Academic Literacies

Internationally, there has been increasing emphasis on the teaching of the academic literacies, particularly reading and writing, in higher education institutions. However, recent research is highlighting the need for more explicit teaching of multimodal forms of communication, such as the visual literacies, in undergraduate courses in a wide range of disciplines such as the sciences, engineering and architecture. The research recognises that this is an area of academic literacy teaching that has often been neglected. This article draws on the findings of a research project which set out to understand both the multimodal literacy requirements and current practices in the teaching of these literacies in the earth and life sciences at a South African university. Three key themes are discussed: learning to see like a scientist, the importance of learning by switching between and integrating different modes of representation and teaching the conventions of representation in the sciences. The conclusion proposes ways for academic developers to work with staff to develop more explicit ways of teaching the visual literacies.

This article describes, analyses, and reflects on the conceptualisation and establishment of a Writing Lab at a South African university's Faculty of Health Sciences. Drawing on the theoretical framework of New Literacy Studies, the academic literacies approach, and South African writing centre scholarship, the analysis revealed that the conceptualisation of the Writing Lab was primarily informed by the academic socialisation model but has since shifted to encompass a more transformative ideology; opening spaces where students' own knowledges and literacies practices could contribute to new forms of thinking and representation in the academy. We argue that the shift was facilitated by collaboration with disciplinary lecturers, the faculty's Primary Health Care ethos, and the Writing Lab's engagement with a large postgraduate population, leading to the Writing Lab's participation in new forms of knowledge-building that could contribute to the creation of decolonised spaces and shifts in institutional culture.

This article is built around an art-piece which depicts a particular phenomenon in physics concerning the process of transition and transformation; in other words, change. In itself the art-piece is an example of 'regenring' (English 2011) in that it represents information that has previously been produced in other genres (scientific papers, mathematical formulae) by producing it using a different genre, a mixed media collaged picture displayed on a wall. In keeping with the theme of transformation and change, the article uses four different genres in discussing the piece: account of what is observed, interview with the maker of the piece, reflection-inaction shown in italics and reflection-on-action shown in boxes , and in so doing explores, through these different lenses, how the art-piece helps or hinders the unpacking of the science that it represents. It also provides a multilayered reflection on the theme of change itself since every aspect of this article, the topic, the art-piece, the physics and the textual activity of how the discussion is represented, revolves around representing and observing through different lenses, regenring and transformation. Fiona English is currently an Honorary Senior Research Associate in the Centre for Applied Linguistics at the UCL Institute of Education, where she obtained her PhD. She has been working in the field of language, communication and linguistics for many years in both research and teaching and has published books, chapters and articles in this area. Her first book (English, F., 2011, Student Writing and Genre: Reconfiguring academic knowledge, Bloomsbury) introduces the concept of 'regenring' and, by showing how different genres afford new opportunities for student learning, proposes 'regenring' as an enabling resource with which students can adopt different perspectives, develop new insights and see new relevance in their disciplinary work. Her collaboration with Alke Gröppel-Wegener on writing in creative practice stems from a serendipitous meeting at a conference in Ireland.

Resumo: Este trabalho tem como objetivo principal discutir os lugares da escrita na pós-graduação brasileira. Para isso, realiza uma análise de postagens de pós-graduandos que relatam experiências com esse processo na rede social Facebook. O estudo guia-se pelos pressupostos dos letramentos (STREET, 1995; GEE, 2001), com foco na proposta de estudo dos letramentos acadêmicos no contexto brasileiro (FISCHER, 2010; FIAD, 2011). Metodologicamente, a análise guia-se pelo paradigma indiciário (GINZBURG, 1986), reconhecendo os dados de pesquisa como autenticamente dialógicos (BAKHTIN, 2011). Como resultado, o trabalho indica que há uma percepção complexa acerca da escrita na pós-graduação brasileira, associando-a como prática que transforma as formas com as quais o pós-graduando enxerga a si e suas relações de trabalho nesta esfera. Palavras-chave: Escrita; Pós-graduação; Letramentos acadêmicos. Title: Writing experiences in Brazilian graduate courses: proposing a dialogue with academic literacies Abstract: This paper aims at discussing the places of writing in the Brazilian graduate courses. To do so, it develops an analysis of graduate students' posts about their experiences with this process in the Facebook social network. The study is guided by literacy studies (STREET, 1995; GEE, 2001), focusing on the academic literacy investigation proposals in the Brazilian context (FISCHER, 2010; FIAD, 2011). Methodologically, the analysis is guided by the indiciary paradigm (GINZBURG, 1986), recognizing the research data as authentically dialogical (BAKHTIN, 2011). As a result, the study indicates that there is a complex perception about writing in the Brazilian graduate courses, relating it as a practice that transforms the ways the graduate sees him/herself and his/her working relationships in this place.

