction in scientific concepts if the learners cannot understand the language of instruction. The discussion of dialogism and multimodality as a sole vehicle for raising the quality of science teaching should be further complimented with a consideration of deliberate use of multilingual and multimodal meaning making which enables teachers to value their learners' linguistic resources that they brought to school to enable effective science teaching and learning. The findings of this study revealed how the affordances of multiple linguistic resources and modes have positive effects for emergent bilingual learners to gain nuanced understanding of the scientific knowledge, regardless of their limited proficiency in English. I will therefore argue that the prevailing monoglossic orientations to the current Namibian education system is a major contributing factor preventing Namibia to realise its' educational goals of access, quality, equity, and social justice. There is a need to support learners from linguistically diverse backgrounds through a deliberate inclusive language policy that harnesses their multilingualism and their cultural identity to enhance equal education access to all Namibian children. Clear direction is warranted on how teachers can publicly acknowledge and sustain their learners' linguistic and cultural resources in science written assessments.

This thesis was motivated by my own family's language biography, and the social justice work I have been doing over the years in bi-multilingual education. This work has involved challenging the continuation of Apartheid language in education policy in practice in schools for Black African language speaking children, the neglect of the multilingual Language in Education Policy of 1997, and the narrow perspective on literacy learning in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement enforced by the Department of Basic Education and the provincial departments of education. Connected to the continuing subtractive, Anglonormative, monoglossic and monolingually oriented bilingual language in education policy in practice, which teaches languages in silos as Home and First Additional Languages, is the deficit construction of Black African language - emergent English speaking bi-multilingual children. This study argues that the curriculum's construction of separate Home and Additional Language periods continues to be calibrated to the needs of White English and Afrikaans monolingual children who speak one language at home, learn it at school as Home Language, and a second language as a First Additional Language. This same policy is imposed on Black bi/multilingual children, largely regarding as problematic their rich linguistic repertoire and language resources. This deficit positioning of these children inspired me to start an intervention which involved facilitators and children in co-constructing a multilingual and multimodal literacy club as a third space that calibrated language and literacy learning to their multilingual needs and to research this intervention. My research aimed to answer the questions: How is a bi-multilingual, multimodal third space co-constructed in an after-school literacy club? How do children from marginalised communities conceptualise language and literacy learning? What are the affordances of a bi/multilingual and multimodal approach to language and literacy learning in an out-of-school literacy club? And how do children respond to a bi/multilingual, multimodal pedagogical approach which legitimises all the semiotic resources in their repertoire? To answer these questions, I drew on linguistic ethnography as my methodology. The findings show, first, that bi/multilingual children learning language and literacy desire and need the affective, social, and linguistic third spaces, physical third spaces and pedagogical spaces that value and legitimise their sociocultural resources and include their full semiotic repertoire. Thus, the literacy club, instead of perpetuating binaries, was created as a pedagogical third space that legitimised both translanguaging pedagogy and spontaneous translanguaging for meaning making. Though facilitators might plan for pedagogical translanguaging in activities to take place in any of the languages used for teaching and learning in a bilingual learning space, the children spontaneously translanguaged, and drew on their hybrid linguistic repertoire for meaning making even in tasks that required them to work monolingually, in many cases producing bilingual texts. Their meaning making processes while engaging with the activities demonstrated that emergent bilinguals are at different stages in the bilingual and biliteracy continuum, and that drawing from their hybrid repertoire helps them participate and engage meaningfully with the activities. Secondly, the findings show that multilingual languaging on its own is not sufficient for meaning making, and multimodal communication alongside their use of their multilingual repertoire enriches children's meaning making. Drawing on a full semiotic repertoire creates a third space that does not just transcend language and non-verbal communication: it creates education opportunities that build on children's sociocultural resources. These include knowledges, languages and discourses, and ways of seeing, doing, reading, and writing the world. Thirdly, the study shows that language and literacy learning require both pedagogised literacy and social uses of literacy, thus transcending both autonomous and sociocultural understandings of literacy. Finally, collaborative activities were shown to be central in both multilingual and multimodal communication. These also allow for a distributive system of skills that children bring to their language and literacy activities. This multiple languaging and collaborative process not only enriches their final written product in whatever named language the activity is assigned but creates an affective social space that takes away the pressure and stress often placed on individual learners who are forced to compete. Additionally, drawing on their multilingual and multimodal repertoires assists children in achieving cognitively demanding tasks, including translation. Translation, interpreting, multiple languaging, and metalinguistic awareness are higher order skills that create opportunities for children to think deeply about the task at hand, make explicit their thinking processes by engaging in exploratory talk, and write to express what they know and feel.

