Here’s a blog post about using semantic waves to write better paragraphs in essays.

A blog on how to breach this gap using Semantics and the case of nursing studies.

Nóra Wünsch-Nagy wrote about making connections between kinds of knowledge using semantics.

Hanelie Adendorff wrote about how LCT helps in actual teaching practices.

Wits University wrote about the newly appointed Director of the Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) Hub, Prof Lee Rusznyak and her efforts in helping Wits students through the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. It focuses on her work with the Teacher Choices in Action initiative that has helped thousands of students in South Africa as an alternative to school practicals within the context of the global pandemic.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation published Hello World, the big book of computing pedagogy which includes an article on the use of semantic waves for this purpose, based on the work of Paul Curzon and Karl Maton.

Legitimation Code theory is used to prepare thousands of South African teacher trainees for practice-based learning. Concepts from LCT empower trainees to analyse how teachers work with knowledge across different subject areas and year groups. They learn why practices may work in some classroom contexts but not in others. Since it was launched in August 2020, more than 40 000 trainees from 24 universities have completed the course as part of their teacher qualification requirements. Project leader, Lee Rusznyak is the director of the LCT Hub, University of the Witwatersrand.

To find out more about the Teacher Choices in Action module:
2020-11-05: LCT Centre for Knowledge Building Roundtable: Preparing professionals for practice: Developing students’ gazes

27-10-2020: Researching and changing higher education with LCT (CHERII, University of Wollongong)

1-10-2020: Universities join forces to strengthen teaching practicals during Covid-19 and beyond

Ian Siebörger wrote about the recent South African unrest from the viewpoint of linguistics with the help of LCT’s constellations.

The UK National Center for Computing Education has adopted semantic waves as one of their 12 core pedagogy principles. This LCT idea is now embedded in the way they design their resources for teacher CPD across England and for their comprehensive ‘A level’ (and coming GCSE) resources developed for student online learning across the country.

Hier ein Video zur Planung und Analyse von Informatikunterricht: Semantic Waves als Unterrichtskonzept / Informatikdidaktik kurz gefasst https://t.co/Po9LdcSr8x #twitterlehrerzimmer #Informatikunterricht #Informatikdidaktik #LegitimationCodeTheory

— Peer Stechert (@Informatik_SH) May 29, 2021

A series of videos on using LCT to teach English for Academic Purposes.

Catherine Elliott wrote an article on Hello World on teaching computing using semantic waves

Jonathan Bean wrote about sustainable housing and building using LCT as a lens to teach these ideas.

Olwyn Alexander wrote about how to use Autonomy to understand spontaneous teachable moments in the classroom.

Over at the DigiTeacher Dorian Love wrote about unpacking racism using LCT’s constellations.

Quark Education published an article on writing in science regarding secondary education students.

Steve Rollet even dreams about LCT while sleeping! In his waking hours he wrote some examples and explanations on how to use LCT’s Autonomy.

Future learning has a course on how to teach programming using semantic waves.

Erik the linguist wrote about one-sentence paragraphs in academic writing using semantic waves.

Public Lecture at the PhD Week (Rhodes University) on 30 September 2014 by Prof Karl Maton: Heretical Knowledge – Knowledge-Blindness in Education. From Nompilo Tshum

LCT Centre Director Karl Maton’s keynote talk for BALEAP 2017 at Bristol, UK.

At the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid there is a longitudinal research project studying CLIL students using semantic waves.

Teaching Computing published a post on how to teach computational concepts using semantic waves.

Ian Siebörger analyzed the media takes on lockdown rules using LCT’s constellation anaylsis to find out how ‘we become divided’. Here he reflects on the current status of the situation in South Africa.

Steve Rollett reflected on how LCT’s constellations and cosmologies can help analyze the cosmology of education, especially after the impact COVID-19 has had.

Dorian Love has written on how to decolonize literature studies using LCT’s Semantics, applying semantic gravity and semantic density to analyze poetry.

Steve Rollett wrote about focusing on knowledge itself using semantics, using examples of an online review of the Sonic the Hedgehog film and of an online class.

Teaching London Computing has published a series of resources on using semantic waves.

Olwyn Alexander wrote about metaphors and using Semantics to approach English for Academic Purposes (EAP).

Although it was moved from its initial date at the end of this year to 2021, Steve Kirk will present a keynote titled ‘Thinking globally, practising and theorising locally: Knowledge and knower-building in EAP‘.

Dorian Love over at the DigiTeacher wrote about what has been learned so far in regards to online teaching and learning due to the current Corona–imposed lockdown and quarantine. He contextualises it with an overview of the current three dimensions of LCT so it also doubles as a refresher!