This study investigates academic transition to post-graduate level study in UK design contexts. It uses the ‘Mastersness’ framework developed by QAA Scotland to question to what degree previous cultures of learning have prepared learners to engage in MA level study, or alternatively, in which specific areas they need explicit instruction to ease academic transition. Qualitative data were collected through observation, in-depth interviews, and focus groups. Thematic analysis and problem tree modeling were used to identify a causal account of academic transition issues. The study discovered that the perceived distance from UK cultures of learning can impair academic transition, particularly for students of Confucian heritage education systems. This was largely due to difficulties in understanding the epistemological requirements of UK design research, leading to an intolerance of the unpredictability inherent in the process. Recommendations include greater institutional explicitness of the rationale and application of design thinking in UK pedagogic contexts, together with facilitating the critical examination of genre examples to show how design thinking is embedded in texts.

The normative understanding of academic literacy relates mainly to textual reading and writing. While texts might well be dominant, other literacies such as numeracy and visual literacy are equally dominant in higher education studies. The context of academic literacy is here located within five first-year diploma subjects where visual literacy and numeracy emerged as dominant modalities for subject content representation. Lecturers’ perceptions of reading requirements for their respective subjects and a review of summative assessments provided the data for content analysis using academic literacy specifications as data codes. Literature on academic literacies and disciplinary literacies provided the framework for data analysis and discussion. The findings revealed a constellation of textual-visual-numeracy modalities that necessitated modal shifts in translating and transforming subject content across modalities. This study foregrounds the need to support first-year students with discourse analysis of visual and non-literal representations to provide epistemological access to the field of practice.

This paper explores how the textual voice in an online medical research article engages and positions itself with respect to other voices in the communicative context. Taking a systemic functional, social semiotic approach, I examine engagement from a number of complementary perspectives: intersemiotically, with regard to the deployment and integration of visual and verbal resources; interstratally, from the levels of (lexico-)grammar ('from below') and genre and ideology ('from above'); and logogenetically, as the text unfolds. The paper provides an account of the meaning potential of the text with regard to engagement, by identifying some of the prompts that allow for different possible readings and positionings. Those prompts suggest a text that variously opens and closes the space for dialogic alternatives as the textual voice seeks to align the reader with various positions construed in the text. I argue that some of those positionings cannot be fully appreciated without examining the text from a multimodal/multisemiotic perspective. Multisemiotic analysis is an essential part of trying to understand how experts engage through specialized genres, and the insights gained from such analyses could have important implications for those involved in literacies and learning.

"Reading the sentences of the paper without imagining the reader's objections is like watching only one player's strokes in the tennis final. They just appear as so many empty gestures." (Latour 1987, 46)

Ante el gran desafío de los deficientes niveles de literacidad y numeracidad en Chile, la Facultad de Educación de la Universidad Santo Tomás impulsó desde el año 2011 un modelo anidado o transversal de desarrollo de estas habilidades. El presente artículo detalla los resultados en torno al significado de esta estrategia para sus estudiantes y académicos, que se sustanciaron a través de grupos focales, analizados a través de categorización y triangulación. Los hallazgos sustentan la relevancia de estas habilidades en la profesión, su presencia en las actividades prácticas y su anidamiento en contextos concretos, lo que reduce la visibilidad de las actividades de apoyo. Futuras investigaciones debieran abordar el desarrollo de la numeracidad académica, y las literacidades profesionales.

This thesis addresses the practical problem of developing effective writing pedagogy to support doctoral candidates. It does this by focusing on the ways knowledge is organised in dissertations and the strategies used to enact these practices in writing. In doing so, the thesis offers an alternative perspective on knowledge practices in doctoral dissertations that goes beyond distinguishing between knowledge ‘types’ and simple descriptive categories of disciplines (e.g. ‘hard’ vs. ‘soft’). The study shows how this alternative perspective can see knowledge, analyse knowledge and, importantly, reveal the organising principles of knowledge; and from this it develops tools and descriptions that uncover generalizable strategies for knowledge-building oriented toward doctoral-writing pedagogy.

