Delia Marshall
University of the Western Cape, Physics, Faculty Member
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Science disciplines are inherently multimodal, involving written and spoken language, bodily gestures, symbols, diagrams, sketches, simulation and mathematical formalism. Studies have shown that explicit multimodal teaching approaches... more
Science disciplines are inherently multimodal, involving written and spoken language, bodily gestures, symbols, diagrams, sketches, simulation and mathematical formalism. Studies have shown that explicit multimodal teaching approaches foster enhanced access to science disciplines. We examine multimodal classroom practices in a physics extended curriculum programme (ECP) through the lens of new materialism. As De Freitas and Sinclair note in their book, Mathematics and the Body, there is growing research interest in embodiment in mathematics (and science) education—that is, the role played by students’ bodies, in terms of gestures, verbalisation, diagrams and their relation to the physical objects with which they interact. Embodiment can be viewed from a range of theoretical perspectives (for example, cognitive, phenomemological, or social semiotic). However, they argue that their new materialist approach, which they term “inclusive materialism”, has the potential for framing more so...
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2 Approaches to Learning Jennifer M. Case and Delia Marshall The new lecturer in the university of the twenty-first century who seeks to improve their teaching is faced with a bewildering array of questionnaires which promise to deliver... more
2 Approaches to Learning Jennifer M. Case and Delia Marshall The new lecturer in the university of the twenty-first century who seeks to improve their teaching is faced with a bewildering array of questionnaires which promise to deliver useful information about their students and ...
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This paper has been peer-reviewed but does not include the final publisher proof-corrections or journal pagination. Citation for the published paper:
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2 Approaches to Learning Jennifer M. Case and Delia Marshall The new lecturer in the university of the twenty-first century who seeks to improve their teaching is faced with a bewildering array of questionnaires which promise to deliver... more
2 Approaches to Learning Jennifer M. Case and Delia Marshall The new lecturer in the university of the twenty-first century who seeks to improve their teaching is faced with a bewildering array of questionnaires which promise to deliver useful information about their students and ...
How can research on academic literacies throw light on the challenge to widen access to undergraduate science studies? This article explores what an academic literacies approach might mean in the context of undergraduate physics. The... more
How can research on academic literacies throw light on the challenge to widen access to undergraduate science studies? This article explores what an academic literacies approach might mean in the context of undergraduate physics. The study examines the pedagogical practices and student learning in two undergraduate Physics courses, a mainstream and an extended course, with a particular focus on the disciplinary practice of problem-solving. Concepts from the sociology of knowledge, specifically Legitimation Code Theory, offer a useful analytical framework for characterising the movement between abstract principles and concrete contexts in problem-solving and understanding how meaning is encapsulated in the dense representations of physics. The study shows that with more time and careful pedagogical attention, the extended course was able to make more explicit the literacy practices and epistemological functioning of the discipline. The study found that the extended course adopted a m...
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Going to University: The Influence of Higher Education on the Lives of Young South Africans is a great book written very well by the authors. The use of the narratives gives the book an engaging and readable quality that will make a... more
Going to University: The Influence of Higher Education on the Lives of Young South Africans is a great book written very well by the authors. The use of the narratives gives the book an engaging and readable quality that will make a reader to complete the reading. The authors narrated the interviews conducted with 73 young people six years after they enrolled at one of the urban schools in South Africa. As the book progresses, the authors further introduced us to 20 young people whose stories were narrated in detail.
Research Interests: Sociology, Computer Science, Higher Education, Political Science, First Year Experience, and 6 moreLearning And Teaching In Higher Education, Student Experience, South Africa, Decolonization, The Student Experience and Satisfaction In Higher Education, and RACE AND IDENTITY IN POST APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA
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EJ893334 - Being a Student Again: A Narrative Study of a Teacher.
Research Interests: Chemical Engineering, Psychology, Higher Education, Social Interaction, Hermeneutics, and 10 morePhenomenology, Teaching Methodology, Learning And Teaching In Higher Education, Narrative Analysis, Reflection, Teaching, Student Experience, Learning Environment, Student Learning, and Undergraduate Student
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Published as: Allie, et al (2009). Learning as acquiring a discursive identity through participation in a community: improving student learning in engineering education. European Journal of Research in Engineering Education. 34(4)... more
Published as: Allie, et al (2009). Learning as acquiring a discursive identity through participation in a community: improving student learning in engineering education. European Journal of Research in Engineering Education. 34(4) [359][360][361][362][363][364][365][366][367] In this paper we propose that learning in engineering involves taking on the discourse of an engineering community, which is intimately bound up with the identity of being a member of that community. This leads to the notion of discursive identity, which emphasises that students' identities are constituted through engaging in discourse. This view of learning implies that success in engineering studies needs to be defined with particular reference to the sorts of identities that students develop and how these relate to identities in the world of work. In order to achieve successful learning in engineering we need to recognise the multiple identities held by our students, provide an authentic range of engine...