Dorian Love has written on using semantic waves to help students program robots.

The University of Sheffield published a set of resources using LCT’s Specialization to help students engage with critical thinking and writing in one of their online resources.

Steve Rollett wrote another piece on curriculum development using LCT’s Semantics!

Steve Rollet wrote a piece on curriculum design on his blog!

The Teaching Computing blog posted a resource that uses Semantics to help teach computer algorithms.

Ian Johnson from the University of Portsmouth wrote about using semantic waves to help students bridge the gap between theory and practice, for the Take 5 blog.

Jonathan Bean wrote for the Association for Computing Machinery‘s journal Interactions a post introducing LCT’s Specialization, linking it to questions about the human–computer interaction.

Dorian Love over at The DigiTeacher wrote a post on Computational Technology and the ‘Ideal Knower’, linked here.

Richard Ingold from Navitas wrote a blog post on learning the rules of academic writing by means of LCT’s notion of semantic waves. Check it out!

Although from 2015, this blog post elaborates also on the use of semantic wave when teaching English as Additional Language.

The School of Social and Political Sciences magazine published a winter 2019 highlights of the department’s achievements, which includes a piece by Dr Tessa Lunney on the impact LCT has had on education theory and practice.

The University of Sydney published a piece on the research impact that LCT Theory and practice has on education:

“Researchers at the University of Sydney are leading a new way of thinking about education that is changing teaching and learning around the world, from preschool to university and from physics to ballet, by bringing knowledge into the picture.”

Paul Curzon from the Queen Mary University of London wrote a post on teaching programming by means of semantic waves.

The Thesis Whisperer published a post on the use of semantic waves for academic writing. You can read the blog post here!

For further empirical works done on the issue, here is the tag for academic writing in the LCT Knowledge Database.

According to linguistics scholars in Mexico, Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) is the next big thing for many in the field of systemic functional linguistics. The theory, created by University of Sydney Sociologist Professor Karl Maton, is changing the way linguists work and has made a significant impact in South Africa, USA, and China.

The linguists adopting LCT are using it to great social impact. Dr Yaegan Doran ran a two-day workshop in Puebla, Mexico before the Fourteenth Congress of the Association of Systemic Functional Linguistics of Latin America, at Benemérita Universidad de Autónoma Puebla, in early October 2018. He had these words to say about LCT in Mexico:

“For scholars in the field of systemic functional linguistics, LCT is the next big thing. There are many people with real-world problems – like falling literacy rates in indigenous populations in the south of Mexico, where there is significant societal change, and they’re looking for a means to both celebrate and develop indigenous knowledge while giving access to the Spanish-language knowledge. LCT gives them a way of doing both the macro understanding of ‘What is happening? How does this work?’ but also to filter it down to the micro understanding of being able to teach intricate, nuanced, literacy and knowledge practices.

“There is one person who is working with a local indigenous community in Oaxaca – Marievna Donají Vázquez Marcial. There are protest movements in the area with a lot of tension, injury, even death. They’re trying to build education in the area – not to deny the protests but to help, so their voices can be heard without violence. LCT is a way to build literacy and educational programs that can give voice and access to both indigenous and Spanish-based knowledge so the voices can be heard.”

While not every Mexican scholar was using LCT for social justice, they were using it to clarify not only their work but their discipline: “Lots of people work in disciplinary literacies, like architectural design or sciences, and particular educational programs – LCT is a way of being able to conceptualise the way their disciplines are organised.”

Dr Doran could not stress enough how popular this SSPS theory was at the pre-conference series of workshops. It has inspired the Mexican scholars he met with: “It was the biggest course there, and then two days in people said they wished they had gone to the course – it’s almost worth doing a course again at the end. It’s exciting, it’s getting bigger, people are excited and want to come to Sydney to learn. Every time we do this somewhere, there are more people, which sparks local centres, and when we return two years later [LCT has] exploded. I want to go back! It’s the Mexican and Chilean scholars who are leading the Spanish translation of LCT terminology.”

This popularity extended to the university itself: “Sydney University is very much the centre of all this. People genuinely want to come here. It’s the centre of the world field.”

In a 2019 STEM for all video showcase presenter Cory Buxton mentions the use of semantic waves and semantic gravity as helpful theoretical tools to help young students bridge the gaps toward STEM education.

