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Creating a transformed space for disciplinary discourse and knowledge

creation through an adjunct instructional model

Conference Paper · July 2017

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 Creating a transformed space for disciplinary discourse and
knowledge creation through an adjunct instructional model
Esther Tong, Cecilia Pun, Phoebe Siu & Jan Gube

Hong Kong Community College, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

Abstract
Acknowledging that collaboration between faculty members and language teachers is challenged by
resources constraints and their perceived distinctive roles in supporting knowledge and academic
discourse development, this paper considers an adjunct instructional model that promotes the
collaborative design of a genre-based bridging pedagogy in three disciplinary courses (Mechanical
Engineering, Tourism Management and Sociology) at a Hong Kong tertiary institute. First, the paper
examines the design and role of Engineering-specific assessment tasks in engaging students in simulated
disciplinary problem-solving scenarios and selections of rhetorical and lexico-grammatical resources in
their disciplinary knowledge creation processes. It also demonstrates the role of genre-based pedagogy in
illustrating technicality in facilitating students’ understanding disciplinary discourses in Tourism
Management. Then, it highlights the functions of creating multimodal genre-based environments in
facilitating students’ sociological inquiry through scaffolded written tasks based on real-life social issues.
Lastly, it explores how learners engage with polyvocal resources to clarify how they make sense of their
disciplinary roles through their writing practices in the adjunct courses. The implications of these diverse
trajectories are discussed in line with the need for curriculum-embeddedness of disciplinary conventions
(Wingate, 2016) and discursive strategies for bridging English language learners’ disciplinary discourse
and knowledge creation across the curriculum.

Introduction
To prepare learners for the evolving work environments, tertiary education programmes have
dual focuses on developing learners’ generic and disciplinary skills so that they can adapt to
changes, function fully and engage in dialogues in their disciplinary communities. This sets a
challenging task for educators in Hong Kong to explore ways to help English learners make
sense of their disciplinary knowledge and to bridge their meaning representations across the
curriculum in their second or additional language. Cummins & Man (2007) point out that
such academic language proficiency prerequisite to students’ academic success embraces not
only broad-based knowledge in English vocabulary, phonology, grammar and spelling, but
also the mastery of more sophisticated sentences, discourse knowledge and higher order
thinking skills. In other words, using English as a learning medium calls for learners’
coherent presentation of meanings beyond the sentence level. While “there is simply no time
to delay academic instruction until these students have developed high levels of English
language proficiency” (Short, 1993, p. 628), it is of paramount importance for educators to
offer full support to aid students’ development of academic discourse for more effective
communication of the ways of knowing, thinking and doing in their study disciplines.
Highlighting the language-context link within Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics
model (Halliday, 1994, 2007; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, 2014), this paper examines the
diverse trajectories in designing the three disciplinary adjunct courses in a project funded by
the Language Fund under Research and Development Projects 2015-16 of the Standing
Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR), Hong Kong SAR. It discusses
how the adjunct genre-based courses create a transformed space for disciplinary discourse
and knowledge creation within three academic discourse communities (Mechanical
Engineering, Tourism Management and Sociology) at a Hong Kong tertiary institute and
argues for the need for curriculum-embeddedness of disciplinary conventions (Wingate, 2016)
and discursive strategies for bridging English language learners’ disciplinary discourse and
knowledge creation across the curriculum.

1 Transforming Students’ Assessment Experiences: The Theory-

Practice Dialectic in Simulated Professional Practice in
Engineering
First, data from faculty members, course assessment materials and assignment samples in the
mechanical Engineering programme highlight the role of assessment tasks in engaging
learners in the process of enculturation, i.e. the theory-practice dialectic in Engineering.
According to Schlepeggrell and Colombi (2002), education is an enculturation process where
novice learners are socialised into the values and practices of a disciplinary community of
practice (p. 2). To support English learners’ knowledge and academic discourse development
while socialising them into the disciplinary communities of Engineering, educators are urged
to design not only a coherent curriculum but also a trajectory-based assessment-for-learning
framework which systematically introduces and reinforces students’ learning of the
disciplinary ways of knowing, thinking, doing in genre-specific assessment tasks across the
years of their studies. In the target Mechanical Engineering sub-degree programme, students
were first introduced to and being assessed in the disciplinary genres of laboratory report and
proposal in two discipline-specific subjects in the first semester of their 2-year studies,
namely Engineering Materials and Applied Computing for Engineers. These discipline-
specific assessment tasks engaged students with its meaning potential and semiotic processes
specific to Engineering. Table 1 illustrates the semiotic processes demanded in these tasks.
Students were required to use appropriate linguistics resources to interpret, construct and
represent their experience in the theory-practice dialectic in Engineering (Mohan, 2011).
Assessment Lab Report Proposal
Tasks
Theory - Explain the discrepancies/ errors - Group findings based on the
(Engineering found concepts learnt
Ways of - Justify the theory-grounded
Knowing) decision
(Engineering - Compare the data collected with the - Identify the problem
Ways of theoretical calculations - Compare the findings
Thinking) - Identify discrepancies/ errors found - Make recommendations
Practice Perform lab tests Research for relevant information
(Engineering (Describe the procedures of the (Describe the details of the
Ways of Doing) experimental work completed) problem, findings (existing
products/previous works), and
procedures of the work completed)
Table 1: Analysis of the Semiotic Processes demanded in the Discipline-specific Assessment
Tasks
Building on students’ experience with these Engineering-specific genres, these key genres
were used in other assessment tasks to assess and reinforce (R) students’ Engineering
knowledge and skills in simulated professional practices in other contexts in Engineering in
the subsequent semesters (S):
Subject Stage 1, S2 Stage 2, S1 Stage 2, S2
Engineering Design  Engineering Design
Fundamentals Report (Proposal) (R)
Project Management  Engineering
for Engineers Proposal (R)
Basic Electricity and  Engineering Lab
Electronics Report (R)
Engineering Project  Engineering
Proposal (R)
 Engineering Project
Report (R)
Table 2: A trajectory-based assessment-for-learning framework of an Engineering
programme
The findings suggest that an integrated assessment approach may enhance students’
awareness of genre variations and how registerial features are (re)used in Engineering
writings. The results call for a more comprehensive analysis of the key disciplinary genres
within a trajectory-based assessment-for-learning framework of the academic programmes –
a space for collaborative design of the assessment criteria for disciplinary writings, which
may promote more effective assessment of students’ disciplinary learning.

