Informed Interdependence: A model for collaboration in fostering communicative competencies in a Commerce curriculum

Abstract

The current orthodoxy among academics in higher education studies is that content and language learning should be integrated in order to facilitate communicative competencies in degrees seeking to prepare students for business and professions such as accounting, engineering and pharmacy. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has been well-theorised and its goals are laudable; however, we contend that a one-size-fits-all solution of complete integration is not the most practicable or pedagogically-sound option in all contexts. Instead, we argue that establishing relationships of Informed Interdependence between content and language courses may offer greater benefits in specific contexts. This argument may appear counterintuitive, but we believe it has significant insights to add to the continuing dialogue around the use of CLIL.Accordingly, we describe a Professional Communication course at Rhodes University and then outline how we have responded to changes in our context through a process of engagement which led to a new course, namely, Professional Communication for Accountants, and recurriculation of the original Professional Communication course. In reporting on this process we foreground the importance of suitable boundary objects and discursive spaces around which interdisciplinary collaboration can occur. We provide staff and student reactions to a pilot project designed to test the curricular innovations made thus far, and conclude by reflecting on the efficacy of an Informed Interdependence model in our context. Background and OverviewLearning and teaching communicative competencies in higher education qualifications for business and professions such as accounting, engineering and pharmacy is a complex task. These competencies lie at the intersection of linguistic competence with discipline-specific and profession-specific literacies, creating a tension as to how to address each adequately in the curriculum: does one teach them in independent courses focusing on language, or does one integrate them into the content disciplines? There is much at stake in this decision, and various factors apart from disciplinary content and language are implicated in it, including matters of disciplinary boundarykeeping and the challenges of a changing context. In this article we report on how we confronted these factors through a variety of changes that led us to review the curriculum for Professional Communication, a semester-long course teaching communicative competencies to undergraduate Commerce students at Rhodes University. This article was prompted by our response, as members of the Department of English Language and Linguistics at Rhodes University, to a call by the Dean of Commerce to members of the faculty to reconsider their curricula and to interact with other departments over possibilities for interdisciplinary integration in the faculty's undergraduate programme. This was after extensive changes to the Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting) curriculum were proposed in the light of changes to the South A...