Using process-oriented, guided-inquiry learning in the teaching of academic literacy

Abstract

This paper presents a quantitative analysis of an intervention study that used process-oriented, guided-inquiry learning (POGIL) to teach grammar as part of an academic literacy module in the Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) at a South African university. In the first semester of the Language and Study Skills (LST) module, four key grammatical functions (parts of speech, sentence structure, punctuation, and discourse markers) are foundational to subsequent writing skills taught throughout the year. The POGIL-based intervention study for the LST module was designed to respond to the specific educational context and needs of the ECP students. A teaching intervention was conducted using POGIL-style worksheets, after which the performance of the intervention group was compared to the performance of a control group using data from items in formal assessments (two semester tests and an examination). Analysis of this data indicates that the POGIL group performed better than the control group in all four constructs, though the difference in performance was statistically significant in only three constructs. The paper concludes with a suggestion that further research should be conducted to investigate the relationship between students’ level of capability and their response to POGIL-style language instruction; some possibilities for the continuation of the study are outlined. The research therefore contributes to the small, but growing body of work on POGIL instruction by expanding it to include academic literacy and ECP instruction.