Discipline-specific Approach Research Articles

EXPLORING STUDENT AND LECTURER PERSPECTIVES ON ACADEMIC WRITING: A CASE STUDY AT THE CENTRAL UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, SOUTH AFRICA

This study explores the perceptions of students and lecturers regarding the Academic Literacy Course (ALC) at the Central University of Technology (CUT), South Africa. Academic literacy encompasses critical skills for effective communication, while academic writing provides a structured framework for presenting ideas, arguments, and research. The study investigates attitudes toward the course's relevance, effectiveness, and its impact on students' academic writing abilities. Using a qualitative approach, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with students who completed the course and lecturers from the Communication Sciences Department. Thematic analysis revealed recurring patterns and insights from participants. Findings indicate that both students and lecturers value academic literacy as essential for academic writing success. Participants highlighted the course’s focus on critical reading, writing, information literacy, and communication skills, expressing predominantly positive opinions. However, a majority of students (90%) and lecturers (80%) emphasized the need for tailored content and additional resources to address specific academic writing challenges. The study provides valuable insights into the strengths and areas for improvement in the ALC. It suggests that a more discipline-specific approach, incorporating relevant terminology and practices, could better align with students' academic needs. Recommendations include redesigning the course to integrate discipline-specific content and adapting it for both in-person and online delivery. These findings have significant implications for curriculum development, offering strategies to enhance the course’s effectiveness in fostering students' academic literacy and writing proficiency.

Sports Physiology in Adolescent Track-and-Field Athletes: A Narrative Review.

The present study aimed to review the physiological aspects of adolescent track-and-field (TAF) athletes. A search of Scopus on 27/12/2022 using the syntax ABS (track-and-field) AND ABS (children) OR ABS (adolescent) showed 121 documents, and 45 were considered for further analysis. In addition, handsearching was conducted to identify Russian literature missing in Scopus. Differences were shown in performance characteristics among disciplines, especially between throwers and the other athletes. The sex difference in performance (ie, a better performance in boys than in girls) started in early adolescence. A relative age effect was more pronounced in athletes under 13 years old. Despite the wide use of nutritional supplements, an insufficient intake of vitamins has been found. The age of training onset and body weight were identified as risk factors for problems with menarche. The inclusion of track-and-field training programs in physical education was beneficial for health and physical fitness. The need to collaborate closely with parents and coaches was identified, especially, regarding education in topics such as the age of training onset, relative age effect, and doping. In conclusion, the existence of many disciplines with different anthropometric and physiological characteristics highlighted the need for a discipline-specific approach.

A review of resilience in higher education: toward the emerging concept of designer resilience

ABSTRACT Higher education (HE) students experience rates of depression and anxiety substantially higher than those found in the general population. Many psychological approaches to improving wellbeing and developing student resilience have been adopted by HE administrators and educators, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. This article aims to review literature regarding integration of resilience and wellbeing in HE. A subsequent aim is to scope toward developing foundations for an emerging discipline specific concept – designer resilience. A literature scoping review is applied to chart various conceptual, theoretical and operational applications of resilience and wellbeing in HE. Twenty-seven (27) articles are identified and analysed. The scoping review finds that two general approaches to implementing resilience and wellbeing training exist in HE. First, articles reacting to a decline in student mental health and remedying this decline through general extra-curricular resilience or wellbeing programmes. Second, articles opting for a curricula and discipline-specific approach by establishing why resilience will be needed by future graduates before developing and testing new learning experiences. The presence of cognitive flexibility, storytelling, reframing and reflection lie at the core of the practice of resilience and design and therefore offer preliminary opportunities to develop ‘designer resilience’ training. Future research opportunities are identified throughout the article.

