Caroline Kerfoot and Christopher Stroud
Centre for Research on Bilingualism,
Stockholm University
Overview
 situate UWC within the broader tertiary education landscape
 argue for enaggement with complex new forms of linguistic and social
diversity and a critical rethinking of the nature of multilingualism and
language policy
 sketch how an alternative understanding of multilingualism for
academic literacy may address some of the issues of power and voice
that currently constrain epistemological access, that is, “access to the
knowledge that universities distribute” (Morrow, 2007, p. 18), and
consequently the transformation of HE.
 suggest a policy development process that moves from microinteraction to macro-structure
2
Change in post-1994 South African
higher education
 a constant state of institutional and programmatic
change since 1994
 stasis or unwelcome continuities with the apartheid
past (Badat, 2009) but at the same time
 innovations underway which place South Africa in the
"forefront of higher education and transformation
discussion" (Soudien, 2011, p. 20).
 address not only issues of social inclusion and
conceptual access but also critical new approaches to
the mediation and production of knowledge.
3
The South African Tertiary Landscape
• High levels of poverty and continuing patterns of
historical disadvantage, failures of the primary school
system, and the inability generally of many state
institutions to cater to the needs of the population,
will continue to dominate sociopolitical development
for the foreseeable future.
• Recent statistics show that on all socio-economic
measures, South Africa has regressed significantly in
the years since the first free elections in 1994 (Marais,
2011).
4
Challenges: SA education system
and international benchmarks
 International PIRLS literacy study ( 2006, 2011)
South Africa came last out of 38 countries after countries
like Morocco, Indonesia and Iran.
Around 80% of South Africa’s Grade 4 and Grade 5 learners
attained not even the most basic reading literacy, the ‘low’
benchmark, as against 6% internationally. And only 2% of
South African learners reached the ‘high’ benchmark. (Baer
et al. 2007)
 HSRC study of the Language and Mathematics Skills of
Grade 8 Learners in the Western Cape in 2006 found that
over 30% of learners in Grade 8 appear to have no more
than emergent literacy skills and a further 24% can barely
read or write.
5
The University of the Western Cape (UWC)
• an “engaged university” with a vision statement “from hope to action
•
•
•
•
through knowledge”.
established in 1960 as a bilingual English/Afrikaans university college
for people classified as “coloured”.
“meant to produce the administrative corps for the bantustan and
department of Indian Affairs and Coloured Affairs bureaucracies and
to assist […] in the project of separate development” (Gordon, 1957,
cited in Anderson, 2003, p. 34). Ten Bantustans (black African
homelands) were established under apartheid in order to create
ethnically homogeneous territories which could later serve as the basis
for creating an "autonomous" nation state for each ethnic group.
aligned itself to the national-liberation movement (Anderson, 2003)
and created the country’s first nonracial, open admissions policy
(UWC, 1982).
committed to the admission of students from poor communities  a
very large proportion of students from educationally disadvantaged
backgrounds
6
First Language/s Given By Students on Enrolment at the University of the
Western Cape: A Comparison of 2001 and 2010 (UWC, 2011)
First
language/s
Afrikaans
given on
Afrik.
and
Isi-
Other
Xhosa
English
Eng.
Total
Total
%
African
% NOT
student
under-
languages
English
number
graduate
enrolment
first
students
language
2001
2010
1671
1039
3637
1182
2693
7806
(16%)
(10%)
(35%)
(11%)
(26%)
(74%)
2737
931
4509
1449
7765
(15%)
(5%)
(25%)
(8%)
(42%)
10529
10,499
76%
18,294
79%
(58%)
7
Reading the data
• an increase in the number of students claiming English as a
first language from 26% in 2001 to 42% in 2010, which is in
line with broader studies of language shift in the Western
Cape and South Africa more broadly (Anthonissen, 2009;
Kamwangamalu, 2003; McCormick; 2002; Webb, 2002).
• sociolinguistic reality is that the variety of English spoken
in many homes and produced in classrooms differs from
the variety of academic English expected at university, that
many of these households remain in fact bi-, if not
multilingual (Dyers, 2008; Plüddemann, Braam, October,
& Wababa, 2004),
• in some homes codeswitching itself could be considered a
language variety (McCormick, 2002; Paxton, 2009).
