Epistemic Access Research Articles

’We do not have a writing culture’: exploring the nature of ‘academic drift’ through a study of lecturer perspectives on student writing in a vocational university

ABSTRACT Vocational universities are increasingly becoming susceptible to pressures associated with the phenomenon known as ‘academic drift’. Yet the specific influence of such pressures is experienced differently at various institutional levels and by different stakeholders in such universities. Exploring lecturers’ understanding and perceptions of student academic writing can make visible the ways in which these pressures are realised, for example, in the types of writing given value and writing pedagogies deemed suitable in the context of the vocational university. In this paper, we report on an ethnographically shaped study exploring lecturers’ writing pedagogies and perceptions of students as academic writers at a South African vocational university. The study analytically illustrated how wider socio-political, regulatory and ideological framings of these universities were implicated in lecturers’ writing practices and pedagogies. The study found that lecturers and students were generally constricted by narrow vocationalist agendas, which reinforced negative conceptions of students as academic writers. Our findings suggest that while the explicit impact of academic drift drivers was minimally felt at the undergraduate diploma level of study in our research site, this appeared to close off the potential for writing to act as a means to facilitate students’ epistemic access to their disciplines.

Partial truth versus felicitous falsehoods

Elgin has argued that scientific models that are, strictly speaking, inaccurate representations of the world, are epistemically valuable because the “falsehoods” they contain are “felicitous”. Many, including Elgin herself, have interpreted this claim as offering an alternative to scientific realism and “veritism”. In this paper, I will argue that there is a more felicitous interpretation of Elgin’s work: “felicitous falsehoods” do play a role in the epistemic value of inaccurate models, but that role is of instrumental value. Elgin’s view is not best understood as claiming that falsehoods provide scientific understanding in and of themselves, only that they facilitate epistemic access to the fundamental, even if partial, truths that are contained within models. While falsehoods may be felicitous in that they facilitate exemplification, the epistemic value of inaccurate models ultimately relies on their partial accuracy.

Uncovering the universals of ubuntu translanguaging in classroom discourses

ABSTRACTIncreasing international mobility has raised awareness on the fluidity and porous nature of boundaries not only between nation states, but also between named languages. Despite the complexities of overlaps across a wider spectrum of languages and classrooms worldwide, orthodox education programmes still reflect monolingual and epistemic biases, which disproportionately put the majority of the students at an educational disadvantage. In this paper, I explore classroom data from African classrooms on how translanguaging is effective in deepening comprehension and cultivating a high sense of self. Samples of data from a primary school were analyzed to explain the nature and prevalence of translanguaging in South African classrooms. The results of the study show that there is a high prevalence of translanguaging that reflects infinite relations of dependency between various linguistic resources employed in classroom discourses. This multilingual usage is interpreted within the African value system of ubuntu (I x We): I am because you are. I then argue that this cultural competence can be leveraged for successful learning and teaching. In the end, I consider recommendations on how the universals of Ubuntu translanguaging as a regime for multilingual practices becomes transformative in enhancing epistemic access and identity positions of multilingual students.

Native-English-Speaking Teacher and Korean English Teacher Identities in EFL Co-Teaching Interaction

This study examines how particular teacher actions occasion the categories of native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) teachers in classroom interaction, and how they are implicative of teacher identities in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. By adopting Conversation Analysis (CA) and Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA), the purpose of this study is to establish an empirical ground for viewing NS/NNS as members’ categories rather than externally-imposed labels, thereby producing an observational account of NS/NNS teacher identity construction in situ. Data involves video recordings of co-taught elementary EFL lessons wherein two teachers - a Korean teacher and an American teacher - are present in the classroom. The analysis manifests the participants’ orientation to a normative entitlement to language expertise, momentarily positioning each other into asymmetrical categories in relation to their respective institutional roles. Also revealed is that the Korean teacher may claim epistemic access to her English expertise. By describing participants’ category-implicative actions in which NS/NNS teacher identities are occasioned, sustained, and renegotiated, this study leads to a deeper understanding of ideologies inherent in EFL co-teacher partnerships, and further suggests CA/MCA as a powerful methodological tool for analyzing teacher identities as a locally situated, interactional accomplishment.

