School of Education

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Author: search.filters.author.Janks, HilaryStart date: 2010

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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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.
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    District Nine and constructions of other: Implications for heterogeneous classrooms.
    (2011) Janks, Hilary; Adegoke, Roseline
    Culturally responsive research and pedagogy are a challenge in classrooms that are increasingly heterogeneous. I start from the premise that culture is dynamic not static, that difference is a resource for new ways of doing, thinking and believing, that identity is hybrid. The challenge for teachers is how to harness the productive potential of diverse classrooms for pedagogy. John Thompson (1990) argues that discourses of “unification” which construct an “us”, and discourses of “fragmentation” which construct a “them”, produce and maintain relations of power. Us/them discourse will be explored in the South African context in relation to both apartheid’s racial othering and post-apartheid’s xenophobic othering. The South African film, District Nine, which can be interpreted as both forms of othering, is presented as a case for considering these ideas.
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    Janks, H., & Makalela, L. (2013). Engaging a visionary: Horizons of the (im)possible. Education as Change, 17(2), 219-228.
    (2013) Janks, Hilary; Makalela, Leketi
    Neville Alexander has had a profound impact on the way we think about language education and language policy in South Africa. His views on the harmonisation of African languages, mother-tongue education, the position of English and the importance of literacy have shaped academic and policy debates since the early 1990s. Visionaries are able to combine insight with foresight and so imagine a different way forward. In this way they change what Roger Simon describes as the ‘horizon of possibility’. This article examines Alexander's positions critically in relation to questions of power, identity, access and social transformation, in order to understand both their take-up and their rejection. Both history and geography – time and space – are central to this discussion of his achievements.