8
So
• A majority of students registered during the past decade
could therefore be considered either bi- or multilingual to
varying degrees.
• Furthermore, it is safe to assume on the basis of South
Africa’s performance on international and local benchmark
tests (see Soudien, 2007) that a substantial number of
these students did not have access to academic registers to
any significant degree in any language.
• Despite the obvious challenges thus arising from cohorts of
highly bi/multilingual students entering the universities
with palpable inadequacies in English academic literacy,
“language” as an issue remains all but invisible in national
assessments of the challenges facing HE generally (see
Scott, 2009; Boughey, 2010).
9
A call for
 reconceptualisation of the University and the development
of new epistemologies consonant with the complexities of
“a post-racial world" : "what the University does in what it
teaches, how it teaches and how it imagines learning might
take place within it" (Soudien, 2011, p. 30)
 We believe that the majority of academic language and
literacy development programmes conserve the status quo
 what is needed is a radical re-conceptualisation of the
design of academic language and literacy programmes, and
indeed of the very understanding that we have of
multilingualism and its role in teaching and learning more
generally
10
Thus
 the necessity of finding more radical and systematic
ways to deal with the implications of diversity,
especially linguistic diversity, for epistemological
access
 emphasize mechanisms and processes for building
“nonracial orientations to knowledge production”
(Soudien, 2011, p.25) AND
 facilitating the voice and agency of students in the
transformation of curriculum content and practice.
This means that critical attention needs to be given to
multilingualism as a transformative epistemology and
methodology of diversity.
11
Our point of departure
 the success of transformation in South African tertiary education
contexts such as UWC depends crucially on transforming
students’ everyday encounters with teaching and learning.
Fundamental here is the role of language, specifically the
multiple languages which students bring with them into the
academy.
 We argue this point from the perspective of the role multilingual
repertoires play in the voice, power and agency of speakers
(Alexander, 2003; Blackledge & Creese, 2010; Heller & MartinJones, 2001). Voice here is understood as the (structured)
capacity to use multilingual semiotic resources to produce rather
than merely reflect realities (Pennycook ,2001) and to achieve
“semiotic mobility” (Blommaert, 2005), that is, to create
meanings than can be taken up across social and, in this case,
educational spaces.
12
A transformative epistemology of
multilingualism for HE
 all available languages and semiotic resources are used and promoted in pursuit of
learning
 encourages a questioning of monodiscursive, monolingual norms in education – be
these in one or the other language.
 takes voice, rather than language, as a starting point (Bailey, 2007; Stroud, 2009),
focusing on
linguistic repertoires rather than languages
(Block, 2003; Blommaert & Rampton, 2011),
practices rather than proficiency
(Canagarajah, 2007),
translanguaging rather than codeswitching
(Creese & Blackledge, 2010; García, 2007, 2009).
 resemiotisation which focuses on the “unfolding of meaning-making across
practices, and enquires into its material consequences “(Iedema, 2003, p. 49) as
fundamental to a reconceptualisation of HE language policy
13
Escaping the gridlock of monoglossia:
Key questions
 what roles can language/multilingualism play in
changing structures of academic privilege?
 what models and sets of strategies exist – or need
to be developed– that can make this goal
possible?
14
International research in academic literacies
 a change in emphasis from “text” to “practice” (Street 2004;
Barton & Hamilton, 2000),
 a recasting of student identities from “apprentices” on the
periphery of academic discourse communities to “agents”
at the centre of meaning-making (Lillis & Scott, 2007).
 critical perspectives on academic development which go
beyond induction into the norms of disciplinary
communities, seeing meaning-making as a site of struggle
and prising open spaces for a wider range of
representational resources in teaching and learning,
including those brought by students (Lillis & Scott, 2007).
15
Towards a Transformative Language Policy in Higher Education
A priority must therefore be to reform curricula in ways that genuinely
accommodate the diverse intake so that “teaching and design practices
are aligned with the students’ legitimate learning needs” (Scott, 2009, p.
28).
1.) One important aspect of this is for language policies and practices for
the tertiary education sector to address the mismatch between “the
monolingual ethos and the ideology of English-medium tertiary
education and the needs, identities and resources of multilingual
students” (Preece & Martin, 2010, p. 3).