Recent and current low food intake – prevalence and associated factors in hospital patients from different medical specialities

Background/ObjectivesPoor food intake is a major etiological factor of malnutrition. This research aims to describe the prevalence of recent and current low food intake (LIRC) and to identify factors associated with LIRC in adult hospital patients from different medical specialities.Subject/Methods1865 patients participating in the nutritionDay survey 2016–2020 in Germany were included. LIRC was defined by decreased eating both on nutritionDay and in the week before hospitalisation. Multivariate binary logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with LIRC overall and in different specialities.ResultsLIRC was observed in 21.1% of all patients, with the highest prevalence in Gastroenterology (26.6%) and the lowest in Neurology (11.2%). Weight loss within three months before nutritionDay (OR 2.62 [95% CI 1.93–3.56]), (very) poor self-rated health (2.17 [1.62–2.91]), female sex (1.98 [1.50–2.61]), uncertain weight loss (1.90 [1.03–3.51]), digestive disease (1.90 [1.40–2.56]), inability to walk without assistance (1.55 [1.14–2.12]) and emergency admission (1.38 [1.02–1.86]) were associated with increased risk, cardiac insufficiency (0.55 [0.37–0.83]) and being in a neurological ward (0.51 [0.28–0.92]) with decreased risk in the total sample. In Gastroenterology and Oncology, estimates were higher than in the entire sample; no significant associations were found in Neurology and Geriatrics, presumably due to the low prevalence of LIRC in Neurology and limited data quality in Geriatrics.ConclusionLIRC is common in German hospital patients and associated with female sex, poor health and decreased functional status. Interdisciplinary differences suggest a discipline-specific approach to dealing with malnutrition.

The Academic Development approach to academic literacy in higher education South Africa: a disconnect between teaching and assessment.

Academic literacy, the ability to cope with the discourse demands of higher education, is believed to be a factor in the poor graduation rates among South African students. As a result, interventions to deal with low levels of this ability have been part of the broader effort by universities to boost student completion rates. In South Africa, two approaches to these interventions and the theories informing them have seen the light of day to date. In the main, these approaches and their theories have either been generic or discipline-specific in orientation, with the latter being currently the most embraced of the two. The present article is a case study of these two theorizations of academic literacy and aims to demonstrate that although the discipline-specific approach is the most favoured, a void exists currently regarding how its teaching might translate into assessment. This is the case especially when viewed from the way that this approach has been pursued in the field of Academic Development in post-apartheid South Africa. The article demonstrates, in other words, that while the discipline-specific approach, as pursued by the field of Academic Development, is convincing in terms of how it advocates for teaching, nothing equivalent has come from this field to balance the approach from the side of assessment. Keywords: academic literacy, language ability, generic, discipline-specific, higher education, applied linguistics

Transitioning from undergraduate to postgraduate studies A multistage evaluation of a discipline-specific writing intervention

This study attempted to address academics’ general concern about the steady decline in students’ academic writing abilities and the impact this has on students’ ability to demonstrate their learning and negotiate written tasks in their respective disciplines. The study focused on what can be done within a higher education institution in terms of academic writing instruction to develop the literacy abilities required to enable students to cope with the demands of tertiary studies within specific disciplines, as students progress from undergraduate to postgraduate work. Given the varied and specialised nature of academic discourses in different fields of study, a discipline-specific approach to writing instruction was adopted to facilitate students’ familiarity with the conventions of academic and discourse-specific writing, and develop their ability to produce effective and appropriate texts for their courses. A multistage evaluation design was used to measure the potential impact of the writing intervention, there results of which indicate an improvement in students’ academic literacy and writing abilities, as well as their ability to apply these abilities to writing in their subject area. Keywords: academic writing development, discipline-specific, course evaluation, higher education, postgraduate writing, writing centre

Phraseology in Two Omani Undergraduate Civil Engineering Genres: The N of (the) N Pattern

