Faculty of Humanities

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/4474

Browse

Author: search.filters.author.Liccardo, SabrinaHas files: Yes

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Language, identity, and ideology: High-achieving scholarship women
    (Unisa, 2013) Dominguez-Whitehead, Yasmine; Liccardo, Sabrina; Botsis, Hannah
    This article addresses the linguistic identities of high-achieving women who are participants in a prestigious scholarship programme at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). We examined how these high-achieving women negotiate and construct their linguistic identities within the context of the university’s Anglicised institutional culture and against the backdrop of South Africa’s multilingual society. Individual and focus group interviews were examined by employing an experience-centred and culturally orientated approach to narrative (Squire 2008). Our examination revealed that language is both an academic and social intermediary of experience at the university, and that language functions as both an identity marker and an ideology that permeates the university and wider society. How participants transgress and maintain their linguistic identities, as well as how they subvert, and align with, the dominant university ideology is discussed.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Conceptualising transformation and interrogating elitism: The Bale scholarship programme
    (University of the Free State, 2013) Botsis, Hannah; Dominguez-Whitehead, Yasmine; Liccardo, Sabrina
    In this article, we consider the extent to which a scholarship programme at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) engages with the challenges of transformation. This scholarship programme highlights the transformative potential of a programme that focuses on excellence for a previously under-represented group, but also demonstrates how this type of programme reaffirms the dominant notion of excellence within the university space, which could be read as a reproduction of inequitable practices. Theoretically, we make use of Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘field’ and ‘capital’ to understand how a space that is socially elite, such as a university, engages with the issue of change. Transformation efforts such as Bale have meant that previously disadvantaged individuals have opportunities to pursue a university education, these efforts have also served to maintain and perpetuate elitism. This happy “marriage” between elitism and transformation ensures that the university remains elite, while simultaneously pursuing demographic equity and diversity. Bale students who successfully complete a university education reap many benefits, through their access to the cultural capital of a Wits degree. However Bale consists of an exclusive group of students who will personally benefit, while the broad interests of a top-notch University are served.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Background knowledge and epistemological access: Challenges facing black women in a SET scholarship programme
    (Unisa, 2015) Liccardo, Sabrina; Botsis, Hannah; Dominguez-Whitehead, Yasmine
    In promoting access to higher education in an unequal society there is a concern that universities may operate in a manner that values background knowledge associated with those who have access to a privileged class location. The authors focus on background knowledge, its contribution to epistemological access to higher education and how such background knowledge is likely to affect black women’s academic success. They analyse interviews with 19 black women from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds who are recipients of a Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) scholarship, utilising Ryle’s (1945) distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that, to understand their challenges in gaining epistemological access to university. Despite the scholarship programme’s comprehensive support, the findings suggest that students who enter with background knowledge acquired at well-resourced high schools are academically advantaged. The authors argue that SET scholarship programmes which recruit low-income students are necessary, but insufficient interventions for enabling epistemological access. Further responsiveness is required on the part of the university.