The following report has been commissioned by the International Baccalaureate Organisation to inv... more The following report has been commissioned by the International Baccalaureate Organisation to investigate literature related to professional learning practices in language education. It comprises of a systematic review to highlight critical aspects and successful modelling of professional learning (PL) programs in elementary and early years settings. In this report ‘elementary and early years is defined as classroom teaching and learning with students between the approximate ages of 5 to 12. The overarching research question for this report is: What current research on teacher professional learning provides evidence of successful implementation of social-semiotically informed social- interactionist approaches to language learning in multi-, bi- and monolingual contexts in elementary and early years classrooms? While we review literature from a range of theoretical perspectives, we focus on pedagogic practices and professional learning that are informed by socio-cultural orientations to literacy, and especially those underpinned and informed by the social-semiotic theories of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). The overall aim of this report is to identify, select, and synthesise the available literature relating to best practices in implementing social constructivist approaches in teacher professional learning. These findings then inform design principles for professional learning for IB’s diverse language learning contexts.
Over the past 20 years, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), especially its genre theory, has i... more Over the past 20 years, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), especially its genre theory, has informed the development of an in uential suite of literacy pedagogies within and beyond Australia. In higher education, linguists and educators have drawn on these perspectives to scaffold students’ academic reading (Rose, 2005); to describe the verbal and visual demands of a range of disciplines (Chen and Foley, 2004; Hood, 2006; 2008; Jones, 2007; Lee, 2009; Ravelli, 2004; Wignell, 2007); and to support students in gaining control of the genres valued in these disciplines (Bonanno and Jones, 2007; Ellis, 2004; Cof n and Hewings, 2004; Mahboob, Dreyfus, Humphrey and Martin, this volume; Taylor and Drury, 2007; Woodward-Kron, 2005). The development of SFL-informed academic literacy pedagogies is hardly surprising, given the extended coverage of SFL systems and the long history of this ‘appliable’ linguistics in successfully addressing tasks and problems related to literacy learning and teaching (Halliday and Hasan, 2006; Halliday, 2007)
This chapter examines the development of teachers’ knowledge about language and metalanguage in a... more This chapter examines the development of teachers’ knowledge about language and metalanguage in an Australian secondary school serving students from low SES and indigenous backgrounds. The central research question addressed is whether a professional learning program to build teachers’ knowledge of the language and literacies of their curricular areas enables them to more effectively integrate language and literacy into discipline instruction and into feedback on students’ written texts. The metalanguage designed for this particular professional learning program draws on the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) model of language, which informs the recently developed national curriculum for English in Australia. Using surveys, written feedback and examples from the KLA of Technology and Applied Sciences, the focus is on how resources within the discourse semantic stratum of SFL have been recontextualised to effectively integrate literacy instruction with what teachers recognise as core business content learning.
... in Adult and Tertiary Environments (SLATE) Project Ahmar Mahboob, Shoshana Dreyfus, Sally Hum... more ... in Adult and Tertiary Environments (SLATE) Project Ahmar Mahboob, Shoshana Dreyfus, Sally Humphrey ... a detailed introduction to the 3× 3, see Humphrey, Martin, Dreyfus and Mahboob ... is currently preparing material to pilot an online modelling and joint construction session. ...
In this chapter we move from reporting key findings of our discourse analysis of Biology and Ling... more In this chapter we move from reporting key findings of our discourse analysis of Biology and Linguistics to reporting on the implementation of the intervention stage of the SLATE project. Specifically, this chapter focuses on the design of the training provided for tutors (language coaches) who were employed to support participating students from City University, Hong Kong (hereafter CityU), through the cycles of literacy intervention designed by SLATE researchers.