The study of phraseology with respect to continuous and discontinuous frames in academic writing has gathered increasing research attention over the past decade. Their prevalence in expert writing and the influence of discipline and genre on their frequency and type have led to studies that attempted to identify the most productive discontinuous frames in specific disciplines. The aim of this study is to investigate the pattern of the N of (the) N, a prolific pattern in expert academic writing, in two Omani corpora of undergraduate Civil Engineering genres, Case Studies (CS) and Methodology Recounts (MR). The two strands of inquiry involve 1) a comparison between the semantic noun categories of the first (N1) and second noun (N2) used in this pattern and; 2) the N1-N2 sequences in the pattern which realize specific discourse functions in these two genres. Strings belonging to this pattern were retrieved from the two corpora through the corpus interface, Sketch Engine. Findings indicate the prevalence of this frame in the two genres and genre influence on the choice of semantic noun categories. It was also found that the N1-N2 sequences in the pattern are used to realise distinct discourse functions in the two genres. This is one of the first corpus-based studies on university student writing in the Middle East and considering that English is the language of instruction and assessment in many of these countries, these findings have significant pedagogical implications. EFL students in such lingua franca contexts can be supported by a more discipline-specific approach.

A discipline-specific perspective for advanced practice

While being integrated into a public health policy which is extending their role, advanced practice nurses should operate within a discipline-specific approach, which takes account of their professional identity and ensures their added value for the health care system. Conceptual models of nursing care and other nursing theories are there to guide their practice and enable them to stay focused on their specific discipline.

Four Models for Conducting the Introductory Business Course

The introduction to business course provides a critical opportunity to mold students’ perceptions about business. In this paper, the authors discuss four different approaches to conducting introductory business courses. These include a survey of the discipline, a philosophical approach, a discipline-specific approach, and an entrepreneurial venture approach. Regardless of format, these approaches focus on the integration of theological constructs and recognize the value of molding students from the start of their academic journey.

Cultural obstacles to research data management and sharing at TU Delft

Research data management (RDM) is increasingly important in scholarship. Many researchers are, however, unaware of the benefits of good RDM and unsure about the practical steps they can take to improve their RDM practices. Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) addresses this cultural barrier by appointing Data Stewards at every faculty. By providing expert advice and increasing awareness, the Data Stewardship project focuses on incremental improvements in current data and software management and sharing practices. This cultural change is accelerated by the Data Champions who share best practices in data management with their peers. The Data Stewards and Data Champions build a community that allows a discipline-specific approach to RDM. Nevertheless, cultural change also requires appropriate rewards and incentives. While local initiatives are important, and we discuss several examples in this paper, systemic changes to the academic rewards system are needed. This will require collaborative efforts of a broad coalition of stakeholders and we will mention several such initiatives. This article demonstrates that community building is essential in changing the code and data management culture at TU Delft.

Position vectors, homologous chromosomes and gamma rays: Promoting disciplinary literacy through Secondary Phrase Lists

The pedagogical approach of Disciplinary Literacy has been gaining recognition in secondary schools internationally. It shares much with English for Specific Purposes, though as yet there have been few interdisciplinary connections. This paper draws on ESP corpus research to produce innovative resources for developing disciplinary literacy, i.e. the Secondary Phrase Lists, a set of discipline-specific lists containing content word phraseology across multiple subjects. The current study builds on two recent trends in wordlist research. Firstly, there has been a debate over the extent of a general academic vocabulary, which has led to a focus on discipline-specific pedagogical wordlists. Secondly, there has been a movement toward capturing phraseology. The SPL combines these two trends. Furthermore, the paper contributes to theory as well as practice. The extent of a general academic vocabulary has been questioned by previous research that has found vocabulary and lexical bundles vary so much by discipline that a discipline-specific approach to vocabulary instruction should be adopted. The current study explores content word phraseology (e.g. gamma rays) and reports disciplinary variation greater than previous phraseological research into lexical bundles, suggesting limited general academic vocabulary for phrases of this kind, thereby supporting the need for discipline-specific resources that capture them.

Specificity in English for Academic Purposes (EAP): A Corpus Analysis of Lexical Bundles in Academic Writing