In order to accomplish this, a crucial condition is the
development of an understanding of language as practice that places at
the centre people as actors engaged in “languaging” (Becker, 1995, cited
in Pennycook, 2010).
16
2.)
A second aspect is the need for a fundamental
rethinking of the role of language and
multilingualism in HE in terms of semiotic
resources and repertoires for critical authorship
and epistemological ownership.
This entails a reconceptualisation of students as
“walking” repertoires or portfolios of multiple
codes and integrated semiotic resources available
to be deployed for academic authority, agency and
voice
17
Multilingual Repertoires as Resources for Epistemological Access
 Studies of academic writing in multilingual HE contexts, although few, indicate
a range of creative translanguaging practices used by multilingual writers.
 South African studies illustrate the value of multilingual repertoires for
conceptual understanding, critical engagement and voice
 emphasise the bidirectional nature of the impact of bilingual pedagogy on
discipline-specific conceptual understanding and register development, as well
as enhanced confidence, motivation and performance.
  use code-switching confidently and openly as a translanguaging strategy and
pedagogic resource, scaffolding and deepening conceptual understanding in
disciplinary subjects
 Further, accepting the pedagogic validity of translanguaging enables a different
lens on the “intellectualisation” of African languages and can contribute to
building academic registers in African languages through bottom-up processes
in which students are co-creators of knowledge.
18
3.) A third key aspect would be that accounting for
student diversity with the goal of enhanced voice
and agency in knowledge-generating spaces entails
working with the realisation that all discourse
repertoires are inevitably social and ideological.
This concern with knowledge-making also applies to
multimodal forms of representation -- informed by new
work on “emerging literacies” (Lea, 2007), especially
those afforded by the interactive applications of Web
2.0. This work has illuminated new spaces of
engagement which challenge traditional conceptions of
sites of knowledge construction and the parameters of
what counts as academic writing.
19
Expanding Meaning-Making Repertoires: Multimodality and Hypertextuality
 potential of a multimodal approach for addressing
issues of equity and access in a context where the
majority of South African students learn in a second or
additional language
 interrogate legitimised “representational resources”
(Kress, 1996, p. 18), or routinely accepted ways of
using language and other forms of semiosis, in tertiary
educational spaces which often, if unintentionally,
privilege certain kinds of cultural capital and
reproduce patterns of privilege (Thesen, 2001).
20
”Resemiotisation” as fundamental to reconceptualising
multilingually based academic transformation
 Along with the rapid development of technologies has come a blurring of the
boundaries between “text”, mode, media and context, producing “new and
unsettled genres” (Jewitt, 2008, pp. 255-56).
 Students work across sites of expression, continuously decontextualise and
recontextualise texts, images and other semiotic forms (Jewitt, 2008; Thesen,
2007).
 A notion of resemiotisation which allows analysis of the ways in which
“meaning-making shifts from context to context, from practice to practice, or
from one stage of a practice to the next,” (Iedema, 2003, p. 41)
 provides the conceptual bridge that brings together these strands of research
to articulate practices with multilingual resources: resemiotisation in
multilingual contexts often also includes recoding into one or more languages
or language varieties (Kerfoot, 2011).
 Example
21
Nurturing multilingual, multimodal
repertoires: possibilities
 An array of downloadable podcasts either subtitled into the languages
desired by students or recorded in two or more languages either by the
same lecturer or an associate depending on the repertoires of the
lecturer/s in question. Ideally multiple versions of lectures in different
languages accessible at the press of a button.
 Translated course outlines, key readings, assignments and exam
questions provided as a matter of course on e-learning platforms.
 A cohort of well-trained isiXhosa- and Afrikaans-speaking tutors with
qualifications in the field of study to mark assignments written in the
language or languages of students’ choice and also to teach students in
tutorials.
 African language and Afrikaans speaking tutors available online at all
times
22
 Multilingual technical glossaries available online and
through mobile learning devices along with instant
translation. State interventions in allocating resources
towards enabling instant translation in all South African
languages through, for example, Google translate, would
have immediate spin-offs in increased understanding of
course content. Work on this is proceeding in isiXhosa and
isiZulu
 Commissioning the translation of key texts in all fields,
made available free as eBooks by institutions, reality is that
students will have not have money for textbooks for the
foreseeable future.
