Using Bernstein

1
Using Bernsteins notion of re-contextualising
fields to understand the challenges around the
integration of discursive and formal communities
at UWC

•  T L Colloquium
•  19 July 20103
• Birgit Schreiber (PhD)
• Centre for Student Support Services
• University of the Western Cape

2

• Formal Communities
• Delineated by identity, name, profession, title,
  rank or membership
• Delineated by in-out group gate-keeping
  mechanisms
• Might be binary
• Might be described by assertion-negation
  principle
• Communities of Practice describe a community
  which is legitimised through practice and
  participation (Lave Wenger, 1991)
• Epistemic Community might have different
  disciplinary and professional backgrounds, but
  members share understanding and intentions around
  unifying goals, have shared notions of validity,
  and have a normative component around betterment
  of society (Haas, 1992, p. 35)

3

• Discursive Communities
• Are understood as
• A group of communicators with a common goal or
  interest that adopts certain preferred ways of
  participating in public discussion, i.e. has
  distinct discursive practices. (Malon, 2008, p.
  59)
• Generally, membership in a discursive community
  requires a certain level of expertise, the more
  expert according to a ranking system, the more
  influence one has over the preferred discursive
  practices. (Swales, 2011)
• A local and temporary constraining system,
  defined by discursive practices that are unified
  by a common focus, has stated and unstated
  conventions, mechanisms for wielding power,
  institutional hierarchies, vested interests, and
  so on. (Porter, 2011, p. 262)
• The boundaries of discursive communities are
  often fluid, nebulous and frequently overlap.

4

• Bernsteinian notions
• of fields and contexts (1)
• Bernsteins notions of recontextualsing fields is
  a very useful framework for understanding the
  nexus of Student Affairs and Academic Affairs
• A field is a socio-cultural and epistemological
  domain conceptual, discursive, structural, and
  legitimised by power relations.
• The official recontextualising field is
  described as the official, administrative,
  management, policy or non-academic domain.
  (Bernstein, 2000, p. 42)
• The pedagogic recontextualising field refers to
  the domain of knowledge construction and
  reconstruction, discipline-specific discourses,
  curriculum, and teaching and learning.
  (Bernstein, 2000, p. 42)
• These, together with a third field, the social
  domain, constitute key institutional domains
  where the interplay of mediating factors in
  student experience takes place (Lange, 2010, p.
  46).

5

• Fields and contexts (2)
• The focus of this paper is to understand the
  relational interplay and integration of the
  formal, discursive, and epistemic fields and
  communities
• The focus is to explore the relational interplay
  and integration of Student Affairs with Academic
  Affairs, as it manifest in an Extended Programme
  in the Science Faculty
• Overall, there seems to be disjuncture between
  Student Affairs, Academic Affairs, TL, research,
  structural and policy related imperatives,
  classroom practice, and student experiences.
• According to Bernstein, the recontextulisation
  between fields creates disjunctures and tensions,
  there are articulation gaps by migrating
  knowledge across fields.
• The relocated research and migrated knowledge
  from one field to another field creates
  disjunctions the classroom is experienced as
  alien and literally re-located and
  dis-located. (Harris, 2006)

6

• Student Affairs field
• Student Affairs finds itself straddling these
  fields and domains the official
  recontextualising field, the pedagogic
  recontextualising field and the social domain
• Student Affairs finds itself in the pluralist
  intersections between the co-curricular and the
  curricular, between the affective and cognitive,
  between the faculty and student, between the
  administration and the social domain (Case, 2007
  Lange, 2010 King Baxter-Magolda, 1996 Kuh, et
  al, 2010 Pascarella Terenzini, 2005 Scott et
  al., 2007)
• American models emphasise the integration of
  Student Affairs into the academic experience at
  faculty level and have developed an academic
  discipline focussing on Student Affairs (Astin,
  1977, 1996 Kuh, 1995 Kuh Hu, 2001 Kuh et
  al., 2010 Pascarella Terenzini, 2005 Tinto,
  1997)
• European Student Affairs are located within
  Bernsteins official recontextualising field
  and are located in the bureaucratic body of the
  Welfare State
• The European Council for Student Affairs locates
  itself within the social domain and declares
  itself responsible for the student experience
  (EHEA, Bergen, 2007)

7

• Student Affairs theory
• Developmental theories
• address issues of human growth, mainly from
  psychological theory
• focus on intra- and inter-personal factors which
  affect and are affected by learning, cognitive
  and personal-social development
• Environmental impact theories
• address the interplay between the environmental
  factors and the student
• Focus on involvement and engagement, social and
  academic integration
• seminal work of Tinto, Astin, Kuh and Pascarella
  (Pascarella Terenzini, 2005)
• Structurally Student Affairs in South Africa is
  centrally positioned while infused into faculty
  and programmes

8
Integration of Student Affairs and Academic
Affairs (1)

• The assertion of integration is based on the
  assumption that learning is synergistic and not
  segmented
• Cognitive and affective dimensions of
  development are related parts of one process
  (King Baxter-Magolda, 1996, p. 163)
• Parity in psycho-social and cognitive development
  is key for progress in learning (Erikson, 1968
  Vygotsky, 1978)
• Meaning making is related to self-authorship
  (Astin, 1977). The self as cohesive continuous
  construct develops while cognitive structures
  develop.
• Separation of academic from personal-social is
  reductionist and artificial.

