Genre and cognition in an mba program

1. Genre and cognition in an mba program Nigel A. Caplan (nacaplan@udel.edu) University of Delaware, USA PhD Student, School of Education Assistant Professor, English Language Institute http://nigelteacher.wordpress.com Genre 2012, Ottawa, Ontario

2. Competing Approaches Cognitive Strategies (Individual) Genres (Social)

3. Outline • Needs Analysis: Context & Culture • Discussion: Participation, Pragmatics, and Purpose • Case analysis: Coherence, Conventions, and Cognition • Conclusion: Activity Theory

4. Needs analysis: Context and Culture • Conditional Admissions Program (CAP) • English Language Institute (English for Academic Purposes, graduate/MBA track) • Most ELI graduate students are CAP-MBA • Almost all international MBA students come from CAP Why don’t the Chinese speak in class?

5. Needs Analysis: Data • Syllabi of MBA classes • Online questionnaires for MBA faculty and international students • Observation of an MBA class • Focus groups and interviews with MBA faculty • Focus groups with international MBA students (ongoing) • “Think-aloud” sessions with MBA faculty Instruments available online at http://nigelteacher.wordpress.com (Handouts  Genre 2012)

6. Genre System in the UD MBA

9. Discussion: Participation, Pragmatics, Purpose

10. Case Genre System(Forman & Rymer, 1999) • The “focus [is] on practical problem solving in real situations and on engaged interaction between students and instructors.” • The case discussion is an “agonistic approach to experiential learning … a democratic event is which the instructor serves as a facilitator and equal partner with all the students.”

11. Participation • A = Visible, thoughtful, and regular involvementin class discussion. You got involved, and not just for the purpose of hearing yourself speak. Class members seemed to pay attention to what you said, and your comments almost always were appropriate to the context. BUAD 870 Syllabus, Fall 2011

12. Chinese students really don’t speak Author’s data from a single BUAD 870 class (approx. 90 minutes’ class discussion), Fall 2011

13. Case Analysis: Coherence, Conventions, Cognition Set up ^ Diagnosis ^ [Recommendation]n (^Reflection)

14. Features of the Genre • The set-up should not summarize the case • Key words, facts, characters, and statistics from the case should be referenced • Evidence must be presented • The case write-up exists in the context of the class • Format and style conventions must be • Professors’ expectations may be idiosyncratic

15. Cognition, Creativity, Critical Thinking • “You can get a really good grade if you have one really good idea that’s not intuitively obvious.” (faculty interview) • “… the mindset” of a good student who “knows how it fits together” (faculty interview) • “There is no way to isolate a social process from the minds that carry it out.” (Flower, 1994, p. 31)

16. A Socio-Cognitive Approach Literate actions emerge out of a constructive cognitive process that transforms knowledge in purposeful ways. And at critical moments, this constructive literate act may also become a process of negotiation in which individual readers and writers must juggle conflicting demands and chart a path among alternative goals, constraints, and possibilities. (Flower, 1994, p. 2)

17. Conclusion: MBA as Activity System

18. Activity System of the MBA

19. Nigel A. Caplan University of Delaware nacaplan@udel.edu http://nigelteacher.wordpress.com (Handouts  Genre2012)