2 Opening the Gaze of Disciplinary Discourse for Students:

Building Technicality in Tourism Management Discourse
To address the language struggle of the students majoring in Business with a specialisation in
Tourism Management in construing their daily experience into specialised knowledge, the
adjunct model for TM focuses on the perception and production of English language is
delivered to the students for 2 consecutive semesters with 5 mapped subjects (2 of them are
discipline specific compulsory subjects). The adjunct model focuses on scaffolding the
requirements of the mapped assignment, and externalising the students’ knowledge through
writing in English. Technicality is also examined as a realisation of disciplinary knowledge,
and the technicality of the TM discipline identified is both horizontal and vertical (Bernstein,
1996). This could be illustrated by the two subjects, economics (a compulsory course in stage
1, semester 1) and tourism management (a discipline-specific compulsory course in stage 1,
semester 2). Table 3 shows some examples of the entities that denote technicality within the
two subjects in terms of horizontal discourse and vertical discourse. The horizontal discourse
in tourism management, however, is arguable as this largely depends on the personal
experience, or the “commonsense” knowledge that the students possess (with * in Table 3).
For example, it is common for travelers to have access to, or experience of, using the taxi and
limousine service from a hotel when they are travelling out of their home town, or to go on a
rail travel if the cities are connected; yet, these might not be the experience of younger
learners. In the vertical discourse, both hierarchical knowledge structure and horizontal
knowledge structure are observed in the TM discipline. The hierarchical knowledge structure
is shown through the strong relations of segments between subjects. The students will need to
accumulate and integrate the knowledge learnt from other business subjects to tourism
management; for example, after the students learnt the concept of elasticity in economics in
their semester 1, they need to recontextualise elasticity into tourism management. Thus, what
they have learned in the previous semester serves as the foundation for building up a higher
level. However, in the TM program, not all subjects are focused on specialised knowledge
that have a close relationship with tourism management; some of the compulsory subjects, for
instance, information technology, are more focused on generic skills for their college studies,
and there is no necessary relation between segments for building up the knowldge. Therefore,
considering the technicality found in the complusory courses, Tourism Management lies in
the middle of in the cline of hierarchical knowledge structure and horizontal knowledge
structure.
Subjects Examples of Horizontal Examples of Vertical
Discourse Discourse
Economics Choice Marginal cost/ benefit
Gain Opportunity cost
Price Market supply/ demand
Tourism Management Accommodation Inbound tourism
Festivals Travel motivation analysis
Shopping Seasonality
Rail travel* (Price) elasticity/inelasticity
Taxi and limousine service* Tax revenue
Table 3 Examples of Horizontal and Vertical Discourse in Economics and Tourism
Management