Learning through Linguistic citizenship: Finding the “I” of the essay

In recent years, the South African higher education system has seen growing calls for broadened epistemic access, decolonised curricula and transformed institutions. Scholars across South Africa have taken up the challenge and are working on new theoretical approaches to teaching and learning in higher education. In this paper, we reflect on students’ experiences of a multilingual, multimodal module called Reimagining Multilingualisms, which was jointly offered by the Universities of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch in April and May of 2018. In this paper, we provide an overview of the module and the different types of activities it involved. We reflect on these experiences using the theoretical lenses of decolonial scholar Mignolo (2009) on the ‘locus of enunciation’, and Stroud (2018) on ‘Linguistic Citizenship’. We present extracts from focus group interviews with students from both campuses to illustrate the involvement of ‘the body’ in ‘knowing’ and the ways in which the module enabled different ‘voices’ to emerge. We focus particularly on the role played by students’ perceived ‘vulnerability’ in the transformative benefits of the module and discuss this by way of conclusion. In sum, we suggest how the centring of multilingualism and diversity – not only as core pedagogic principles, but also as a methodology for transformation – may be used to enhance access and recapture voice in the building of a more integrated and just society.

A survey of logical realism

Logical realism is a view about the metaphysical status of logic. Common to most if not all the views captured by the label ‘logical realism’ is that logical facts are mind- and language-independent. But that does not tell us anything about the nature of logical facts or about our epistemic access to them. The goal of this paper is to outline and systematize the different ways that logical realism could be entertained and to examine some of the challenges that these views face. It will be suggested that logical realism is best understood as a metaphysical view about the logical structure of the world, but this raises an important question: does logical realism collapse into standard metaphysical realism? It will be argued that this result can be accommodated, even if it cannot be altogether avoided.

How Can Abstract Objects of Mathematics Be Known?†

Abstract The aim of the paper is to answer some arguments raised against mathematical structuralism developed by Michael Resnik. These arguments stress the abstractness of mathematical objects, especially their causal inertness, and conclude that mathematical objects, the structures posited by Resnik included, are inaccessible to human cognition. In the paper I introduce a distinction between abstract and ideal objects and argue that mathematical objects are primarily ideal. I reconstruct some aspects of the instrumental practice of mathematics, such as symbolic manipulations or ruler-and-compass constructions, and argue that instrumental practice can secure epistemic access to ideal objects of mathematics.

Lenguaje y referencia

Like cognition, the language in which the cognition finds expression has, in principle, a function of synthesis, that is, a function of connecting the cognizing subject with the object of cognition. The language enables the human subject to have epistemic access to the object; in its form and function this epistemic access constitutes the necessary referentiality of the language itself. Cognition must inevitably refer to the object of knowledge in the mode of pre-linguistic sensory and abstract-conceptual accesses, as clearly highlighted by Kant in his basic notion of the synthetic nature and structure of conceptual knowledge. This points to an aporetic ambiguity of the epistemic referentiality of language. In the process of cognition the subject should have an epistemic access to the particular. However, the conceptual cognition departs from the particular and is directed to a general universal idea. The ambiguity between the referential access and the referential departure in cognition necessarily requires a supplementation of the abstractlogical through the pre-linguistic-sensory or aesthetic knowledge, as emphasized by Alexander G. Baumgarten in his doctrine of sensory cognition (cognitio sensitiva) and the aesthetic-logical truth. Such a supplementation within the framework of a theory of perception seems to establish a unique form of epistemological reference, in which the subjective-epistemic access to the particular object does not terminate in the ontological finality of a concept or conceptual cognition, but transcends the cognition into the infinity of an aesthetic perception.

Ethically engaging international students: student generated material in an active blended learning model

ABSTRACTIn the context of increasing international mobility in higher education, educators experience multiple challenges in the classroom. In the UK, policy discourses often frame international students as desirable resources. However, international students are frequently problematised as in academic deficit. Cultural reasons are posited for different patterns of participation in seminar discussions and critical engagement. This deficit narrative is neo-imperialist. A critical and ethical pedagogy should position international students as equals and as co-contributors. This article suggests that by changing pedagogical structures of traditional higher education classroom in the UK, subverting norms for epistemological interactions, international students can be empowered to engage actively and critically. This approach draws on the principles of Active Blended Learning to develop an ethical pedagogy, with equitable epistemic access for internationally mobile students. This paper explores how a module designed in keeping with ethical pedagogy [Madge, Clare, Parvati Raghuram, and Patricia Noxolo. 2009. “Engaged Pedagogy and Responsibility: A Postcolonial Analysis of International Students.” Geoforum 40 (1): 34–45] succeeded in critically engaging students.

