School of Education

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Author: search.filters.author.Janks, HilaryStart date: 2000

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 12
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    Language and the design of texts.
    (2005-12) Janks, Hilary
    By demonstrating lexical and grammatical analysis – the rough work that underpins critical discourse analysis – this paper demonstrates the importance of grammatical knowledge for the critical reading of texts. It also provides readers with a grammar rubric for working systematically with the linguistic analysis of texts and argues that Fairclough’s model enables teachers and students to move beyond text analysis to an examination of texts in contexts.
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    Critical literacy: Beyond reason.
    (2002) Janks, Hilary
    In this paper, I argue that critical literacy is essentially a rationalist activity that does not sufficiently address the non-rational investments that readers bring with them to texts and tasks. I begin by looking at playful advertising texts that work with humans and the transgressive in order to consider the role of pleasure rather than reason. Then I examine the force of powerful identifications in relation to reason to show that educational inventions cannot ignore them. Finally, I tentatively suggest that we may need to find ways to combine socio-cultural and psycho-analytic theory in order to imagine new directions for pedagogy in the critical literacy classroom.
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    (Un)reliable assessment : A case study.
    (2003-03) Reed, Yvonne; Granville, Stella; Janks, Hilary; Makoe, Pinky; Steyn, Pippa; Van Zyl, Susan; Samuel, Michael
    The drive towards quality assurance at South African universities, with 'consistency' of approach being one of its key features, has profound implications for assessment policies and practices in relation to equity. In this article we present a case study discussion of an investigation we undertook, as a department, into certain anomalies which arose in the assessment of a particular group of post-graduate students' research reports. We were puzzled by the variability in the marks awarded by three different markers of the same reports and set out to investigate what factors were producing this 'inter-marker [un]reliability'. Through a content and discourse analysis of the different assessors' written reports, we uncovered the implicit assessment categories and criteria which assessors were working with in their assessments. We discovered shared categories and criteria, as well as differences in how these were weighted. In the interests of equity and increased inter-marker reliability, we have developed a set of banded criteria on generic features of the research report which we intend to develop a set of banded criteria on generic features of the research report which we intend to trial. We also surfaced two unresolved issues: the use of language and the role of the writer's 'voice' in the research report. As a result of this investigation, we argue that the 'consistency' of assessment within and across universities aspired to by quality assurers (such as the HEQC in the South African context) is difficult to achieve and much still depends on professional judgement, intellectual position and personal taste.
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    The access paradox.
    (2004) Janks, Hilary
    Because English is a dominant world language, access to English provides students with ‘linguistic capital’. Bourdieu’s theory of the linguistic market (1991) has important consequences for the teaching of a powerful language such as English. English teachers, who take issues of language, power and identity seriously, confront the following irresolvable contradiction. If you provide more people with access to the dominant variety of the dominant language, you contribute to perpetuating and increasing its dominance. If, on the other hand, you deny students access, you perpetuate their marginalisation in a society that continues to recognise this language as a mark of distinction. You also deny them access to the extensive resources available in that language; resources which have developed as a consequence of the language's dominance. This contradiction is what Lodge (1997) calls the ‘access paradox’. This paper explores ways of working inside the contradiction by examining language in education policy in South Africa as well as classroom materials and classroom practices. It shows the importance of counterbalancing access with an understanding of linguistic hegemony, diversity as a productive resource, and the way in which ‘design’ can be enriched by linguistic and cultural hybridity.
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    Deconstruction and reconstruction: Diversity as a productive resource.
    (2005-03) Janks, Hilary
    This article uses critical discourse to show that a series of advertisements by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees are premised on a discourse of sameness that constructs difference negatively. This article moves from deconstructing these advertisements to possibilities for reconstruction that show difference as a positive and productive resource.
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    Reconciliation pedagogy, identity and community funds of knowledge: Border work in South African classrooms.
    (2007) Janks, Hilary; Ferreira, Ana
    This article is based on a South African research project in which teachers and educational researchers pool their resources to explore ways of teaching reconciliation in desegregated English and Art classrooms ten years after independence. One of significant findings of this research was that positioning students as agentive researchers of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission served as a catalyst for their engagement with their histories. There is evidence that for some of the students their investigations of their varied communities’ funds of knowledge had effects on their own identity locations in relation to those of their classmates. Bringing their different knowledges into the classroom created spaces for borderwork (G. Anzaldúa, 1999. Borderlands/La Frontera: The new mestiza) and the remapping of their identities in relation to one another.
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    The politics of citation: An analysis of doctoral theses across the disciplines
    (2013) Afful, Joseph Benjamin Archibald; Janks, Hilary
    Citation is used as a measure to rank academics and institutions on the assumption that the more one is cited, the greater the impact of one’s research. For this reason, citations in high impact journals that appear on highly regarded scientific indices are favoured as sites for publishing one’s work. There can be no doubt that citation in the academy is a politicized practice. In acquiring advanced academic literacy, students have to master the art of positioning themselves in relation to the work of others, so that they develop their own ‘scholarly identity’. Drawing on insights from sociology of knowledge, information science, and critical discourse analysis, in this paper, we examine the reference lists of ten doctoral theses, from three disciplines – Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, Literature, and Sociology – in a leading South African university. Four parameters: (1) authorship (2) type of source (3) place of publication and (4) date of publication are used as means of understanding differences in relation to knowledge construction across the different disciplines. The analysis of the reference lists shows that they are a highly politicized discursive site marked by particular values, alliances, allegiances, and dominant forms that are privileged. The findings from this study have important implications for advanced academic literacy, disciplinary discourse studies at doctoral level, and postgraduate supervision.
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    Janks, H. (2014). Critical literacy’s ongoing importance for education. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57(5), pp. 349-356.
    (2014) Janks, Hilary
    In explaining the importance of critical literacy, this commentary suggests what teachers need to be able to do - essential ‘repertoires of practice’ (Comber, 2006). These include making connections with students’ lives, enabling them to do the necessary research, exploring texts and practices, considering the social effects of texts and practices and imagining possibilities for making a positive difference. These ideas are illustrated with an extended classroom example.
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    Janks, H. (2014) Globalisation, diversity, and education: A South African perspective. The Educational Forum, 78(1), 8-25.
    (2014) Janks, Hilary
    In this article, literacy, which is conceived of as a set of cognitive skills, is juxtaposed with a sociocultural orientation that sees literacy as a set of social practices for the production of meaning. Cognitive, skills-based pedagogies treat literacy as universal, autonomous, and independent of context, whereas sociocultural literacy pedagogies focus on the production of socially situated meanings that are inclusive of diversity. I argue that current policy formulations of literacy in South African curriculum documents, which are based on deficit constructions of teachers and learners and organized around language and the communicative skills, is a pedagogy of despair. I offer a more hopeful, futures-oriented alternative.
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    The importance of critical literacy
    (2012) Janks, Hilary
    This paper is divided into three parts. It begins by making an argument for the on going importance of critical literacy at a moment when there are mutterings about its being passé. The second part of the paper formulates the argument with the use of illustrative texts. It concludes with examples of critical literacy activities that I argue, are still necessary in classrooms around the world.