9
Integration of Student Affairs and Academic
Affairs (2)

• Student Affairs contribution is predicated on the
  integration into Academic Affairs and
  institutional affairs (Baxter Magolda, 1992,
  2001 Pascarella Terenzini, 1991, 2005 Kuh et
  al, 1995, 2001, 2003)
• Integration needs to be at the site and moment
  of learning (Kuh, et al, 1998, 2001 Schuh, 2012
  Tinto, 1997)
• Learning should be viewed as a comprehensive,
  holistic, transformative activity that integrates
  academic learning and student development.
  (Keeling, 2004, p. 2)
• There is a need for the re-definition of learning
  as a broad process across cognitive, affective
  and social domains.

10
Extended Programme ICS153 and the Student
Affairs component (LL)

• Piloted in 2009 Vivienne Bozalek and Delia
  Marshal
• Funded by IOP Change Initiative of DVC SDS
• Student development and support sessions part of
  time table
• Weekly sessions facilitated by student affairs
  practitioner
• Didactic and participative, experiential and
  reflective
• Primary aims
• improve throughput
• improve retention
• Mediating factors
• Facilitate personal-social functioning
• Attachment to institution
• Improve social integration within academic spaces
• Conduit to resources

11

• Research Methodology
• Research Question
• The exploration of staff perception of the
  integration of Student Affairs and Academic
  Affairs in an Extended Programme
• Sample
• 14 staff involved in ICS153 Extended Programme
• Staff are faculty based, TL, co-ordinators,
  lecturers, facilitators
• Questionnaire
• 14 open ended questions
• Explored synergies, barriers, enablers and
  challenges
• Focus was on integration of content, practices,
  and culture
• Explored assumptions, structural issues,
  discursive and administrative issues
• Responses
• 9 of 14 questionnaires were returned
• most answered most questions, in sentences,
  bulleted or key words
• Analysis
• Thematic
• Extracted insights, and issues which could be
  abstracted and were transcending

12
Emerging themes

• Domain and territoriality
• Issues around who is in and who is out who
  belongs to this community is not clear.
• sometimes there are meetings which exclude
  student support staff and they are told that this
  isnt relevant to them. But then you think we are
  all part of the team, so Im not sure why they
  are excluded sometimes (2)
• Power and ownership of success
• Power and expert issues, in-out group tensions.
•  
• there are some issues around who owns success as
  opposed to seeing student success as a win-win
  (6)
• there are moments when there is a power struggle
  around which interpretation and which
  understanding we should follow (3)
• the academics decide on their content, and the
  others which are less academic need to adjust to
  the set programme (4)

13

• The disjuncture of fields
• Re-contextualised knowledge creaets disjuncture
  between policy and implementation.
• there are gaps between decision makers and
  implementers (6)
• decision makers are separate from facilitators
  (4)
• The disjuncture of practices
• Challenges around complying with dominant
  practices, such as formative and summative
  assessments and academic performances as
  positivistic indicators of success.
• Re-location of dominant practices from one
  domain/field to the other creates challenges.
• its hard for student development to
  quantitatively provide assessment marks about
  student participation in the LL, but we need to
  find a way of documenting progress, but we
  havent found a good indicator yet, so thats
  frustrating (8)
• to include LL into exams and tests, is an
  impairment to integration (4)

14

• Experts
• In the e-technologies field, no one has expert
  status and can claim power.
• Integration of the domains is facilitated by the
  equality amongst the members of this community.
• what works really well is our use of
  e-technologies, we are all novices, so the
  playing field is leveled (1)
• use of multi-media resources in sessions, and
  utilizing the e-teaching site has facilitated
  the integration process (4)
•  

15

• Epistemic community
• An awareness of many disciplines, shared goal,
  shared commitment and understanding. This is the
  making of an epistemic community.
• what works is embracing diversity within a
  multi-disciplinary team (6)
• we all focus on student success, regardless of
  where we come from (2)
• frequent meetings ensure we keep communicating
  and we stay aligned (8)
• sharing attitude to work, sharing vision for
  students, and focussing on what works well (6)
• cross referencing of our content and the many
  meetings allow us to find common ground it is a
  nice group of committed and hard working people,
  from across campus, students feel this and it
  makes a difference (3)
• constant cross-referencing by facilitators
  around content and components allows for it to
  be integrated (4)

16
Conclusion

• There is a recognition of various fields,
  contexts and pockets across UWC and a recognition
  for the necessity to find ways to work together
  and integrate practices and theories
• The process of integrating Student Affairs and
  Academic Affairs is complex and demanding
• Integration is required in terms of content,
  structure, management and implementation
• To bridge fields and context, structural and
  systems - issues need to be addressed
• Epistemic Communities need to be fostered and
  supported this involves cross disciplinary
  conversations and projects with shared goals
• ICS153 is a case study which demonstrates the
  value of this integration

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