The issue of specificity in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) settings has always challenged linguists and instructors in the field to take a stance on how language should be perceived, that is whether language forms and features are transferable across different academic disciplines or are specific to particular disciplines. This study intends to take this debate a step further by employing a corpus-driven method in identifying a type of phraseological sequence, namely lexical bundles in a corpus of journal articles in the field of International Business Management (IBM). The lexical bundles were compared with those compiled by Simpson-Vlach and Ellis (2010) in their study of Academic Formulas List (AFL) to determine the specificity of the lexical bundles identified in this study. Following frequency-based approach, the corpus tool, Collocate 1.0 was used to extract three- to five-word sequences. These word sequences were manually filtered to exclude irrelevant and meaningless combinations. The qualified lexical bundles were compiled and compared with lexical bundles in AFL (Simpson-Vlach and Ellis 2010) using log-likelihood test. The findings show that three-word lexical bundles are the most common types of lexical bundles in IBM corpus. The comparison reveals that lexical bundles in IBM corpus are relatively specific as compared with lexical bundles in AFL. A discipline-specific approach to the teaching and learning of lexical bundles in EAP settings is therefore advocated to enhance EAP syllabuses and instruction. Keywords: EAP; phraseological sequences; lexical bundles; frequency-based; discipline-specific

A workshop to promote interprofessional care.

Paediatric incontinence has traditionally been managed through a discipline-specific approach by doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and psychologists. We evaluated a workshop aiming to increase health professionals' knowledge, confidence and willingness to involve other health professionals when managing paediatric incontinence. Our 1-day workshop focused on paediatric bedwetting, daytime incontinence, faecal incontinence and neurogenic bladder. Attendees completed surveys before and after the workshop, and 6months later. Differences between health professionals and changes in attitudes, knowledge, confidence and experience before and after the workshop were analysed using descriptive analysis. Qualitative data analysis was undertaken using content analysis. The workshop was attended by 77 clinicians (41 doctors, 19 allied health professionals and 17 nurses). Over two-thirds of respondents acknowledged having average or above average knowledge of and/or confidence in managing bedwetting, daytime urinary incontinence (DUI) and faecal incontinence, with lower baseline knowledge and confidence for neurogenic bladder. Participants who completed the initial and final surveys reported increased knowledge, improved ability to manage patients, better appreciation of the contribution of other disciplines and willingness to refer patients to other disciplines. Of those who saw patients with incontinence, most reported that the workshop had improved their management: 33/35 for bedwetting; 31/35 for DUI; 21/29 for faecal incontinence; and 16/19 for neurogenic bladder. Paediatric incontinence has traditionally been managed through a discipline-specific approach by doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and psychologists DISCUSSION: This study demonstrates that an interprofessional workshop conducted by clinicians from different health professional backgrounds increases clinicians' awareness of the roles of other disciplines and promotes the development of an interdisciplinary approach or multiprofessional collaboration, enabling a more effective, patient-centred, collaborative care model.

The enactment of the policy initiative for critical thinking in Singapore schools

This article examines the enactment of the policy initiative to promote critical thinking in Singapore schools from the perspectives of educators in Singapore. It is argued that teachers in Singapore are not passive recipients or mere implementers of top-down policy decisions. Rather, they enact the policy initiative by making sense of, negotiating, influencing and capitalising on their unique conditions to achieve their goals and juggle multiple demands. Three research findings are discussed in this article. First, the teachers mediate the policy process through their interpretations of critical thinking and cognisance of the socio-cultural challenges they face. Secondly, they recontextualise the policy initiative by adopting a skills-focused conception of critical thinking in the form of the infusion cum discipline-specific approach. Thirdly, they apply correlative thinking by combining didactic teaching with active student participation in their dual desire to foster critical thinking and prepare their students for the high-stakes exam. This study extends the existing research on policy enactment by identifying and illustrating manifestations of active appropriation in an Asian context.

Contextual influences on animal decision-making: Significance for behavior-based wildlife conservation and management.