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In this paper we explore the use of narrative analysis to provide methodology for student learning research with a sociocultural orientation. The narrative which is the primary focus of this paper is drawn from a study in which a series... more
In this paper we explore the use of narrative analysis to provide methodology for student learning research with a sociocultural orientation. The narrative which is the primary focus of this paper is drawn from a study in which a series of individual interviews was conducted with a class of senior engineering students. The interview with a particular student emerged as a ‘paradigmatic’ case in that it represented a rich example of student success against a background of disadvantage. The analysis presented in the paper leads to a questioning of some of the commonly held views on disadvantage in higher education. It is argued that the coping strategies developed in a ‘disadvantaged’ social background could form useful resources for succeeding in higher education, and that the construction of identity could be crucial for mobilising these resources. Questions are consequently raised about the extent to which these aspects of personal growth are supported by the formal curriculum and t...
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... Instructional Science, 10, 177-200. MARTON, F. (1988) Phenomenography and 'The art of teaching all things to all men' (Gothenburg: Fenomenografiska notiser 8). MARTON, F.,... more
... Instructional Science, 10, 177-200. MARTON, F. (1988) Phenomenography and 'The art of teaching all things to all men' (Gothenburg: Fenomenografiska notiser 8). MARTON, F., DALL'ALBA, G. and ... MARTON, F. and SALJO, R. (1976a) On qualitative differences in learning. ...
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This article presents a qualitative analysis of the essential characteristics of university students’ “focus of awareness” whilst engaged with learning physics related to the Bohr model with the aid of a computer simulation. The research... more
This article presents a qualitative analysis of the essential characteristics of university students’ “focus of awareness” whilst engaged with learning physics related to the Bohr model with the aid of a computer simulation. The research is located within the phenomenographic research tradition, with empirical data comprising audio and video recordings of student discussions and interactions, supplemented by interviews. Analysis of this data resulted in descriptions of four qualitatively distinct focuses: Doing the Assignment, Observing the Presentation, Manipulating the Parameters and Exploring the Physics. The focuses are further elucidated in terms of students’ perceptions of learning and the nature of physics. It is concluded that the learning outcomes possible for the students are dependent on the focus that is adopted in the pedagogical situation. Implications for teaching physics using interactive-type simulations can be drawn through epistemological and meta-cognitive consid...
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Abstract: Research on student learning in physics has tended to focus largely on an individual perspective on learning. This can be contrasted with a sociocultural perspective which focuses on the social and linguistic dimensions of... more
Abstract: Research on student learning in physics has tended to focus largely on an individual perspective on learning. This can be contrasted with a sociocultural perspective which focuses on the social and linguistic dimensions of learning. As an exemplar of this ...
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ABSTRACT This article describes two approaches to learning (in addition to the classic deep and surface approaches) identified in studies of student learning in engineering contexts. The first study identified the ‘procedural deep’... more
ABSTRACT This article describes two approaches to learning (in addition to the classic deep and surface approaches) identified in studies of student learning in engineering contexts. The first study identified the ‘procedural deep’ approach in a group of engineering foundation programme students in the UK, while the second study identified the ‘procedural surface’ (originally termed algorithmic) approach amongst second‐year South African chemical engineering students. Both these approaches involve a strategy of focusing on problem solving, but they have respectively deep and surface intentions (the former involving the intention to understand and the latter not). From both studies it was clear that the approaches students use are adaptations to particular course contexts, and it is suggested that a course focus towards a procedural deep objective might preclude the adoption of a deep approach.
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Studying is simply what students do. We can investigate the phenomenon, observe that some students do it better than others, and then using these findings we can attempt to facilitate better learning through improved teaching. These, at... more
Studying is simply what students do. We can investigate the phenomenon, observe that some students do it better than others, and then using these findings we can attempt to facilitate better learning through improved teaching. These, at least, are the underpinning ...