This chapter discusses the SLATE project’s development and implementation of the final step of th... more This chapter discusses the SLATE project’s development and implementation of the final step of the Teaching Learning Cycle (TLC). As explained in Chapter 5, in a typical enactment of the TLC, the Joint Construction step is followed by an Independent Construction step. In this step, students write a text of the same genre as the ones that are modelled in the Deconstruction step and co-constructed with the teacher in the Joint Construction step. As noted in Chapter 10, some students in the SLATE project participated in online Joint Construction lessons, whereas other students went straight from Deconstruction to Independent Construction, bypassing the Joint Construction step altogether. The SLATE project’s enactment of the Independent Construction step differed from traditional face-to-face versions in that it involved iterative cycles of feedback and revision after students had written a draft of their assignment independently but before being finalised and submitted to the lecturer. This adapted Independent Construction, or Negotiated Independent Construction step, involved asynchronous interaction between a student or novice writer and an expert other (a tutor) using an online platform. In this chapter, we describe how the Negotiated Independent Construction step was implemented and also present an analytical framework to explain the nature of feedback given.
In Chapters 6 and 7 we modelled the key texts that were needed for learning across undergraduate ... more In Chapters 6 and 7 we modelled the key texts that were needed for learning across undergraduate linguistics and biology at CityU. We provided details of the key linguistic features of these texts and described pathways to cumulative learning in both disciplines. These understandings were essential for tutors to support students’ literacy and learning throughout the SLATE project. In this chapter we turn our attention to the nature of the pedagogic support provided by SLATE researchers and tutors. This online support was designed on the basis of resources developed within the Sydney School in both face-to-face and online modes (Ellis, 2004; Rose & Martin, 2012; Unsworth, 2001b) and takes as its starting point the Teaching Learning Cycle (TLC), originally proposed for secondary contexts of learning (Rothery & Stenglin, 1995). In this chapter we examine cycles of support provided for building field knowledge and analysing target texts within the deconstruction step of the TLC. Chapter 10 focuses on the joint construction step, while Chapter 11 details the negotiated independent construction step designed to support students through the drafting of literacy-based assignments. Crucial to all steps of the support is the development and use of a meta-language to ensure that knowledge of more generalisable patterns of academic discourse are made visible to students and transferred to their work with other academic texts.
This chapter continues the report of our research into the literacies of the particular disciplin... more This chapter continues the report of our research into the literacies of the particular disciplines involved in the SLATE research project at Hong Kong City University (referred to as CityU). Here we focus on describing the key genres used for both reading and writing across four courses of undergraduate Biology and the way these genres build knowledge cumulatively across these courses. Our findings complement those from the discipline of linguistics, which were provided in Chapter 6.
In this chapter we describe how we recontextualised the systemic functional linguistics (hereafte... more In this chapter we describe how we recontextualised the systemic functional linguistics (hereafter SFL) model of language presented in Chapters 2 and 3 as a bridging framework to support the analytic work of SLATE tutors. This framework, which was conceptualised as a 3 × 3 toolkit1 (Humphrey et al., 2010), makes visible the metafunctional organisation of language but pragmatically simplifies SFL’s model of stratification and rank as three ‘levels of text’.
This chapter introduces ‘Sydney School’ genre-based literacy programs, which form the theoretical... more This chapter introduces ‘Sydney School’ genre-based literacy programs, which form the theoretical underpinning for the pedagogic interventions of the SLATE project. Sydney School literacy programs involve a model of literacy teaching that aims to maximise all students’ ability to read and write texts across a range of contexts by providing high levels of support. Based on sociocultural theories of learning (such as Vygotsky, 1978; Wood et al., 1976), language development (e.g. Halliday, 1975,2003; Painter, 1984, 1989, 1999), and language (as introduced in Chapters 2 and 3), the Sydney School model does not ask students to produce work independently until they have experienced at least one cycle of support and engagement with a target text, provided by a teacher or more knowledgeable other. This kind of approach can be informally characterised pedagogically as a ‘prepare’ model, and sits in contrast with ‘repair’ models, which give students little support prior to reading and writing, and which instead focus on providing feedback after students engage with or produce text. Sydney School genre pedagogy has two main foci — curriculum and pedagogy. In other words, the focus is on both what to teach and how to teach it.