Survival and successful reproduction require animals to make critical decisions amidst a naturally dynamic environmental and social background (i.e. "context"). However, human activities have pervasively, and rapidly, extended contextual variation into evolutionarily novel territory, potentially rendering evolved animal decision-making mechanisms and strategies maladaptive. We suggest that explicitly focusing on animal decision-making (ADM), by integrating and applying findings from studies of sensory ecology, cognitive psychology, behavioral economics and eco-evolutionary strategies, may enhance our understanding of, and our ability to predict how, human-driven changes in the environment and population demography will influence animal populations. Fundamentally, the decisions animals make involve evolved mechanisms, and behaviors emerge from the combined action of sensory integration, cognitive mechanisms and strategic rules of thumb, and any of these processes may have a disproportionate influence on behavior. Although there is extensive literature exploring ADM, it generally reflects a canalized, discipline-specific approach that lacks a unified conceptual framework. As a result, there has been limited application of ADM theory and research findings into predictive models that can enhance management outcomes, even though it is likely that the relative resilience of species to rapid environmental change is fundamentally a result of how ADM is linked to contextual variation. Here, we focus on how context influences ADM, and highlight ideas and results that may be most applicable to conservation biology.

A Discipline-Specific Approach to the History of U.S. Science Education

A Discipline-Specific Approach to the History of U.S. Science Education

Teaching Social Studies/History to Elementary School Students through a Discipline-Specific Approach

This mixed methods study explored students’ learning following an intervention unit, which focused on discipline-specific practices in elementary social studies/history. The following questions guided the research: To what extent does students’ learning in social studies/history change following their participation in a unit emphasizing disciplinary-specific practices? and How does their learning compare to students who learn the same content without this approach? Two fifth-grade teachers in a low socioeconomic district taught a disciplinary unit to their students, and a third fifth-grade teacher in the same district taught the same content to her students using a transmission approach. All students performed similarly on the pre-assessment; following the intervention students in the experimental classrooms made greater gains and demonstrated disciplinary-specific practices. This study has implications for elementary school instruction in social studies/history and literacy.

Research Data Management Training for Geographers: First Impressions

Sharing and secondary analysis of data have become increasingly important for research. Especially in geography, the collection of digital data has grown due to technological changes. Responsible handling and proper documentation of research data have therefore become essential for funders, publishers and higher education institutions. To achieve this goal, universities offer support and training in research data management. This article presents the experiences of a pilot workshop in research data management, especially for geographers. A discipline-specific approach to research data management training is recommended. The focus of this approach increases researchers’ interest and allows for more specific guidance. The instructors identified problems and challenges of research data management for geographers. In regards to training, the communication of benefits and reaching the target groups seem to be the biggest challenges. Consequently, better incentive structures as well as communication channels have to be established.

Corpus evidence for a discipline-specific phraseological approach to academic vocabulary

This study examines the validity of the rationale underlying recent trends towards discipline-specific and phraseological approaches to vocabulary selection for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses. It examines the behaviour of Coxhead’s (2000) New Academic Wordlist (AWL) using a 2,795,031 word corpus compiled from journal articles taken from the disciplines of History, Microbiology, and Management Studies. A two-stage method of analysis is employed. Firstly, coverage statistics for all AWL word families and their members are compared across the History, Microbiology, and Management Studies sub-corpora. This suggests difference in language use across disciplines. This difference is investigated further in a second stage of analysis which employs the Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004) Word Sketch Difference tool and Corpus Pattern Analysis (Hanks 2004) techniques to examine the collocational behaviour of a sample of 57 AWL headwords across the three sub-corpora. The results demonstrate that a large number of the AWL words have discipline- specific meanings, and that these meanings are conditioned by the syntagmatic context of the AWL item.

Quality criteria for sociology? What sociologists can learn from the project «developing and testing research quality criteria in the humanities»

Universities take an important role in the knowledge-society. For reasons of accountability to the public or in order to assure or enhance research quality, many universities implemented assessment procedures, often using bibliometric and other performance indicators. These procedures are mostly developed in a data-driven manner and not much is known about what the indicators in these procedures actually measure and how they affect behavior. Furthermore, the methods stem from the natural and life sciences and cannot be readily transferred to the social sciences and humanities. In this article, we present (i) quality criteria for research from the perspective of humanities scholars and how they can be transferred to sociology (ii) summarise the opportunities and limitations of the research rating of the German Council of Science and Humanities, and (iii) suggest that sociology as a discipline should develop a discipline-specific approach to research evaluation that takes into account the sociology scholars’ notions of quality and the disciplines’ research practices, that is bottom-up in nature, and uses both quantitative as well as qualitative data.