Using Bernstein’s notion of re-contextualising fields to understand the challenges around the integration of discursive and formal communities at UWC

T & L Colloquium 19 July 20103 Birgit Schreiber (PhD) Centre for Student Support Services University of the Western Cape

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Formal Communities

• • • • Delineated by identity, name, profession, title, rank or membership Delineated by in-out group gate-keeping mechanisms Might be binary Might be described by assertion-negation principle

‘Communities of Practice’

describe a community which is legitimised through practice and participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991)

‘Epistemic Community’

might have different disciplinary and professional backgrounds, but members share understanding and intentions around unifying goals, have shared notions of validity, and have a normative component around “betterment of society” (Haas, 1992, p. 35) 2

Discursive Communities

• • • • Are understood as: “A group of communicators with a common goal or interest that adopts certain preferred ways of participating in public discussion, i.e. has distinct discursive practices”. (Malon, 2008, p. 59) Generally, membership in a discursive community requires a certain level of expertise, the more ‘expert’ according to a ranking system, the more influence one has over the preferred discursive practices. (Swales, 2011) “A local and temporary constraining system, defined by discursive practices that are unified by a common focus, has stated and unstated conventions, mechanisms for wielding power, institutional hierarchies, vested interests, and so on.” (Porter, 2011, p. 262) The boundaries of discursive communities are often fluid, nebulous and frequently overlap.

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Bernsteinian notions of fields and contexts (1)

• • • • • Bernstein’s notions of recontextualsing fields is a very useful framework for understanding the nexus of Student Affairs and Academic Affairs A

‘field’

is a socio-cultural and epistemological domain: conceptual, discursive, structural, and legitimised by power relations.

The

“official recontextualising field”

is described as the official, administrative, management, policy or non-academic domain. (Bernstein, 2000, p. 42) The

“pedagogic recontextualising field”

refers to the domain of knowledge construction and reconstruction, discipline-specific discourses, curriculum, and teaching and learning. (Bernstein, 2000, p. 42) These, together with a third field, the

“social domain

”, constitute “key institutional domains where the interplay of mediating factors in student experience takes place” (Lange, 2010, p. 46).

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Fields and contexts (2)

• The focus of this paper is to understand the relational interplay and integration of the formal, discursive, and epistemic fields and communities • The focus is to explore the relational interplay and integration of Student Affairs with Academic Affairs, as it manifest in an Extended Programme in the Science Faculty • Overall, there seems to be disjuncture between Student Affairs, Academic Affairs, T&L, research, structural and policy related imperatives, classroom practice, and student experiences. • According to Bernstein, the recontextulisation between fields creates disjunctures and tensions, there are articulation gaps by migrating knowledge across ‘fields’. • The relocated research and migrated knowledge from one ‘field’ to another ‘field’ creates disjunctions: the classroom is experienced as alien and literally ‘re-located’ and ‘dis-located’. (Harris, 2006) 5

Student Affairs field

• • • • • Student Affairs finds itself straddling these fields and domains: the

official recontextualising field

, the

pedagogic recontextualising field

and the

social domain

Student Affairs finds itself in the pluralist intersections between the co curricular and the curricular, between the affective and cognitive, between the faculty and student, between the administration and the social domain (Case, 2007; Lange, 2010; King & Baxter-Magolda, 1996; Kuh, et al, 2010; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005; Scott et al., 2007) American models emphasise the integration of Student Affairs into the academic experience at faculty level and have developed an academic discipline focussing on Student Affairs (Astin, 1977, 1996; Kuh, 1995; Kuh & Hu, 2001; Kuh et al., 2010; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005; Tinto, 1997) European Student Affairs are located within Bernstein’s “official recontextualising field” and are located in the bureaucratic body of the Welfare State The European Council for Student Affairs locates itself within the ‘social domain’ and declares itself responsible for the student experience (EHEA, Bergen, 2007) 6

Student Affairs theory

• Developmental theories: • address issues of human growth, mainly from psychological theory • focus on intra- and inter-personal factors which affect and are affected by learning, cognitive and personal-social development • Environmental impact theories: • address the interplay between the environmental factors and the student • Focus on involvement and engagement, social and academic integration • seminal work of Tinto, Astin, Kuh and Pascarella (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005) • Structurally Student Affairs in South Africa is centrally positioned while infused into faculty and programmes 7

Integration of Student Affairs and Academic Affairs (1)