In many parts of the world today, English is seen as the language of higher education and knowled... more In many parts of the world today, English is seen as the language of higher education and knowledge production. For example, in countries and territories such as Hong Kong, India, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines, a large number of universities and colleges use English as the medium of instruction, even though these countries have recognised national languages. These national languages are typically used in primary and secondary schools, but then replaced with English in tertiary education (although English is increasingly being introduced as a medium of instruction in primary and secondary schools, at least for some subjects). The choice of adopting English in tertiary education in such countries is a result of a combination of complex historical, political and attitudinal factors — historical in that the five countries listed were all colonised by English-speaking countries, political in that these countries are multilingual and English is seen as a ‘neutral’ language, and attitudinal in that a large proportion of the population believes that English is key to educational and scientific development. Regardless of the reasons for institutionalising English in tertiary education in these countries, the fact remains that English is the medium of instruction in institutions of higher education in many countries around the world, even though a large number of students who attend these universities have limited proficiency in English.
This chapter explores the findings from the research conducted into the undergraduate linguistics... more This chapter explores the findings from the research conducted into the undergraduate linguistics program at City University Hong Kong (hereafter CityU). The aim of this research was to gain an understanding of the discursive practices within the CityU linguistics program, through a study of the genres of the texts collected from the program. The genre profile arising from this work was used to inform the literacy interventions implemented in the SLATE project, as described in Chapters 9–11. The genre profile highlighted the fact that the linguistics program at CityU, like most around the world, comprises subjects from many different subfields within the field of linguistics, which gives rise to a diversity in literacy practice. This diversity indicates that the relation of genre to field is a complex one. In order to make sense of this complexity, this chapter examines the key genres students are required to write for the undergraduate program, detailing the differences in staging and linguistic patterns that realise field and mode.
ABSTRACT This paper concerns pedagogical approaches to literacy implemented in the Scaffolding Li... more ABSTRACT This paper concerns pedagogical approaches to literacy implemented in the Scaffolding Literacy in Academic and Tertiary Education (SLATE) project. In particular, this paper focuses on the Joint Construction step of the Teaching Learning Cycle (Rothery & Stenglin 1994; Martin this volume). Through whole-text genre analysis (Martin & Rose 2008), we will describe how the step of Joint Construction was adapted to an online learning context, in order to support the writing development of undergraduate applied linguistics students at the City University of Hong Kong. Our findings highlight that during online Joint Construction lessons, students were given explicit feedback and encouraged to seek clarification, raise queries, recast original contributions and respond to each other’s suggestions. These findings contribute to our understanding of interaction which targets the shared negotiation of meaning, and addresses the on-going challenge of developing pedagogic exchanges which offer explicit and effective support to students’ writing development.
The importance of teacher-student collaboration in text production is well established in educati... more The importance of teacher-student collaboration in text production is well established in education literature (Cazden 1996; Green 1988; Mehan 1979). Teacher-student collaboration is a key feature of Sydney School Genre pedagogy, particularly in the Joint Construction stage of the ...
In this chapter we introduce in general terms the model of language and context informing this mo... more In this chapter we introduce in general terms the model of language and context informing this monograph — namely systemic functional linguistics (hereafter SFL). Only foundational concepts are introduced here: stratification, axis, metafunction, and rank. A more detailed account of the understandings of language and context informing our research will be presented in Chapter 3. In this chapter we base our introduction of basic concepts on examples taken from the following text excerpted from Lasn’s1 Meme Wars (2012, p. iv), an engaging multimodal advocacy monograph composed as an appeal to economics students to liberate their discipline from neoclassical economic theory; the author of this excerpt is Luke Sherlock, from Oxford, UK.
While teachers of English have long recognised the vital role they play in developing students... more While teachers of English have long recognised the vital role they play in developing students' knowledge and effective use of language, the emergence of the Australian Curriculum: English has led to a great deal of discussion concerning the representation of language and the type of meta-language needed to share understandings of literacy and literature with students. Of particular concern is that teachers be provided with language resources which are not limited to either abstract representations of text structure or to decontextualised word level grammatical forms. This paper responds to these concerns by presenting a toolkit, developed as a 4 x 4 framework, to map the multifaceted resources needed to understand and generate texts within subject English, from the more abstract whole text level to their concrete manifestations as words and forms. In framing language resources according to the meanings and levels which are most at stake for literacy development and literature r...