 Web technologies, enabling experts from different
disciplines to work together at no cost and to engage in
activities such as translate@thons.
23
Towards a new policy process
 Language policies and practices need to be located within
wider debates over reshaping “disciplinary, policy, and
pedagogy toolkits for addressing new times” (Luke, 2003, p.
134) and the kinds of local textual practices that can and
should be forged in relation to larger social dynamics.
 In the context of UWC, we have argued that this should
translate into a multilingual policy and practice based in a
visionary leadership and investment in the kind of
technological and human resources that will make possible
transformative practices. This should radically increase the
chances of epistemological access, inclusive dialogic
pedagogies and ultimately academic success.
24
 We suggest a policy process that begins by tracing micro-interactions
in spaces of learning both formal and informal, physical and virtual,
moves on to interrogate legitimate representational resources in these
spaces and then, on this basis, promotes enabling institutional
practices.
 Tracing processes of resemiotisation in this way from micro- to macrolevels enables us to move beyond language alone as the theoretical
point of departure and to address the principle and possibility of social
change itself (Iedema, 2001, 2009).
 Such a process might contribute to building new non-racial
orientations to knowledge production and transforming teaching and
learning. It might also change the vectors along which knowledge
flows, transforming the material consequences of meaning-making
beyond the academy.
25
References


Bamgboṣe, A. (2000). Language and Exclusion: The Consequences of Language Policies in Africa. LIT
Verlag Münster.
Heugh, K., Benson, C., Yohannes, M. E. G., & Bogale, B. (2011). Implications for multilingual
education: Student achievement in different models of education in Ethiopia. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas
& K. Heugh (Reds), Multilingual Education and Sustainable Diversity Work: From Periphery to Center
(pp. 239–). Routledge
.
26
HE participation rate
1993
2009
Total students
473 000
837 779
Africans
approximately 9%
12.8%
coloured
13%
13,6%
Indians
40%
50+ %
whites
70%
60%
Sources: Badat, 2009; Council on Higher Education 2004, 2009.
27
Mobilities and the nation/state
 multiple and intersecting mobilities seem to produce a more "networked" patterning of
economic and social life, even for those who have not moved.... Mobilities are
centrally involved in reorganising institutions, generating climate change... altering
tourism and migration patterns, producing a more distant family life, transforming the
social and educational life of young people and South. The human body and the home
are transformed, as proximity and connectivity are imagined in new ways and often
enhanced by communication devices…. Crucially the nation itself has been transformed
by these mobilities as is the city. New economic and political geographies of "state
rescaling" and urban restructuring "the image of political-economic space as a complex,
tangled mosaic of superimposed and interpenetrating notes, levels, scales and
morphologies (p. 3) has become more appropriate than the traditional Cartesian model
of homogenous, self-enclosed and contiguous blocks of territory that has long been used
to describe the modern interstate system" (Brenner, 2004,p. 66).
 Shift away from the "traditional, Westphalian model of statehood" based on nationalterritorial containers towards more "complex, polymorphic, and multiscalar regulatory
geographies"(Brenner, 2004,p. 67) is fundamentally related to the emergence of complex
mobility systems and their restructuring of both space and time.
 (Hannam et al, 2006, p. 2)
28
Scores voor wiskunde en lees- en
schrijfvaardigheid (4de lj)
Country
Numeracy
Literacy
Tunesia
60,4
77,9
Mauritius
58,5
61,0
Morocco
56,4
67,6
Botswana
51,0
48,0
Uganda
49,3
58,7
Madagascar
43,7
54,7
Mali
43,6
51,8
Malawi
43,0
35,0
Senegal
39,7
48,9
Niger
37,3
41,1
Zambia
36,0
43,0
South Africa
30,2
48,1
29
Slaagpercentages (Westkaap
2004): lees- en
schrijfvaardigheid
Ex-Dept
Grade 3
Grade 6
% of Prov
Learners
CED
97,8
82,9
20
HOR
81,5
26,6
14
DET
66,5
3,7
65
30
Slaagpercentages (Westkaap
2004): wiskunde
Ex-dept
Grade 3
Grade 6
CED
90,5
62,4
HOR
30,5
3,8
DET
12,0
0,1
31