Making insights, gazes and lenses explicit in the Humanities

1. Making insights, gazes and lenses explicit in the Humanities • The quest to facilitate cumulative learning in Humanities Foundation Courses

2. Presentation overview • Research question • Concern • Aim • Conceptual framework • Method (external language of description) • Data analysis • English language and literature • Psychology • History • Film and Media • Emerging patterns • Way forward

3. Research question “Is it possible to offer students a platform of powerful knowledge in Foundation courses that they can build on when they begin their disciplinary majors?”

4. Concern • Generic foundation courses – • critiqued for ignoring content or disciplinary knowledge (knowledge-blindness) • Are they resolving problem of academic ‘under-preparedness’?

5. Aim • Therefore, use of Legitimation code theory to analyse: • knowledge of target disciplines (Faculty of Humanities) • What kinds of knowledge and knowers are assumed in the target disciplines’ 1st year courses. • Eventually, the aim is to make the rules of the game explicit to first year students in the Foundation courses.

6. Conceptual framework • Use of Legitimation Code Theory (Maton, 2000) to determine basis of legitimation – what is valued, what are the rules of the game? • LCT Specialisation in phase 1, semantics dimension in phase 2. • We ask the following: • Knower code/ knowledge code – ER / SR?

7. What types of insight? What types of gaze?

8. What happens when object of study is a text? • The text not only mediates between knower and real world, it transforms what counts as real. • 2 new terms (esp within cultivated gaze): • Textual ontic relations, Intertextual discursive relations (Eng, Hist) • Give rise to four types of lenses:

9. TOR, IDR quadrants – 4 lenses

10. Method (External language of description

11. English language and literature Course outlines: • The courses aim to familiarise students with ‘literary and rhetorical terms’, ‘basic issues in literary studies’, different literary genres and types of ‘critical writing’ with a view of helping them ‘hone their own writing skills’. • Strong emphasis on teaching the concepts of textual analysis, thus cultivating the Knower’s ways of knowing (Knower Code: Cultivated gaze: (SUBR-, IR+) – i.e. on how to engage with canonical texts.

12. English language and literature Tutor’s Handbook: • ‘Teaching is of course a very personal thing – some tutors prefer to be left to their own devices; others appreciate more support and scaffolding’. Essay writing guideline: • ‘Essay writing is a complex process. There are tensions in that: on the one hand, students are required to show expression of independent mind (SUBR+), whilst on the other, they have to follow a code of accepted academic practice (IR+)’. Marking rubric: • ‘It would be wrong to represent the Department as having dogmatic positions. There can be no simple formula that deducts a set number of marks for each error of fact or syntax. This is why the opinion of two markers is necessary to establish a mark…’ (SUBR+, IR+).

13. English language and literature Exam questions: • In his famous essay, “Art as technique”, Shklovsky writes, “And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony.” Choose two or three narrative devices in Great Expectations, and discuss the ways in which Charles Dickens uses these devices (e.g. imagery, characterisation, narrative point of view and many others) to enable his readers to “recover the sensation of life.” • (SUBR-, IR+) Cultivated gaze; (TOR+, IDR+) Elitist Lens.

14. Psychology Course Outline: • We intend not only to look at the contents or material of Psychology (ER: OR+), butalso to help you develop skills to make a critical evaluation of what you read (DR+). Tutorial Questions: • ‘What is an independent variable?’; • ‘What is a dependent variable?’ • ‘What does it mean to vary an IV and measure a DV? • ‘How does one operationally define a variable?’ (OR+) • ‘How would you structure a research report for you research idea?’ • ‘What are some of the possible ethical issues … that may be involved in a study of this nature?’ (DR-)

15. Psychology Exam questions: • Memory involves one area of the brain only. To what extent do you agree with this statement? Draw on the case of HM to illustrate your answer. • Knowledge code: ER+, Situational insight (OR+, DR-) • But we suspect that as students are taught research methods, the procedural requirements will become increasingly strongly framed, reinforcing the development of a purist insight (OR+, DR+).

16. History Student’s Guide: • History at university level is not just about facts. While the past does not change, our interpretations and understanding of it certainly has. The different way historians have written about history is called historiography. As you will see in many courses, history and economic history often deal with contested interpretations of the past. (…) it is important that as an academic reader you process the argument and the evidence provided in each reading. (p.7) The Departmental marking scale describes a 90%+ essay as • An outstanding answer, worthy of a postgraduate student and showing mastery of historical method. Gave your marker new insight into the topic. (p.20) - Historical Studies is a Knower code (SR+)

17. History Exam question: • What do you understand by the term ‘cultural imperialism’ and do you agree with Kwame Anthony Appiah that its negative effects have been exaggerated? • Students have to deal with both evidence – understood as both empirical and interpretative (OR+/ TOR+) and the interpretations and texts of significant historians about that evidence (historiography) (IDR+) • Knower code: Cultivated Gaze: Elitist Lens (TOR+, IDR+)

18. Film and Media Course outlines: • FAM F: ‘the importance of mass media in modern society and questions the roles that the media play in public life’ (IR+). • FAM S: Builds on semester 1 - offers ‘a critical engagement with film and television’ and teaches students to apply semiotic tools to visual texts. • ‘It is one of the few courses in which you can legitimately call going to the cinema and watching TV research’ (SUBJR+). • It also extends the repertoire of existing semiotic tools teaching them the ‘language of screen texts and the anatomy of visual storytelling’ (IDR++). • Cultivated Gaze: Rhetorical lens (TOR-, IDR++)

19. Film and Media Exam questions: • Write down the CORRECT version of the underlined words in each of the following sentences: [5 marks] 1. I need to license/licence my vehicle. 2. The drugs seem to have no affect/effect on her. 3. There are less/fewer than twenty women in the group.(SUBR-, IR-) • With reference to specific scenes in Legally Blonde, discuss how the film’s mise-en-scène contributes to the affirming and questioning of cultural stereotypes. • Cultivated Gaze: Rhetorical lens (TOR-, IDR++)

20. Emerging patterns Knower codes – Social Relations

21. Emerging patterns Knowledge codes – Epistemic Relations

22. Emerging patterns Knower codes: Cultivated gaze: Textual Ontic Relation and Inter-textual Discursive Relation

23. Way forward • Our findings will inform the design of the new Foundation courses. • We aim to make explicit the basis of legitimation for each large disciplinary major in the Faculty. • We hope that this will empower students to read the ‘code shifts’ (and even ‘code clashes’) across the different disciplines in the Faculty. We believe that this will enhance their “epistemic access” to the disciplines and lead to greater academic success.

24. Reference list BERNSTEIN, B. B. 1999. Vertical and Horizontal Discourse: An Essay. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20, 157-173. MATON, K. 2000. Languages of Legitimation: the structuring significance for intellectual fields of strategic knowledge claims. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 21. MATON, K. 2009. Cumulative and segmented learning: exploring the role of curriculum structures in knowledge-building. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 30, 43-57. MATON, K. 2010. Progress and canons in the arts and humanities: Knowers and gazes. In: MATON, K. & MOORE, R. (eds.) Social Realism, Knowledge and the Sociology of Education: Coalitions of the mind. London: Continuum. MATON, K. In Press. Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education. London: Routledge.

25. Thank you Kathy Luckett and Aditi Hunma Academic Development Unit Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town