The following report has been commissioned by the International Baccalaureate Organisation to inv... more The following report has been commissioned by the International Baccalaureate Organisation to investigate literature related to professional learning practices in language education. It comprises of a systematic review to highlight critical aspects and successful modelling of professional learning (PL) programs in elementary and early years settings. In this report ‘elementary and early years is defined as classroom teaching and learning with students between the approximate ages of 5 to 12. The overarching research question for this report is: What current research on teacher professional learning provides evidence of successful implementation of social-semiotically informed social- interactionist approaches to language learning in multi-, bi- and monolingual contexts in elementary and early years classrooms? While we review literature from a range of theoretical perspectives, we focus on pedagogic practices and professional learning that are informed by socio-cultural orientations to literacy, and especially those underpinned and informed by the social-semiotic theories of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). The overall aim of this report is to identify, select, and synthesise the available literature relating to best practices in implementing social constructivist approaches in teacher professional learning. These findings then inform design principles for professional learning for IB’s diverse language learning contexts.
Over the past 20 years, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), especially its genre theory, has i... more Over the past 20 years, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), especially its genre theory, has informed the development of an in uential suite of literacy pedagogies within and beyond Australia. In higher education, linguists and educators have drawn on these perspectives to scaffold students’ academic reading (Rose, 2005); to describe the verbal and visual demands of a range of disciplines (Chen and Foley, 2004; Hood, 2006; 2008; Jones, 2007; Lee, 2009; Ravelli, 2004; Wignell, 2007); and to support students in gaining control of the genres valued in these disciplines (Bonanno and Jones, 2007; Ellis, 2004; Cof n and Hewings, 2004; Mahboob, Dreyfus, Humphrey and Martin, this volume; Taylor and Drury, 2007; Woodward-Kron, 2005). The development of SFL-informed academic literacy pedagogies is hardly surprising, given the extended coverage of SFL systems and the long history of this ‘appliable’ linguistics in successfully addressing tasks and problems related to literacy learning and teaching (Halliday and Hasan, 2006; Halliday, 2007)
This chapter examines the development of teachers’ knowledge about language and metalanguage in a... more This chapter examines the development of teachers’ knowledge about language and metalanguage in an Australian secondary school serving students from low SES and indigenous backgrounds. The central research question addressed is whether a professional learning program to build teachers’ knowledge of the language and literacies of their curricular areas enables them to more effectively integrate language and literacy into discipline instruction and into feedback on students’ written texts. The metalanguage designed for this particular professional learning program draws on the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) model of language, which informs the recently developed national curriculum for English in Australia. Using surveys, written feedback and examples from the KLA of Technology and Applied Sciences, the focus is on how resources within the discourse semantic stratum of SFL have been recontextualised to effectively integrate literacy instruction with what teachers recognise as core business content learning.
... in Adult and Tertiary Environments (SLATE) Project Ahmar Mahboob, Shoshana Dreyfus, Sally Hum... more ... in Adult and Tertiary Environments (SLATE) Project Ahmar Mahboob, Shoshana Dreyfus, Sally Humphrey ... a detailed introduction to the 3× 3, see Humphrey, Martin, Dreyfus and Mahboob ... is currently preparing material to pilot an online modelling and joint construction session. ...
In this chapter we move from reporting key findings of our discourse analysis of Biology and Ling... more In this chapter we move from reporting key findings of our discourse analysis of Biology and Linguistics to reporting on the implementation of the intervention stage of the SLATE project. Specifically, this chapter focuses on the design of the training provided for tutors (language coaches) who were employed to support participating students from City University, Hong Kong (hereafter CityU), through the cycles of literacy intervention designed by SLATE researchers.