Epistemic quality for equitable access to quality education in school mathematics

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a study that aims to address the challenges of UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all. The study focuses on school mathematics in particular. With regard to ensuring equitable access to quality education, it is argued that there is a need to consider the epistemic quality of what students come to know, make sense of and be able to do in school mathematics. Accordingly, the aim is to maximize the chances that all pupils will have epistemic access to school mathematics of high epistemic quality. The study is based on the theoretical framework of Joint Action Theory in Didactics (JATD). Associated research questions focus on the quality of teacher-student(s) joint action and on the epistemic quality of the content. The paper draws on empirical research findings of the Developing Mathematical Thinking in the Primary Classroom (DMTPC) project (2010–12) and also on the findings of a parallel study of mathematics teachers’ assessment practices in Ghana. One teacher’s action research project is used as an exemplar to illustrate how mathematics can become more accessible and inclusive thus leading to an evolution in mathematical thinking and high-quality epistemic access for all.

Diversity in and among Rhetorical Traditions

Diversity in and among Rhetorical Traditions

Technoscientific approaches to deep time

In this paper, I argue that in order to understand the process behind the knowledge production in the historical sciences, we should change our theoretical focus slightly to consider the historical sciences as technoscientific disciplines. If we investigate the intertwinement of technology and theory, we can provide new insights into historical scientific knowledge production, preconditions, and aims. I will provide evidence for my claim by showing the central features of paleontological and paleobiological data practices of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In order to work with something that is imperfect and incomplete (the fossil record), paleontologists used different technological devices. These devices process, extract, correct, simulate, and eventually present paleontological explananda. Therefore, the appearance of anatomical features of non-manipulable fossilized organisms, phenomena such as mass-extinctions, or the life-like display of extinct specimens in a museum's hall, depend both on the correct use of technological devices and on the interplay between these devices and theories. Consequently, in order to capture its underlying epistemology, historical sciences should be analyzed and investigated against other technoscientific disciplines such as chemistry, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology, and not necessarily only against classical experimental sciences. This approach will help us understand how historical scientists can obtain their epistemic access to deep time.

Sobre el rol propedéutico de las intuiciones desde una perspectiva racionalista naturalista

The main target of this paper is to propose a preparatory learning role of rational intuitions, in order to defend a hybrid proposal between a priori and a posteriori epistemic access. Rational intuitions must be informed empirically, and discarded when there is evidence against them, when empirical evidence shows that rational intuition is wrong, so any belief guided by it would also be wrong. It is argued that rational intuitions play an important propaedeutic role: they help to understand different modal scenarios through counterfactual exemplifications. This is not opposed to the cultural variation of intuitions, therefore a variable intuitional reliability is proposed. This proposal includes intuitions as fallible and as not truth conducive: it is not the goal of intuitions to trace the truth of a proposition, but to help understand the hypothetical scenarios that may be relevant in different areas.

Is incompatibilism compatible with Fregeanism?

This paper considers whether incompatibilism, the view that negation is to be explained in terms of a primitive notion of incompatibility, and Fregeanism, the view that arithmetical truths are analytic according to Frege’s definition of that term in §3 of Foundations of Arithmetic, can both be upheld simultaneously. Both views are attractive on their own right, in particular for a certain empiricist mind-set. They promise to account for two philosophical puzzling phenomena: the problem of negative truth and the problem of epistemic access to numbers. For an incompatibilist, proofs of numerical non-identities must appeal to primitive incompatibilities. I argue that no analytic primitive incompatibilities are forthcoming. Hence incompatibilists cannot be Fregeans.

Affect, motivational states, and evaluative concepts

The aim of this paper is to defend, and in so doing clarify, the claim that the affective component of emotional experience plays an essential explanatory role in the acquisition of evaluative knowledge. In particular, it argues that the phenomenally conscious affective component of emotional experience provides the subject with the epistemic access to the semantic value of evaluative concepts. The core argument relies on a comparison with the role played by the phenomenal character of perceptual experience in the acquisition of knowledge of colours. The upshot is that it is a disanalogy with perceptual experience that explains the essential role of affective experience in acquiring evaluative knowledge, namely its motivational component.