The need to prepare science teachers in South Africa to respond to a heterogenous language and literacies context where multilingualism is the norm and where school conditions may shift rapidly is urgent. However, students arrive at university with varying resources and some, due to historical inequality, may not be able to meet the academic literacies demands of the university courses for which they register, and are often institutionally described as “at risk” or underprepared. Drawing on academic literacies and decoloniality theorising, this study examines the apprenticeship into the coloniality of schooling for African language speaking students locating deficit, not in the students but in the lingering colonial ideologies of language and literacy in the schooling and higher education systems. The research uses a qualitative approach and is a case study in the form of a participant intervention that addresses the academic and multiliteracies challenges faced by five African language speakers registered for a one-year Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) in science education at an elite English medium university in South Africa. I also consider whether taking a decolonial approach to academic literacies could expand the students' repertoires of practice and their production of texts in the PGCE programme. In addition, I investigate the participants' early experiences of coloniality in education; the academic and multimodal practices needed by student teachers; how African languages could be used as a resource for learning; and the role spaces outside of the university campus played in developing students' identities as science teachers and in their construction of multimodal repertoires. The theoretical framework draws on decolonial theory (Mignolo 2007; Quijano 2007; Ngugi wa ‘Thiongo 1986) and a social practices approach to academic literacies (Street 1985; Lillis 2001; New Literacy Studies 1993 and the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies; and multimodality e.g. New London Group 2000). The research findings show how African language speaking students' learning and literacies experiences from school to university continue to be shaped by coloniality, specifically the use of English as the language of instruction. Additional findings consider the specific knowledge and experiences student teachers require to successfully navigate university courses and professional practice; and what practices the demystification of academic literacies knowledge entails in a teacher education course. Taking a decolonial approach to academic literacies repositioned the students as capable and demonstrated that the problem lay not with the students, but with the system specifically under-resourced educational practices such as multimodal learning and academic literacies and continuing colonial ideologies of language and literacy.

The aim of this narrative study is to explore the development of five Intermediate Phase English teachers' literate habitus and its influence on their conceptions of literacy, and approaches to literature teaching and texts. Literate habitus (Gennrich & Janks, 2013) captures how a teacher's social background, personal, and professional experiences can play a role in how they negotiate literacy, texts and teaching. Drawing on new literacy studies and a sociocultural approach to literacy pedagogy, links are drawn between the development of each teacher's literate habitus, the conceptions they hold of literacy as autonomous, ideological, or some mix thereof (Gee, 2015), and their approaches to the teaching of texts. Luke and Freebody's four resources model (1999) was used to describe pedagogical choices advocated in the teachers' descriptions of their teaching. Practices involving critical and culturally sustaining pedagogies (Hall, 1998; Luke & Freebody, 1999; Hall, Janks, 2010; Clark & Fleming, 2019), were also traced. Data was collected in the form of semi-structured narrative interviews with five Intermediate Phase English teachers from a variety of backgrounds, teacher education and teaching experiences. Analysis of their narratives through a combination of thematic and discourse analysis, shows the connections between each teacher's literate habitus, their conceptions of literacy, and their described approach to literature teaching. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that the ways in which each teacher negotiated their own habitus, by either accepting, or attempting to adjust or disrupt it, had an influence how they perceived themselves as successful literature teachers. Notably, the Black participants in the study made the largest conscious effort to disrupt their habitus, as they were intent on providing their learners with access to literature learning that was more racially inclusive than their own narrated schooling experiences. Additionally, common factors influencing literature teaching were identified across the interviews, including the use of reading aloud and activities encouraging learner ownership, text relatability, and curricular and institutional limitations on teacher agency. How each teacher chose to negotiate these factors differed, largely in alignment with their literate habitus and conceptions of literacy. This study shows, therefore, that the ways in which a teacher's literate habitus is formed, entrenched, adjusted, or disrupted through their varying experiences plays a role in determining their conceptions of and approaches to literature teaching and texts, so much so that it influences the ways in which they negotiate the factors that exist in their classrooms, such as their perceptions of effective practices, the relatability of the text itself, or the restrictions placed upon their agency as a teacher.