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ABSTRACT A reflective practicum was developed for a group of university physics tutors using Schönian framed coaching experiences. A central theme of the practicum was getting the tutors, as a function of their tutoring practice and its... more
ABSTRACT A reflective practicum was developed for a group of university physics tutors using Schönian framed coaching experiences. A central theme of the practicum was getting the tutors, as a function of their tutoring practice and its consequences, to reflect on the dynamics of their experiences of academic learning in order to evoke personal metalearning development. Qualitative data collected from this reflection‐on‐learning were use to generate characterizations of the tutors’ metalearning development using a phenomenographic analytic approach. The characterizations, together with illustrative descriptions, reflect the nature of the metalearning development experienced by the tutors. The results suggest that Schön's notion of the role of reflection in teaching and supervision contexts can be meaningfully extended to the context of student learning.
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This article reports on a phenomenographic-based study of the expectations of teaching among undergraduate physics students. Data are drawn from a range of course-contexts at each of two quite different universities one South African... more
This article reports on a phenomenographic-based study of the expectations of teaching among undergraduate physics students. Data are drawn from a range of course-contexts at each of two quite different universities one South African and one Swedish and five qualitatively ...
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Academic development is a recent project in the university, intended to enable the university to respond to the needs of a more diverse student body. In South Africa, such work arose during late apartheid, and has now moved to a more... more
Academic development is a recent project in the university, intended to enable the university to respond to the needs of a more diverse student body. In South Africa, such work arose during late apartheid, and has now moved to a more central institutional position advocating responsiveness in the light of the educational disparities that are the legacy of apartheid. The present study uses a social realist perspective to analyse the 25 year evolution of an academic development project within an engineering department at a South African university. The findings show that while academic development initially posed a contradictory logic to the department, the response was to reform the nature of this project into one that suited the other commitments of the department: a logic of complementarity. The department’s relationships with industry were shown to have played a key role in fostering this form of change.
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This research is built upon the student-learning literature that describes the characteristics of relationships between various aspects of experiences of learning and teaching. It draws on research which examined physics and chemistry... more
This research is built upon the student-learning literature that describes the characteristics of relationships between various aspects of experiences of learning and teaching. It draws on research which examined physics and chemistry lecturers' conceptions of teaching (Prosser et al, 1994), lecturers' approaches to teaching (Trigwell et al,1994), and the relationships between lecturers' conceptions of teaching and their approaches to teaching (Trigwell and Prosser, 1996). And it follows from the Prosser and Trigwell (1997) study that illustrated how the approaches adopted by science lecturers were related to their perceptions of their teaching context, and the Trigwell et al (1999) study that describes the kind of relations that emerge from the interactions between lecturers' approaches to teaching and their students' approaches to learning. The notion of epistemological focus draws on work, such as Hammer and Elby (in press), which models epistemological c...
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Studying is simply what students do. We can investigate the phenomenon, observe that some students do it better than others, and then using these findings we can attempt to facilitate better learning through improved teaching. These, at... more
Studying is simply what students do. We can investigate the phenomenon, observe that some students do it better than others, and then using these findings we can attempt to facilitate better learning through improved teaching. These, at least, are the underpinning ...
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Abstract Student learning inventories are used by both researchers and educators as tools to identify 'at risk'students. This article critically interrogates the results of one of these inventories, the 18-item Approaches to... more
Abstract Student learning inventories are used by both researchers and educators as tools to identify 'at risk'students. This article critically interrogates the results of one of these inventories, the 18-item Approaches to Learning and Studying Inventory. In-depth ...
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This article explores the use of narrative analysis to provide a methodology for student learning research with a sociocultural orientation. The narrative which is the primary focus of this article is drawn from a study in which a series... more
This article explores the use of narrative analysis to provide a methodology for student learning research with a sociocultural orientation. The narrative which is the primary focus of this article is drawn from a study in which a series of individual interviews was conducted ...
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This article reports on a phenomenographic-based study of the expectations of teaching among undergraduate physics students. Data are drawn from a range of course-contexts at each of two quite different universities one South African... more
This article reports on a phenomenographic-based study of the expectations of teaching among undergraduate physics students. Data are drawn from a range of course-contexts at each of two quite different universities one South African and one Swedish and five qualitatively ...