An approach to education that is based in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences is being translated from English into four languages at the same time. LCT (short for ‘Legitimation Code Theory’) is a framework for understanding and changing education that examines the forms taken by knowledge, such as its changing complexity. LCT is now the basis of research and classroom practice in at least 44 countries around the world, including over 150 PhDs. The heart of this multidisciplinary community is the LCT Centre for Knowledge-Building in FASS. The Centre Director, Professor Karl Maton, says that:

‘LCT has been taken up rapidly over the past few years, especially in developing countries where scholars and educators are looking for a practical but theoretically robust approach to solving problems in education. But we are excited at the prospect of many more scholars and students being able to read the work in their own languages … and making it their own’.

A Spanish translation of key texts in LCT is underway by a team of Latin American scholars led by Dr Maria Andrea Vazquez Ahumada at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Pueblo. The team includes scholars from Mexico, USA, Spain, Chile and Argentina.

A Vietnamese translation is led by Dr Vinh To, University of Tasmania, and Dr Bao Thai, Australian National University. The volume of key texts is intended as part of a wider project that will involve workshops to train Vietnamese scholars and developing online teaching courses.

A Chinese translation of the founding text of LCT, Maton’s Knowledge and Knowers, by Professor Wang Zhenhua (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) will be published later this year, to be followed by a book in Chinese on LCT by Professor Liu Yi (Shenzhen University). These are part of a series of initiatives aimed at supporting the University’s strategic objective of raising its profile in China, including HDR students visiting the LCT Centre and 18 lectures by Maton at 12 Chinese universities in a year.

A ‘Nordic Network’ of LCT scholars is leading Danish translation, led by Dr Meidell Sigsgaard and Peder Holm-Pederson. Peder Holm-Pederson is hoping to visit the University of Sydney later in 2019 to work on the translation, as well as co-author papers and a grant application.

In addition, various papers are also being translated into Portuguese and, in the near future, Polish and Russian. All these translations are being conducted in collaboration with scholars at the LCT Centre and will be raising the profile of the University of Sydney. These are in addition to four books being published in the next year by Routledge for their new LCT series. On the covers of both those volumes and the translations, FASS will feature prominently as the provenance of the approach. As Maton puts it, ‘It’s already clear that as more scholars and educators engage with LCT in their own language and make it their own, they also wish to connect through the Centre with the University – it’s clearly the heart of the community. The translations will, we hope, raise that profile farther and further’.

The newest thing in China right now is Legitimation Code Theory.

The two FASS Directors of the LCT Centre for Knowledge, Director Professor Karl Maton of SSPS and Deputy Director Professor James R Martin of SLAM, have made LCT the must-know theory in China.

Professor Karl Maton, Director of the LCT Centre for Knowledge-Building and Department of Sociology, has just finished a 10-day tour of China. He gave two keynote speeches, an LCT workshop, a talk, a public lecture, and twelve individual supervisions. During his tour the Chinese LCT reading group, run through WeChat, has almost doubled in size to more than 100 members.

Legitimation Code Theory has its greatest uptake by linguistics scholars. Together with Professor James R Martin, from the University of Sydney’s Dept of Linguistics, Professor Maton spoke at the International Forum of Systemic Functional Linguistics at Peking University. He outlined LCT to a full hall, including how easily LCT can be used with systemic functional linguistics. Professor Martin gave a keynote and closing discussion. The conference was followed by supervisions and discussions with both professors and students.

This was followed by a 4-day workshop at Beijing Normal University, on Legitimation Code Theory exclusively. It also included a lecture at the University of International Business and Economics, on LCT and English teaching. Professor Martin also gave a lecture at the LCT workshop.

After a week in Beijing, Professor Maton moved to Guangzhou for a weekend of talks and supervisions. At the Guangzhou University of Foreign Studies he gave the keynote lecture at the 1^st Chinese Conference on Disciplinary English, in a forum organised by the head of the LCT Forensics reading group, Professor Chuanyou Yuan. Maton also delivered a public lecture at Nanfang College, Guangzhou, on how LCT can help with success in modern learning, living and working.

This ‘legitimarathon’ works in partnership with the introduction of LCT in print in China. Maton will write a paper for a special issue of the Educational Linguistic Studies journal dedicated to LCT scholarship. Educational Linguistic Studies is a new journal dedicated to the research of educational linguistics, published by East China Normal University Press, which includes Professor James R Martin (among other 27 distinguished professors) on the board of editors. A special volume dedicated to the LCT theory and practice in education, especially language education, will be the first one in China dedicated to the research in LCT.

This is the LCT Centre’s first tour to China and a great achievement for the interdisciplinary work of FASS scholars. We look forward to more in the future.