This chapter discusses the SLATE project’s development and implementation of the final step of th... more This chapter discusses the SLATE project’s development and implementation of the final step of the Teaching Learning Cycle (TLC). As explained in Chapter 5, in a typical enactment of the TLC, the Joint Construction step is followed by an Independent Construction step. In this step, students write a text of the same genre as the ones that are modelled in the Deconstruction step and co-constructed with the teacher in the Joint Construction step. As noted in Chapter 10, some students in the SLATE project participated in online Joint Construction lessons, whereas other students went straight from Deconstruction to Independent Construction, bypassing the Joint Construction step altogether. The SLATE project’s enactment of the Independent Construction step differed from traditional face-to-face versions in that it involved iterative cycles of feedback and revision after students had written a draft of their assignment independently but before being finalised and submitted to the lecturer. This adapted Independent Construction, or Negotiated Independent Construction step, involved asynchronous interaction between a student or novice writer and an expert other (a tutor) using an online platform. In this chapter, we describe how the Negotiated Independent Construction step was implemented and also present an analytical framework to explain the nature of feedback given.
In Chapters 6 and 7 we modelled the key texts that were needed for learning across undergraduate ... more In Chapters 6 and 7 we modelled the key texts that were needed for learning across undergraduate linguistics and biology at CityU. We provided details of the key linguistic features of these texts and described pathways to cumulative learning in both disciplines. These understandings were essential for tutors to support students’ literacy and learning throughout the SLATE project. In this chapter we turn our attention to the nature of the pedagogic support provided by SLATE researchers and tutors. This online support was designed on the basis of resources developed within the Sydney School in both face-to-face and online modes (Ellis, 2004; Rose & Martin, 2012; Unsworth, 2001b) and takes as its starting point the Teaching Learning Cycle (TLC), originally proposed for secondary contexts of learning (Rothery & Stenglin, 1995). In this chapter we examine cycles of support provided for building field knowledge and analysing target texts within the deconstruction step of the TLC. Chapter 10 focuses on the joint construction step, while Chapter 11 details the negotiated independent construction step designed to support students through the drafting of literacy-based assignments. Crucial to all steps of the support is the development and use of a meta-language to ensure that knowledge of more generalisable patterns of academic discourse are made visible to students and transferred to their work with other academic texts.
This chapter continues the report of our research into the literacies of the particular disciplin... more This chapter continues the report of our research into the literacies of the particular disciplines involved in the SLATE research project at Hong Kong City University (referred to as CityU). Here we focus on describing the key genres used for both reading and writing across four courses of undergraduate Biology and the way these genres build knowledge cumulatively across these courses. Our findings complement those from the discipline of linguistics, which were provided in Chapter 6.
In this chapter we describe how we recontextualised the systemic functional linguistics (hereafte... more In this chapter we describe how we recontextualised the systemic functional linguistics (hereafter SFL) model of language presented in Chapters 2 and 3 as a bridging framework to support the analytic work of SLATE tutors. This framework, which was conceptualised as a 3 × 3 toolkit1 (Humphrey et al., 2010), makes visible the metafunctional organisation of language but pragmatically simplifies SFL’s model of stratification and rank as three ‘levels of text’.
This chapter introduces ‘Sydney School’ genre-based literacy programs, which form the theoretical... more This chapter introduces ‘Sydney School’ genre-based literacy programs, which form the theoretical underpinning for the pedagogic interventions of the SLATE project. Sydney School literacy programs involve a model of literacy teaching that aims to maximise all students’ ability to read and write texts across a range of contexts by providing high levels of support. Based on sociocultural theories of learning (such as Vygotsky, 1978; Wood et al., 1976), language development (e.g. Halliday, 1975,2003; Painter, 1984, 1989, 1999), and language (as introduced in Chapters 2 and 3), the Sydney School model does not ask students to produce work independently until they have experienced at least one cycle of support and engagement with a target text, provided by a teacher or more knowledgeable other. This kind of approach can be informally characterised pedagogically as a ‘prepare’ model, and sits in contrast with ‘repair’ models, which give students little support prior to reading and writing, and which instead focus on providing feedback after students engage with or produce text. Sydney School genre pedagogy has two main foci — curriculum and pedagogy. In other words, the focus is on both what to teach and how to teach it.