Linking mother tongue and English academic literacy courses for epistemic access

This paper reports on a mother-tongue based pedagogical initiative aimed at promoting epistemic access among native Spanish speakers attending a community college in the United States. This pedagogical initiative linked English and Spanish academic literacy courses within the framework of a learning community, or clusters of pedagogically integrated courses that students take in the same cohort.After presenting the political and pedagogical rationale for this program, I will discuss its impact on students’ ability to access knowledge in higher education through the medium of an additional language. This impact will be assessed through a comparative analysis of quantitative academic success indicators combined with qualitative data collected through interviews. The findings show that the link facilitated epistemic access by providing students with an emotionally safe space where they were able to take ownership of their additional language through a higher level of engagement with academic discourse. This greater engagement was made possible by the use of the mother tongue as a resource for self-expression and as a frame of reference.Keywords: Multilingualism, academic literacy, translanguaging, learning communities, English learners

Creating epistemic access through a scaffold approach: Academic literacy skills development for South African first-year public administration students

For higher education institutions to produce graduates capable of contributing to society and the economy in a productive manner, educational emphasis is placed on the development of critical thinking. The above necessitates that higher education institutions are able to engage in responsive curriculum design and delivery for enhanced student success and access. Public Administration programmes focus on equipping students to work within the broader government sector, able and capable of delivering public functions responsive to the needs of society. Literature suggests that there are a number of factors which influence the success ratio of any undergraduate programme in the South African context, including, inter alia, increased enrolments, student–staff ratios and the overall decline of professional and intellectual life in the country. Further complicating matters are classes too big to be participatory and crammed syllabi preventing in-depth discussions. The notion of embedding academic literacy development in curriculum design through a scaffolded approach aims to influence the academic performance of students through engaged and active learning in order to attain a higher level of achievement as well as benefit from the process of scaffolding. The research comprises a mixed method approach using a case study of the first-year students enrolled for a Public Administration degree. Data collected included an analysis of 2015, 2016 and 2017 student cohorts in: determining their academic literacy level upon registration (set as a baseline before any academic literacy intervention); tracking their academic performance through their formative and summative assessments (through a scaffolded approach); and reflecting upon their learning through their completion of a semi-structured survey. The research intends to argue that the use of a scaffolded approach to learning enhances epistemic access, which sees students moving beyond propositional, or foundation knowledge to epistemic or reflexive knowledge.

Cognitive propositions and semantic values

ABSTRACT In recent work, Scott Soames has declared that we need a new conception of propositions to overcome critical objections to traditional theories of semantics and propositional attitudes. Propositions must be cognitive to account for their inherent intentionality, structure, and epistemic accessibility, and to overcome Frege’s and Russell’s problems. I have previously worked out a foundational semantics in which cognitive propositions are what sentences express. My objective in this paper is to identify some of the limitations of Soames’s theory, and show how they can be overcome within the cognitive framework. Soames’s conception of propositions is needlessly encumbered by identifying them with acts rather than objects. Soames has not fully exploited the possibilities opened up by embracing cognitive propositions, and is still too attached to Russellian propositions and Millian semantics. As a result, his conception of the constituents of propositions is untenable, and his semantics still faces Frege’s and Russell’s problem, which are easily avoidable with the resources of cognitive propositions. Soames was led astray by a mistaken assumption about transparent attitude reports.

Complaining About Others at Work

ABSTRACTThe article investigates the interactional work required to launch a complaint about nonpresent third parties in discussions between employees and their manager. The study shows how the complaint recipient (the manager) creates opportunities for the complainer (the employee) to complain, and how the recipient and complainer collaboratively facilitate entry into complaining by means of building joint epistemic access and affective stance toward the complainable. Focusing on the institutional context of performance appraisal interviews, the study further indicates that the legitimation of complaining is collaboratively treated as a managerial task. Data are in Finnish and Danish with English translation.

Translanguaging for epistemic access to Computer Science concepts: A call for change

Multilingual education has seemingly been relegated to English and academic literacy lecturers in South African universities. This paper reports on the use of translanguaging in a multilingual second-year computer science class. Using descriptive statistical analysis as well as qualitative analysis, results showed that students perceived translanguaging to be a helpful pedagogical strategy that could be used to assist them to gain deeper meaning and understanding of difficult concepts in their field of study. The research also showed and proved that, for translanguaging to become relevantly useful to the students, all members of the faculty should be involved in using this pedagogical strategy in the classroom. Therefore, we argue that, through collaborative efforts by using translanguaging among lecturers from different faculties, students will be able to acquire deeper meaning and understanding of subject material, especially in content-based courses or modules.