3 Genres, Texts and Multimodalities/ Entextualisation Cycle in an

English-in-the Discipline Adjunct Course for Social Sciences
Students
This section presents the data collected in the Sociology and Culture adjunct course in Phase
2 of the project. Jay Lemke (1998) argues that scientific knowledge is rarely developed by
language alone, but is presented through multiple representational systems, ranging from
images, mathematical expressions to physical gestures. Aside from scientific knowledge, it is
observed that content knowledge in Social Sciences is also delivered in multi-modal
discourses. In Phase 2 of this research project, 71 students majoring in the academic
discipline of Social Sciences [Associate in Applied Social Sciences (Sociology and Culture)]
were provided with a 13-week adjunct course (1.5 teaching hours per week; 3 classes of 20-
25 students) to scaffold their English language skills in using academic genres and texts. To
enrich students’ genre-based disciplinary learning experiences, multi-modal learning
resources, such as YouTube videos reporting live social experiments in relation to localised
social phenomena, TED Talk speeches delivered by native English-speaking Sociologists,
were adopted. In the weekly teaching and learning cycle, students were also exposed to a
wide range of semiotic resources in textual forms, still and moving visual images, along with
audio-visual messages and other cultural elements embedded in Sociology-related multi-
modal discourses. For instance, Sociology students were informed about how case studies
and seminar presentations are conventionally conducted for Sociological inquiries. In the
curriculum design of this adjunct course, the effectiveness and pedagogical values of
Multimodalities/ Entextualisation Cycle (MEC) (Lin, 2015) to integrate verbal, written and
visual languages have been examined. With a package of L2 content and language integrated
learning strategies, Sociology students were guided to shuffle among various forms of textual
and multimodal mediation of academic literacy to entextualise (Bauman & Briggs, 1990) the
meanings embedded in different academic genres and texts. In MEC, students are designers
of meanings in a three-stage multimodal classroom. First, with the aid of multimodal tools,
such as visual graphics, images, YouTube videos and role-play activities, students developed
an initial access to sociological issues, like the social and cultural implications of priority
seats in Hong Kong. Next, students were engaged with different reading and note-making
tasks. The meaning-making processes in sociological inquiries involve “re-presentation of L2
textual meaning using different kinds/ combinations of everyday L1/ L2 spoken/ written
genres and multimodalities” (Lin, 2015, p. 26), ranging from the use of bilingual notes, oral
descriptions to visual diagrams. Finally, students were exposed to a rich context of
entextualisation, using concrete language scaffolding tools, such as discipline-specific
vocabulary lists, key sentence frames and writing/ speaking prompts, L2 written/ spoken
academic genres, to write up a case analysis and deliver seminar presentations. In summary,
the reiterative adoption of Multimodalities/ Entextualisation Cycle in this adjunct course aims
at improving students’ discipline-specific multimodal learning and academic literacy in
English.

4 Engaging with disciplinary discourses: Polyvocality and

envisaged professional roles
Lastly, to understand our adjunct courses as a transformed space for learning and knowledge
creation, it is necessary to appreciate what intertextual sources students appropriate in their
writing activities. Writing activities are considered a space where students were prompted to
express their perceived disciplinary or professional practices in their study programs. From a
Bakhtinian standpoint, textual productions are responses to “those from whom s/he has
borrowed the text” (Scollon, Tsang, Li, Yung, & Jones, 1997, p. 228). This form of
borrowing assumes that individuals rely on existing discourses to articulate what they know
and take up in a social context in writing. In other words, texts can be seen as a discourse
representation of polyvocal resources resulting from interaction with practices, people and
events specific to a particular field in written form (i.e., a linguistic representation of how
different experiences, interactions, activities speak to individuals). This view provides a focus
for delineating what historical {HS} and social sources {SS} and social practices {SP}
students invoke in a disciplinary or professional discourse. Using these three vocabularies, a
brief analysis of writing extracts from students in the three adjunct courses are shown below:
I wish I can work in a big company and target elderly and disabled people {SS} to help… I can
[create] some gadgets {SP} helping the old people, like advanced wheelchair, artificial limbs…
Many jobs need to talk in English {SP} it is important for me because many jobs about tourism need
to face foreign people {SS}.
…the “Occupied Central” activity {SP}… to look out the phenomenons of society… conflicts {SS},
banners {SP}, slogan {SP}, police {SS}, violent… It is because the activity is the first big activity {HS}
to show the citizen’s [complaint] about the government policy on the elections.
The preliminary analysis shows what voices spoke to the students in the three adjunct courses
as they imagined what their study programmes entailed in terms of their disciplinary
discourses and the practices in those. Mechanical Engineering and Tourism Management
students tended to envisage what people they will work with and do for them professionally,
such as designing equipment for the elderly and providing services in English to foreigners.
Sociology students, on the other hand, showed proclivity for describing major social events
and its impact on the social fabric of the people involved in it, such as the Occupy Central
and how it created social division in Hong Kong. By identifying these polyvocal resources, it
becomes possible to highlight what resources are invoked to represent disciplinary discourses
as students began to engage more deeply in their study programs. When probed further, the
 dynamics of such polyvocality can provide indication of students’ developing academic
discourse in their disciplines.

5 Conclusion
This paper discusses the diverse trajectories in an adjunct instructional model which aims to
open up a space for collaboration between the content and language teachers in the design of
a bridging curriculum that facilitate students’ development of disciplinary discourse and
knowledge creation across the curriculum. The findings calls for the provision of a linguistic
account of the language demands of the major genre-based academic tasks in higher
education programmes, which will inform the pedagogical arrangements educators need to
make to support students’ expansion of disciplinary repertoire for active intellectual
engagement in disciplinary dialogues, and after all, academic success in the English-medium
programmes.

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