• • • • • The assertion of integration is based on the assumption that learning is synergistic and not segmented “Cognitive and affective dimensions of development are related parts of one process” (King & Baxter-Magolda, 1996, p. 163) Parity in psycho-social and cognitive development is key for progress in learning (Erikson, 1968; Vygotsky, 1978) Meaning making is related to self-authorship (Astin, 1977). The self as cohesive continuous construct develops while cognitive structures develop. Separation of academic from personal-social is reductionist and artificial. 8

Integration of Student Affairs and Academic Affairs (2)

• • • • Student Affairs contribution is predicated on the integration into Academic Affairs and institutional affairs (Baxter Magolda, 1992, 2001; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991, 2005; Kuh et al, 1995, 2001, 2003) Integration needs to be at the site and moment of learning (Kuh, et al, 1998, 2001; Schuh, 2012; Tinto, 1997) Learning should be viewed as a “comprehensive, holistic, transformative activity that integrates academic learning and student development”. (Keeling, 2004, p. 2) There is a need for the re-definition of learning as a broad process across cognitive, affective and social domains.

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Extended Programme ICS153 and the Student Affairs component (LL)

• • • • • • • Piloted in 2009 – Vivienne Bozalek and Delia Marshal Funded by IOP Change Initiative of DVC SDS Student development and support sessions part of time table Weekly sessions facilitated by student affairs practitioner Didactic and participative, experiential and reflective Primary aims: • improve throughput • improve retention Mediating factors: • Facilitate personal-social functioning • Attachment to institution • Improve social integration within academic spaces • Conduit to resources 10

Research Methodology

1. Research Question

– The exploration of staff perception of the integration of Student Affairs and Academic Affairs in an Extended Programme

2. Sample

– 14 staff involved in ICS153 Extended Programme – Staff are faculty based, T&L, co-ordinators, lecturers, facilitators

3. Questionnaire

– 14 open ended questions – Explored synergies, barriers, enablers and challenges – Focus was on integration of content, practices, and culture – Explored assumptions, structural issues, discursive and administrative issues

4. Responses

– 9 of 14 questionnaires were returned – most answered most questions, in sentences, bulleted or key words

5. Analysis

– Thematic transcending

Emerging themes

1. Domain and territoriality

Issues around who is in and who is out – who belongs to this community is not clear. “sometimes there are meetings which exclude student support staff and they are told that this isn’t relevant to them. But then you think we are all part of the team, so I’m not sure why they are excluded sometimes” (2)

2. Power and ownership of success

Power and expert issues, in-out group tensions.

“there are some issues around who owns success as opposed to seeing student success as a win win” (6) “there are moments when there is a power struggle around which interpretation and which understanding we should follow” (3) “the academics decide on their content, and the others which are less academic need to adjust to the set programme” (4)

3. The disjuncture of fields

Re-contextualised knowledge creaets disjuncture between policy and implementation. “there are gaps between decision makers and implementers” (6) “decision makers are separate from facilitators” (4)

4. The disjuncture of practices

Challenges around complying with dominant practices, such as formative and summative assessments and academic performances as positivistic indicators of success. Re location of dominant practices from one domain/’field’ to the other creates challenges.

“it’s hard for student development to quantitatively provide assessment marks about student participation in the LL, but we need to find a way of documenting progress, but we haven’t found a good indicator yet, so that’s frustrating” (8) “to include LL into exams and tests, is an impairment to integration” (4) 13

5. Experts

In the e-technologies field, no one has expert status and can claim power. Integration of the domains is facilitated by the equality amongst the members of this community.

“what works really well is our use of e-technologies, we are all novices, so the playing field is leveled” (1) “use of multi-media resources in sessions, and utilizing the e-teaching site … has facilitated the integration process” (4) 14

8. Epistemic community

An awareness of many disciplines, shared goal, shared commitment and understanding. This is the making of an epistemic community.

“what works is embracing diversity within a multi-disciplinary team” (6) “we all focus on student success, regardless of where we come from” (2) “frequent meetings ensure we keep communicating and we stay aligned” (8) “sharing attitude to work, sharing vision for students, and focussing on what works well” (6) “cross referencing of our content and the many meetings allow us to find common ground – it is a nice group of committed and hard working people, from across campus, students feel this and it makes a difference” (3) “constant cross-referencing by facilitators around content and components … allows for it to be integrated” (4) 15

Conclusion

• • • • • • There is a recognition of various fields, contexts and pockets across UWC and a recognition for the necessity to find ways to work together and integrate practices and theories The process of integrating Student Affairs and Academic Affairs is complex and demanding Integration is required in terms of content, structure, management and implementation To bridge fields and context, structural and systems - issues need to be addressed Epistemic Communities need to be fostered and supported – this involves cross disciplinary conversations and projects with shared goals ICS153 is a case study which demonstrates the value of this integration 16

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