Drawing on Legitimation Code Theory the thesis explores 25 exemplary doctoral dissertations across a range of subject areas in the humanities and social sciences. Through analyses at multiple levels of granularity – from whole dissertations, to individual sections and fine- grained phases of writing – it develops a set of conceptual tools for analysing knowledge in writing and demonstrates how such tools can be used to unpack the knowledge work involved in dissertations.

Through the dimension of Specialization, five ‘core components’ of dissertations are distinguished that reveal a set of strategies candidates use to foreground different kinds of knowledge. These strategies point to the bases of the claims being made, revealing one aspect of the ‘rules of the game’ underpinning dissertation writing. These ‘rules’ are not tied to any one discipline; rather, the strategies are organised according to the kind of knowledge-claim enacted. Drawing on the dimension of Semantics, key strategies for shifting the context- dependence and complexity of knowledge are explored that show how students construct findings in exemplary ways. To orient toward pedagogy, the strategies are then turned back onto the dissertations to demonstrate their utility for analysing texts to reveal key pedagogic insights.

The framework developed in this thesis provides an entry point for developing theoretically sophisticated but empirically-grounded tools with pedagogic potential for analysing knowledge practices in doctoral writing.

Tener un buen desempeño académico y un tránsito adecuado
del colegio a la universidad depende, en gran medida, de
aprender a escribir, leer y argumentar dentro de determinados
géneros y estilos académicos. ¿Qué actividades ayudan a enriquecer
la argumentación oral y escrita? ¿Qué características
generales tiene un ensayo en la universidad? ¿Qué consejos son
importantes para escribir mejor ese tipo de texto, tan frecuente
en la academia? ¿Cómo se realiza una reseña crítica y qué se
espera generalmente de ella? ¿Cómo leer mejor los textos que
se asignan en clase y aprovechar más las explicaciones de los
profesores? Para ayudar a responder preguntas como las anteriores,
este libro propone unas estrategias de fortalecimiento y
apoyo para la lectura crítica y la habilidad argumentativa que
pueden ser útiles para estudiantes y profesores tanto dentro
como fuera del salón de clases.
Por esta razón, Aprender a escribir, leer y argumentar en la
universidad. Orientaciones para géneros académicos representa
tanto una guía introductoria como un texto de consulta que
puede orientar a los estudiantes alrededor de las consideraciones
prácticas de los géneros discursivos que se trabajan en la
academia. Su objetivo es asentar unas bases en los procesos de
lectura, escritura y argumentación que permitan darle mayor
autonomía a los estudiantes durante su vida universitaria y que
les ayuden a construir un mejor futuro profesional.

Academic language and learning advisers are employed by many Australasian universities to help students develop their academic literacies, that is, the knowledge and skills needed to be successful at university both within and beyond disciplinary contexts. At the Academic Skills and Learning Centre of the Australian National University, a team of Learning Advisers spend a third of their time consulting students individually, often about a piece of writing to be submitted for assessment. There is much concern in the literature about the pedagogical effectiveness of the one-to-one session, yet little that examines it and its discourses as sites of identity genesis. This study examines Advisers’ post-consultation notes, and through a community of practice approach to workplace discourse finds that discussion of ‘what we do and don’t do’ is the nexus at which Advisers negotiate the discourses of their organization, define boundaries around their work, and develop their professional identities.

While the importance of academic language and literacies in
students’ meaningful participation in higher education has been
well-explored, studies have focused on writing rather than
reading. There has been a significant silence in the literature
around what constitutes reading in higher education, the
sociocultural complexities of reader engagement with text, and
contemporary understandings of situated experiences regarding
reading practices in the disciplines, especially for traditionally
under-represented student groups. Scholarly interest in academic
literacies, and reading in particular, has significant implications for
the equity and widening participation agenda. To this end this
article critically engages with research examining reading in
tertiary education and describes a scoping study of scholarly work
at the intersection of three domains: academic literacies, reading
studies, and widening participation and equity in higher
education. In asking questions of these three overlapping fields of
inquiry, we map trends in existing academic literature, and argue
for a research agenda that examines the experiences, perceptions
and enactments of academic reading in the context of South
African and Australian efforts to widen participation to higher
education.