The South African constitution recognises 11 official languages, of which isiXhosa is one. IsiXhosa belongs to the Nguni language family which also comprises of isiZulu, isiNdebele, and siSwati. IsiXhosa is mostly spoken in the Eastern and Western Cape Provinces. Those that regard isiXhosa as their home language (HL) are referred to as amaXhosa. However, as a teacher of isiXhosa HL, I have observed that there is often a mismatch between the isiXhosa used by the students and the one used in the schooling context. Thus, this study explores and investigates the written language varieties Grade 6 isiXhosa HL students use in their formally assessed and informal writing. The theoretical framework used in this study reviews literature on discourse/language and literacy as social practice, language ideologies and identity, heteroglossic and translingual practices, as well as primary school children's writing in South Africa to understand the complexities of students' language varieties. Moreover, this study explores the way in which the isiXhosa HL students represent their varied language resources through use of a language body portrait. Further, issues of language standardisation in relation to children's literacy are also reviewed. This study takes the form of qualitative case study in design. Students' Formal Assessment Task (FATs), language body portrait and informal paragraph writing about their linguistic repertoire were collected and analysed. Data analysis revealed the following themes: language ideologies, linguistic repertoires, use of urban and everyday language varieties, Standard Written isiXhosa (orthography), language borrowings, as well as unconventional spellings. Themes and categories are intensively analysed in Chapters four and five of this study. This study displays evidence of hybridity and fluidity of named languages, as well as heteroglossic practices that the students employ. Analysing the students' writing was effective in helping understand how bi/multilinguals engage in writing and that, while the adopted curriculum approach to language and FAT is monoglossic, children's writing is heteroglossic (see also Bakhtin, 1981; Krause and Prinsloo, 2016). The implications of teaching languages as bounded, fixed and separate entities are explored and problematized. Chapter six of this study concludes the study and offers recommendations that are important for deliberation when teaching writing in isiXhosa/African language contexts.

Despite official school language policies mandating English as the medium of instruction from Grade 4 onwards, nearly half of South Africa's English Language Learners (ELLs) are obtaining less than 50% in their final (matric) English examinations. These same students are writing all of their other high school examinations in English. It seems clear that the majority of students do not have an adequate mastery of written English. What is the nature of the English language instruction these children are receiving? Especially in the earliest years of schooling? Are children being adequately prepared to learn through the medium of English? To investigate these issues, the research question for this study asked: 'Does children's learning of English in the subject English First Additional Language (EFAL) in Grades 1-3 prepare them to make sense of a Grade 4 Natural Sciences and Technology (NST) textbook?' This study employed content and discourse analysis, specifically relating to school textbooks and curriculum documents. The focus was on evaluating the readability of one Grade 4 NST textbook, in relation to the language resources provided by a Grade 1-3 English Language Teaching (ELT) scheme. The methodology employed was mixed methods, with elements of both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Findings revealed that for all three key areas relating to text accessibility, namely Vocabulary, Genres and Syntax, the subject EFAL in Grades 1-3 does not adequately prepare learners to make sense of a Grade 4 NST textbook. Based on this, I recommend that learners no longer be made to transition to English as the Language of Learning and Teaching (LOLT) in Grade 4. Instead I recommend that children receive bilingual instruction throughout primary school in all learning areas, and that LTSMs and teacher training be updated to support this approach. I also recommend that EFAL and other home and additional languages be consolidated into a single language arts period and also taught bilingually. Alternatively, I recommend that learners be given two to three additional years to study EFAL before using it as a LOLT and that the EFAL course of study be revised to align more closely with the language and literacy demands of content subjects.

South Africa (SA) is home to 11 official named languages; its Language in Education Policy (LIEP) identifies multilingualism as one of the defining characteristics of its citizenry (DOE, 1997). Moreover, English is the official Language of Learning and Teaching (LOLT) in most ex-Model C schools nationwide. It is the language that is reported to be valued by the middleclass, people who are known for placing a high premium on education (Soudien, 2004; Alexander, 2005). The aim of this ethnographic Language Socialisation study is to explore the language socialisation experiences of a Grade R child in a Black middle-class multilingual family residing in a Cape Town suburb. The study is framed by the question: What are the language socialisation experiences of a child from a Black middle-class multilingual family? It uses a socio-cultural approach, drawing from linguistic anthropology, applied linguistics and sociolinguistics to critically analyse the language ideologies, language practices and linguistic repertoires evident in both the home and school domains across which the young child traverses. Concepts such as multilingualism, Family Language Policy and ‘mother tongue’ identity are reviewed and used to gain insight into the lived language experiences of the Grade R child. The concepts of assimilation (Soudien, 2004) and anglonormativity (Christie & McKinney, 2017) are reflected on as markers of school language practices and ideologies. Findings reveal that the Grade R child is an emergent multilingual who participates meaningfully in multilingual conversations with her family but only produces English. Despite the evident heteroglossia (Bhaktin, 1991) of the family’s language practices through translanguaging (Garcia, 2009; Creese and Blackledge, 2010) and drawing from the range of resources in their linguistic repertoires (Busch, 2012), the parents continue to use their Tswana and Xhosa ethnicity as markers of their language identities. The parents want their children to speak their heritage languages for identity reasons. They also want them to speak English to ‘fit in’ with their peers and to access learning. They see the teaching of Tswana and Xhosa as their sole responsibility thereby absolving the school. Their view enables the schools’ status quo of anglonormativity to go unchallenged. The child, thus, experiences heritage languages as identity markers and languages reserved for home, and English as a valuable language resource that gives access to learning. The notion of a single language identity remains complex for a child who is expected to be multilingual at home but monolingual at school.

