Identities in Transition: Shifting Conceptions of Home among “Black” South African University Students

Bangeni, Bongi; Kapp, Rochelle

doi:10.1353/arw.2006.0004

Cited by 33 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In all these interventions, there is a deliberate attempt to create a sense of belonging to a community which offers a safe space for students to express their fears and anxieties, and also provides coping mechanisms. As a number of theorists have argued, in order to feel invested in their learning, individuals need to feel that they belong (Reay, 2001;Reid et al 2003;Chapman and Pyvis 2006;Christie et al 2008;Bangeni andKapp 2005 andThomson 2009).…”

Section: Harnessing Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Harnessing agency: towards a learning model for undergraduate students

Pym

Kapp

2013

Studies in Higher Education

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This article describes a successful academic development programme in a Commerce faculty at a relatively elite, historically white university in South Africa. The writers argue that the programme has managed to achieve good results in recent years by moving away from deficit models of academic development for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The article draws on five years of data to illustrate how students' home discourses have influenced their negotiations of institutional discourses. It is argued that many of the students have shown considerable agency in gaining admission to university despite their social backgrounds, but experience a crisis of confidence and self-esteem in the new environment. The article describes how the new model of academic development has responded to this context by providing a more flexible approach to the curriculum, which attempts to harness students' agency as well as foster a sense of belonging to a learning community. Also described are the range of interventions that have been put in place specifically to develop a culture of learning and to promote social connectedness, identity and agency.

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Section: Harnessing Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Harnessing agency: towards a learning model for undergraduate students

Pym

Kapp

2013

Studies in Higher Education

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“…Four of the 'coloured' students identified English as the main medium of communication in their homes, but they spoke a mixture of English and Afrikaans as is common on the Cape Flats. 3Elsewhere, we have focussed more on individual students' experiences (Bangeni & Kapp, 2005;Bangeni & Kapp, 2006;Bangeni & Kapp, 2007;Kapp & Bangeni, 2009). 4We are grateful to Dr Sally Frankental and Prof. Mugsy Spiegel for pointing out this notion of situational identity in our data (see Spiegel, 2007).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…11 One of the participants, Sisanda, stands out as an exception in our data because she maintains her strong allegiance to 'Zulu' culture and language and resists consumerism on an intellectual level and in practice. For a detailed analysis, see Bangeni and Kapp (2005). 12 Kwaito is a local music form which Nuttall (2004: 433) describes as 'a potent blend of city and township sound that emerged after the democratic transition in 1994, mixing up the protest dancing and chanting known as toyi-toyi with slow-motion house, local pop ('bubblegum') and a dash of hip-hop'.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A longitudinal study of students’ negotiation of language, literacy and identity

Kapp

Bangeni

2011

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies

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IntroductionThis article is based on a longitudinal, qualitative case study (2002 to 2004) of 20 Social Science students at a historically 'white',1 English-medium, South African university. The participants in our study are all from disadvantaged educational backgrounds and/ or are speakers of English as a second language.2 They were (with the exception of one student) the first in their families, sometimes the first in their communities, to attend university. The project tracked their shifts in language and literacy attitudes and practices and in constructions of self over the course of their undergraduate years.There is by now a considerable body of literature which analyses the linguistic challenges and writing development processes of first-year university students from second-language/ marginalised/ disadvantaged educational backgrounds (see for example Clark & Ivanič, 1997;Herrington & Curtis, 2000; Thesen & Van Pletzen, 2006;Granville & Dison, 2009;Stacey, 2009). These studies have shown that becoming proficient in academic literacy is intimately connected to identity. However, aside from Herrington and Curtis' (2000) path-breaking longitudinal study of student writing in the US context, such studies have tended to be confined to the first-year experience. Our study has attempted to situate students' language and literacy attitudes and practices in time and space. We trace the felt experience of negotiating the accepted ways of 'saying-doing-beingvaluing-believing' (i.e. Discourses) of both the institution and home over time (Gee, 1990: 142). Our data reveal students' ambivalence as they found themselves straddling multiple, often conflicting discourses between home and the institution. In this article, we attempt to highlight key moments in students' journeys in order to illustrate how this process unfolds. Although our participants' trajectories through the institution are by no means uniform, there were discernable patterns in their language and literacy attitudes and practices that are intimately linked to their changing notions of self over the course of their undergraduate years.3

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“…However, even before the events that led to the removal of the Rhodes' statue came to the fore, some studies (Bangeni & Kapp, 2005;Buhle, 2013;Kapp & Bangeni, 2011) appeared to suggest that rather than transform itself and embrace diversity, UCT tended to assimilate non-white students into 'white' (English) culture. Kapp and Bangeni (2011, p. 199) illustrate how some coloured and black students felt 'judged' and 'stigmatised' for not acquiescing to the culture of speaking English like white people, while those that adopted white (English) accents risked being ostracised as 'coconuts' (a reference of being black outside, but white inside) when they got back to their homes/communities.…”

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confidence: 99%

Commodification of transformation discourses and post-apartheid institutional identities at three South African universities

Banda

Mafofo

2015

Critical Discourse Studies

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Using mission statements from the UCT, UWC and Stellenbosch University (South Africa), we explore how the three universities have rematerialised prior discourses to rebrand their identities as dictated by contemporary national and global aspirations. We reveal how the universities have recontextualised the experiences and discourses of liberation struggle and the new government's post-apartheid social transformation discourses to construct distinctive identities that are locally relevant and globally aspiring. This has led to the semiotic refiguring of universities from spatial edifices of racially based unequal education, to equal opportunity institutions of higher learning, and to the blurring of historical boundaries between these universities. We conclude that the universities have reconstructed distinct and recognisable identities which speak to a segregated past, but with a post-apartheid voice of equity and redress.

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Identities in Transition: Shifting Conceptions of Home among “Black” South African University Students

Cited by 33 publications

References 6 publications

Harnessing agency: towards a learning model for undergraduate students

Harnessing agency: towards a learning model for undergraduate students

A longitudinal study of students’ negotiation of language, literacy and identity

Commodification of transformation discourses and post-apartheid institutional identities at three South African universities

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