Service learning (SL) presents apposite opportunities for students to share with and learn from businesses for mutually beneficial development and experience. This article focuses on a SL project conducted by undergraduate students in South Africa, to devise advertising and marketing strategies for community businesses. The reciprocity of benefits for participants, as well as ontological aspects of student learning were explored. Questionnaires administered to three student cohorts and feedback from business owners were subjected to content analysis. Theoretical underpinnings of SL as work-integrated learning (WIL) modality and the curriculum approach of knowing, doing and being, framed this study. The findings revealed that a well-structured SL project is a valuable learning experience with permeable boundaries between knowledge and practice. This article focuses on, firstly, the importance of relating classroom learning to real world experience; secondly, the emergent ontological perspectives of SL, and thirdly, empowering community businesses by sharing knowledge and skills to foster entrepreneurial ideals.

Case studies often do not receive due recognition as a work-integrated learning (WIL)modality for reading development. This article focuses on the case study as a reading strategy to draw on world of work experience as a means of acculturation to professional knowledge and
practice. The purpose of this research project was to determine whether case studies used at first and third year levels in a Marketing diploma achieved the desired objective of introducing students to workplace dynamics. The findings from student questionnaires revealed that although case studies seemed to be effective in merging the world of work with conceptual knowledge of the field of study, constructing meaning seemed to be illusive for many students due to ineffective reading strategies and lack of textual comprehension. For the lecturer, case studies were affordances for learning, but student feedback suggests that case studies might have been missed opportunities for engagement
due to minimal interaction with the texts to elicit depth of understanding. This article foregrounds theneed for lecturers to incorporate interactive reading strategies aligned with using case studies as a pedagogy for reading development to ensure that both students and lecturers share a common understanding of purpose, approach and intended learning experience.

Lecturers' teaching practices often leave indelible impressions on students' learning development. Students tend to respond to expectations that lecturers set, which might limit or extend the boundaries of learning. Given that not all students might access higher education with the requisite level of academic readiness to respond to the academic demands of first year studies, lecturers' academic literacy requirements and practices contribute to setting the tone for reading and writing in higher education. This article draws on lecturers' expectations of writing practices for the first-year subjects they teach to explore how academic literacy development for higher education might be supported or limited. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with lecturers to gain insight into writing skills and practices required for their respective subjects. Written summative assessments were analysed to determine whether lecturers' perspectives of writing aligned with assessment expectations. This study provides support for the contention that lecturers' play a significant role in nurturing or limiting students' academic writing development. The findings suggest that academic writing practices that lecturers espouse have ramifications for how students access and articulate knowledge not only at first year level, but for vertical progression through the years of study.

Статья принята к публикации в Вестнике Томского университета, серия Филология УДК 81'33 (прикладная лингвистика), 81'27 (социолингвистика) Н. В. Смирнова И. Ю. Щемелева "It's not that I am researching it, it's just that I am interested in it": writing a research proposal in English as a social practice Problem statement and the goal of the study. In our study we address the problem of how to study socially bound aspects of a written text production and make an attempt to explore non-discursive aspects of research proposal genre production. We explore how Russian students produce an English-medium research proposal text in social sciences and humanities and raise the following empirical research questions: 1. What resources are important for research proposal production and do students have access to them? 2. What literacy brokers influence text production and why? 3. How do students perceive the research proposal genre and what values influence their writing practices? Methodological approach. Our key methodological orientation is that academic writing is a type of social practice and is rooted in critical discourse and academic literacies theories. Literacy is local and exploration of writing practices in a particular context brings insights into key aspects of a written text production as well as advances our understanding of the social nature of writing. We draw on the idea that any research text production is significantly influenced by contextual aspects and is not produced individually. We employed semi-structured interviews with senior students (in two fields of knowledge, Management and Eastern studies) to learn about how and why they produced the research proposals and who took part in that process. In our study, interview is «a narrative of a lived identity» as it renders beliefs and values of the writer, who becomes an equal participant of the research as the process of meaning-making. Results. The key findings of our study are the following. Writing as a social practice is linked to access to resources. We found out that the English language proficiency is important for the research proposal production but is not the primary resource. Access to research data is crucial for producing a research proposal text. Students compensate this resource by "reinventing the university" or by seeking employment when there is a lack of access to data. Lack of time also significantly impedes writing practices of students. The main literacy brokers are the scientific supervisor, academic English instructor and group mates of students and their roles vary significantly in the process of research proposal production. Students see the research proposal genre as a descriptive one and misinterpret its function in the given educational context. Finally, writers' values significantly influence English-medium text production of the particular genre.