Bilingual minoritised youth face challenging conditions for learning Science in South African schools. Among these are restrictive school-level language policies; entrenched monoglossic language ideologies within the education system which play out in classroom practice; and a lack of learning and teaching materials in African languages. Despite these challenges, learners work daily to make meaning in specific Science topics. It is this meaning-making process which is the focus of this case study. The study proceeds from the view of language as one of multiple semiotic resources comprising an individual’s semiotic repertoire which they draw upon to make meaning. Further, following Bakhtin, an understanding of the inherently heteroglossic nature of language is brought to bear on the learners’ bilingual practices as they journey along a meaning trajectory through a Science topic. These practices are described taking up the recently developed term ‘translanguaging’ and Angel Lin’s ‘trans-semiotizing’ with the theoretical work of these terms being extended to include different registers as well as named languages and modes. A case study employing the tools and perspectives of linguistic ethnography was undertaken for a period of nine months in a high school in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. The author joined a Grade 9 (13/14 year olds) class as a participant-observer during their study of the topic ‘Chemical Reactions’ and facilitated a study group with volunteers from the class of 36 learners. Interactional data from multiple sources of audio and video recordings was collected from ten Natural Science lessons and eight study group meetings. Learner texts, school policy documents, photographs, interviews with staff and questionnaires were also employed to enable analysis of the language environment of the school and microethnographic analyses of the multimodal interactional data. Building on the taxonomies developed by scholars of social semiotics working in Science learning contexts (Jay Lemke, Eduardo Mortimer and Philip Scott, Gunther Kress and Carey Jewitt) three broad categories of learner meaning-making are identified in the data: constrained, guided and spontaneous meaning-making. Forming the major theoretical contribution of this dissertation, these categories serve to provide a framework for understanding learners’ meaning-making – conceptual development as well as identity work - in monolingual and/or bilingual contexts. Key insights from the data analysis include that while constrained meaning-making can facilitate the acquisition of fixed words in scientific discourse, guided and spontaneous meaning-making are required for discourse appropriation and flexible expression of scientific ideas, often through a meshed register. Further research and teaching practice attention focused on guided and spontaneous meaning-making in content subjects drawing on multiple modes is argued for.

This study explores how teaching strategies that constructively employ learners’ linguistic and cultural resources can enhance their learning and participation in literacy lessons. In South Africa, as elsewhere in the world, language policies tend to favour English as the sole medium of instruction and oppose multilingual teaching (Creese and Blackledge, 2010; McKinney, 2017). However, these linguistic restrictions on teaching are hugely problematic for the majority of South African learners who do not have access to dominant language and cultural practices. This study draws on sociocultural theory in that it views language use in the classroom to have a social context, where language regimes at play in greater society determine the language ideologies of teaching and learning in the classroom (Makoe and McKinney, 2014). In addition, this study draws on recent research that advocates multilingual teaching strategies such as translanguaging and translation (Gardia and Sylvan, 2011; McKinney, 2017; Probyn, 2006), as well as drawing on learners’ cultural repertoires and the use of multimodal activities (Newfield, 2011; Stein and Newfield, 2006). The data discussed in this study is drawn from a teaching intervention with Grade 1 and 2 learners that was implemented in a South African primary school. This intervention primarily focused on inviting learners to use their linguistic and cultural repertoires during after-school literacy lessons. Using a linguistic ethnographic approach (Copland and Crease, 2015), this qualitative study describes and analyses the benefits of using such teaching methodologies. This study shows how using learners’ full linguistic and cultural repertoires and multimodal interactions is beneficial to their learning.