The curriculum of an Engineering Faculty in South Africa is being designed using a theory whose centre is the Faculty of Arts and Social Science. Dr Karin Wolff, an associate member of the LCT Centre for Knowledge-Building in FASS, has been appointed by Stadio Multiversity, a new private university in South Africa with campuses spread across the country, and charged with creating a new Engineering Faculty by 2021. Dr Wolff has already begun research-informed design of an innovative learning environment and relevant suite of engineering qualifications using Legitimation Code Theory or ‘LCT’. This sociological approach to understanding the organising principles of knowledge practice is widely used to explore education, from pre-school to university, across the disciplinary map, from physics to ballet. Its home is the ‘LCT Centre’, in the School of Social and Political Sciences of FASS. Dr Wolff was taught by the Centre’s Director, Professor Karl Maton, and is closely liaising with Centre members to shape the new faculty. Specifically, Dr Wolff and her team are using a concept called the ‘epistemic plane’ to analyse what kinds of knowledge students need to learn and how best to support them as they move between different kinds of engineering knowledge. Moreover, LCT will support students to move between theoretical ideas and applications of engineering in diverse economic, social and technical landscapes across southern Africa and beyond. Indeed, all aspects of the curriculum as well as staff development programs are will be informed by LCT ideas. Dr Wolff will be visiting the LCT Centre during 28–30 November to discuss and develop this exciting project.

LCT is having real social impact in places such as South Africa. LCT, or Legitimation Code Theory, is a framework for understanding and changing knowledge practices in different areas of social life. It allows people to explore the ‘rules of the game’ in different fields and to then develop ways of teaching more people to succeed, or to change those rules.

In South Africa, the rules that many feel need to change are those that continue the segregation of education. The movement exemplified by the hashtag #RhodesMustFall demands that South African tertiary curriculum is decolonised and desegregated, and made available to all. Using LCT, some South African scholars are doing just that.

Dr Hanelie Adendorff, of Stellenbosch University, uses LCT to analyse the science curriculum and to see which methods of decolonising are actually working. LCT is uniquely suited for this kind of analysis, as it explores the very thing that decolonising the curriculum seeks to address – that is, knowledge practices. With such a various and controversial movement, finding a way to achieve decolonisation is both vitally important and very difficult. In the following video-cast, Dr Adendorff explains how LCT can be used to cut a path through the arguments to some real-world solutions.

The video is here.

LCT continues to have a profound impact in South African universities, transforming the education landscape to the benefit of all.

The highlight of the linguistics conference calendar is the International Systemic Functional Linguistics Congress, or ISFC. This year the Congress was held at Boston College, Boston USA with multiple sessions running over five full days, as well as a Pre-Congress Institute for workshops.

Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) was represented in 23 different papers and colloquia from 39 different scholars. Five of these scholars are from the University of Sydney and include LCT Centre Deputy Director Professor James R Martin giving the final plenary session. LCT was shown to be relevant a wide range of subjects covered by linguists, such as education, law, and politeness in social media.

LCT was also represented at the Pre-Congress Institute, with a full workshop attendance of over 30 people of diverse backgrounds and ability. Professor Karl Maton, head of the LCT Centre for Knowledge-Building, also ran 12 individual supervisions with scholars and postgraduate students from around the world. LCT is well-represented in places such as China, South Africa, Australia and Scandinavia, but it relatively new to the USA. “It is the first time anything like this kind of sociology has emerged here,” writes Professor Maton. From this conference, we look forward to much more research from the USA.

The LCT Centre for Knowledge-Building has created a new YouTube channel and is extending its impact via video. Ranging from university lectures and keynote speeches to thoughts on the community of LCT scholars, the YouTube channel has become the guide for how to speak about Legitimation Code Theory.

Some of the most important videos are keynote speeches from LCT2, the Second International Legitimation Code Theory Conference held here at the University of Sydney in 2017. The opening keynote is from Professor Karl Maton, Director of the Centre, defined and clarified Legitimation Code Theory for a broad audience, including the underlying premise of the theory: making the invisible visible. The closing keynote from Professor Chris Winberg, of Cape Town University of Technology, South Africa uses LCT to understand the rapidly changing educational landscape and ‘knowledge-scape’ in post-apartheid South Africa.

The YouTube channel also hosts further work from scholars decolonising the curriculum in South Africa, such as Dr Hanalie Adendorff at Stellenbosch University and Dr Karin Wolff at Cape Town University of Technology.

For students and scholars at the University of Sydney, the YouTube channel also hosts the LCT component of the current interdisciplinary subjects running within the university – a useful guide and update for those involved in the subjects.

Even though the channel has been running for only a few months, it already demonstrates the transformative impact that the LCT Centre is having on educators and researchers around the world.