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... Instructional Science, 10, 177-200. MARTON, F. (1988) Phenomenography and 'The art of teaching all things to all men' (Gothenburg: Fenomenografiska notiser 8). MARTON, F.,... more
... Instructional Science, 10, 177-200. MARTON, F. (1988) Phenomenography and 'The art of teaching all things to all men' (Gothenburg: Fenomenografiska notiser 8). MARTON, F., DALL'ALBA, G. and ... MARTON, F. and SALJO, R. (1976a) On qualitative differences in learning. ...
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... Beyond the university gates: Provision of Extended Curriculum Programmes in South Africa. Proceedings of the January 2009 Rhodes University Foundation Seminar hosted by ProfessorChrissie Boughey. Gee, JP (2000). Discourse and... more
... Beyond the university gates: Provision of Extended Curriculum Programmes in South Africa. Proceedings of the January 2009 Rhodes University Foundation Seminar hosted by ProfessorChrissie Boughey. Gee, JP (2000). Discourse and sociocultural studies in reading. ...
Research on student learning in higher education has highlighted the central role that students' conceptions of learning play in influencing their approaches to learning. This article reports on a study of conceptions of learning... more
Research on student learning in higher education has highlighted the central role that students' conceptions of learning play in influencing their approaches to learning. This article reports on a study of conceptions of learning among engineering students on a one ...
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This is a report on a qualitative study of students' learning where a physics computer simulation session is used to supplement lectures on the topic. Drawing on phenomenography as the analytical framework, the students'... more
This is a report on a qualitative study of students' learning where a physics computer simulation session is used to supplement lectures on the topic. Drawing on phenomenography as the analytical framework, the students' learning-focuses were analysed. The result is a description of ...
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Research on student learning in physics has tended to focus largely on an individual perspective on learning. This can be contrasted with a sociocultural perspective which focuses on the social and linguistic dimensions of learning. As an... more
Research on student learning in physics has tended to focus largely on an individual perspective on learning. This can be contrasted with a sociocultural perspective which focuses on the social and linguistic dimensions of learning. As an exemplar of this perspective, this paper uses Gee’s notions of ‘little d’ discourse and ‘big D’ Discourse as a framework for the design of an introductory physics course. Firstly, this involves a focus on helping students acquire the discourse of physics, which is the way the discipline represents itself in text. Secondly there is a focus on making the Discourse of the discipline explicit, through emphasising the values and ways of thinking that characterise physics, incorporating more authentic practical activities and engaging with scientists in the field. Basing curriculum design on a sociocultural perspective on learning, the paper argues, is a potentially productive way of addressing many of the traditional shortcomings of physics curricula.
In the South African higher education sector, there is increasing concern about the poor retention and throughput rates of undergraduate students. There is also concern that the participation rates in higher education, relative to... more
In the South African higher education sector, there is increasing concern about the poor retention and throughput rates of undergraduate students. There is also concern that the participation rates in higher education, relative to population demographics, remain extremely racially skewed. With the quality of schooling unlikely to change dramatically in the short term, universities need to look for ways to improve student success, particularly in science and engineering, where graduates are needed for a range of key roles in society. Here we review the research presented at a forum held by the Academy of Science of South Africa in 2010, which sought to bring together the latest expert thinking in this area. The major focus of academic development to date has been the establishment of extended degree programmes. However, it is clear that this model has limited capacity to deal with what is, in fact, a much broader problem. We summarise existing interventions aimed at reducing the 'gap' between secondary and tertiary education, and describe key innovations in mainstream programmes that are possible at the levels of pedagogy, curriculum and institutional environment, some of which are also becoming established internationally in science and engineering. Driving such initiatives will demand visionary university leadership in order to effect the integrated and holistic change that is needed.
For some time there has been a focus in higher education research towards understanding the student experience of learning. This article presents a narrative analysis of the experience of a teacher who re-entered the learning world of... more
For some time there has been a focus in higher education research towards understanding the student experience of learning. This article presents a narrative analysis of the experience of a teacher who re-entered the learning world of undergraduate students by enrolling in a challenging chemical engineering course. The analysis identifies multiple lenses in the narrative: of student, of researcher, of teacher, and of mature student. A personal reflective genre was noted which displayed an overriding emotional tenor, linked both to the emotions associated with the individual experience of struggling with difficult tasks and those arising from negotiating the social interactions of the learning environment. This hermeneutic engagement points to the value in teachers exploring their own learning, as well as new possibilities for critically examining the implications of apparently progressive teaching methodologies.
