Editor: Viv Edwards (University of Reading, UK)
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Volume: 11 Number: 3 Page: 200–221
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Two Streams of Literacy in Science: A Look at First Year Laboratory Manuals
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Jean Parkinson and Ralph Adendorff
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This article reports on one aspect of an ethnographic study of laboratory sessions in the departments of Physics and Chemistry at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, namely, a comparison of
the functions of verbs in three first year laboratory manuals: one Chemistry and two Physics manuals. The Chemistry manual and one of the Physics manuals is framed in the `cookbook' mode; the other Physics
manual is framed in the `investigative' mode. Based largely on this analysis, this article argues for at least two distinct streams of literacy in mainstream academic scientific discourse. The first of
these, associated with the `cookbook' manual, is oriented to industry and technology and the second, associated with the `investigative' manual, is oriented to experimental research. The technological stream
stresses learning how to act (for example how to perform a procedure such as a distillation), while the research stream stresses cognitive processes: learning how to think, predict and draw inferences.
These different streams of literacy reflect different values for what it means to be a scientist, different concepts of the purpose of science and different destinies envisaged for students at whom the
laboratory sessions are aimed: industry or research. Several pedagogical implications are discussed.
© Multilingual Matters
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