In many parts of the world today, English is seen as the language of higher education and knowled... more In many parts of the world today, English is seen as the language of higher education and knowledge production. For example, in countries and territories such as Hong Kong, India, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines, a large number of universities and colleges use English as the medium of instruction, even though these countries have recognised national languages. These national languages are typically used in primary and secondary schools, but then replaced with English in tertiary education (although English is increasingly being introduced as a medium of instruction in primary and secondary schools, at least for some subjects). The choice of adopting English in tertiary education in such countries is a result of a combination of complex historical, political and attitudinal factors — historical in that the five countries listed were all colonised by English-speaking countries, political in that these countries are multilingual and English is seen as a ‘neutral’ language, and attitudinal in that a large proportion of the population believes that English is key to educational and scientific development. Regardless of the reasons for institutionalising English in tertiary education in these countries, the fact remains that English is the medium of instruction in institutions of higher education in many countries around the world, even though a large number of students who attend these universities have limited proficiency in English.
This chapter explores the findings from the research conducted into the undergraduate linguistics... more This chapter explores the findings from the research conducted into the undergraduate linguistics program at City University Hong Kong (hereafter CityU). The aim of this research was to gain an understanding of the discursive practices within the CityU linguistics program, through a study of the genres of the texts collected from the program. The genre profile arising from this work was used to inform the literacy interventions implemented in the SLATE project, as described in Chapters 9–11. The genre profile highlighted the fact that the linguistics program at CityU, like most around the world, comprises subjects from many different subfields within the field of linguistics, which gives rise to a diversity in literacy practice. This diversity indicates that the relation of genre to field is a complex one. In order to make sense of this complexity, this chapter examines the key genres students are required to write for the undergraduate program, detailing the differences in staging and linguistic patterns that realise field and mode.
ABSTRACT This paper concerns pedagogical approaches to literacy implemented in the Scaffolding Li... more ABSTRACT This paper concerns pedagogical approaches to literacy implemented in the Scaffolding Literacy in Academic and Tertiary Education (SLATE) project. In particular, this paper focuses on the Joint Construction step of the Teaching Learning Cycle (Rothery & Stenglin 1994; Martin this volume). Through whole-text genre analysis (Martin & Rose 2008), we will describe how the step of Joint Construction was adapted to an online learning context, in order to support the writing development of undergraduate applied linguistics students at the City University of Hong Kong. Our findings highlight that during online Joint Construction lessons, students were given explicit feedback and encouraged to seek clarification, raise queries, recast original contributions and respond to each other’s suggestions. These findings contribute to our understanding of interaction which targets the shared negotiation of meaning, and addresses the on-going challenge of developing pedagogic exchanges which offer explicit and effective support to students’ writing development.
The importance of teacher-student collaboration in text production is well established in educati... more The importance of teacher-student collaboration in text production is well established in education literature (Cazden 1996; Green 1988; Mehan 1979). Teacher-student collaboration is a key feature of Sydney School Genre pedagogy, particularly in the Joint Construction stage of the ...
In this chapter we introduce in general terms the model of language and context informing this mo... more In this chapter we introduce in general terms the model of language and context informing this monograph — namely systemic functional linguistics (hereafter SFL). Only foundational concepts are introduced here: stratification, axis, metafunction, and rank. A more detailed account of the understandings of language and context informing our research will be presented in Chapter 3. In this chapter we base our introduction of basic concepts on examples taken from the following text excerpted from Lasn’s1 Meme Wars (2012, p. iv), an engaging multimodal advocacy monograph composed as an appeal to economics students to liberate their discipline from neoclassical economic theory; the author of this excerpt is Luke Sherlock, from Oxford, UK.
While teachers of English have long recognised the vital role they play in developing students... more While teachers of English have long recognised the vital role they play in developing students' knowledge and effective use of language, the emergence of the Australian Curriculum: English has led to a great deal of discussion concerning the representation of language and the type of meta-language needed to share understandings of literacy and literature with students. Of particular concern is that teachers be provided with language resources which are not limited to either abstract representations of text structure or to decontextualised word level grammatical forms. This paper responds to these concerns by presenting a toolkit, developed as a 4 x 4 framework, to map the multifaceted resources needed to understand and generate texts within subject English, from the more abstract whole text level to their concrete manifestations as words and forms. In framing language resources according to the meanings and levels which are most at stake for literacy development and literature r...
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