Creating conditions for working collaboratively in discipline-based writing at a South African university

Abstract

Students' academic literacy practices frequently do not prepare them for, or articulate with, the ways of thinking and practising within their chosen academic disciplines (Boughey, 2010;Clarence, 2010;Wingate & Tribble, 2012). There has been much debate about who should be responsible for responding to this 'articulation gap' (Bitzer, 2009) and how this should be done. In this paper, we posit the importance of working with students in the disciplines and draw on Lillis and Scott's (2007) notion of transformative writing spaces to engage critically with disciplinary culture, norms and practices. We critique 'remedial' approaches to tertiary writing development that treat the articulation gap as a skills deficit that can be overcome by teaching a set of requisite academic literacy skills. We also suggest that increased collaboration between writing centres and discipline-based academic staff has helped to shift the deficit conception to more socially constructed approaches to writing development. We explore conditions in two discipline-specific writing centres that show how writing can be used as a way of engaging all students with core course concepts and in which writing development has been embedded within mainstream, substantive modules in order to facilitate epistemological access (Morrow, 2007) to both disciplinary content and writing in the discourse.

The liminal space: academic literacies practitioners’ construction of professional identity in the betwixt and between

“…At many institutions, ALD is often misunderstood as being solely remedial and only aimed at students who are deemed 'at risk' in one way or another (Cottrell, 2019;Wingate, 2006). This remedial view of ALD is despite calls from several scholars (see Bond, 2020;Clarence, 2011;Dison and Moore, 2019;Jacobs, 2005Jacobs, , 2007Jacobs, , 2010Turner, 2011;Wingate and Tribble, 2012) for academic literacies practitioners (ALPs) to work collaboratively with other academics in integrating ALD work into mainstream curricula. Indeed, as Jacobs (2005: 870) argues, 'higher education [needs] to create discursive spaces for the collaboration of academic literacy practitioners and lecturers, to facilitate the embedding of academic literacy teaching into disciplines of study'.…”

Using scaffolding academic literacy practices in tertiary classrooms: A South African case study

“…If we understand academic literacies as a set of social practices which are contested and socially constructed, this means that literacy practices are best learned within the discipline, as disciplines have different ways of engaging with texts and of constructing knowledge (Lea & Street, 2006;Clarence & McKenna, 2017). This can happen when academic literacy specialists work closely with academics to make these disciplinary practices and conventions explicit (Jacobs, 2013;Winberg, et al, 2010;Dison & Moore, 2019); another option is for academics to learn how to embed the academic literacies work in their own teaching (Rose, 2017a). This practice is not discussed much in the South African literature.…”

Using scaffolding academic literacy practices in tertiary classrooms: A South African case study

“…If we understand academic literacies as a set of social practices which are contested and socially constructed, this means that literacy practices are best learned within the discipline, as disciplines have different ways of engaging with texts and of constructing knowledge (Lea & Street, 2006;Clarence & McKenna, 2017). This can happen when academic literacy specialists work closely with academics to make these disciplinary practices and conventions explicit (Jacobs, 2013;Winberg, et al, 2010;Dison & Moore, 2019); another option is for academics to learn how to embed the academic literacies work in their own teaching (Rose, 2017a). This practice is not discussed much in the South African literature.…”