Integrating literacy practices in business education: pedagogic intentions for teacher training

Abstract

The importance of literacy and literacy practices as an instrument of conceptual and cognitive development is well documented. Reading and writing skills have an integral role in higher education, yet the application of these skills is normally the domain of language specialists or academic support programmes and not the focus of subject lecturers. This article reports on business education student teachers’ reflections of a small-scale ‘read-talk-write’ project. I argue that introducing a disciplinary literacy component in business education may infuse a critical-reflective approach in business education teacher training to encourage habits of reading, writing, speaking and reasoning with the intention to cascade it to school level. Data was collected by means of open-ended survey questions using content analysis. Findings suggest that content literacy instruction in business education can be applied by introducing deliberate and consistent literacy practices for students to become critically aware of and confident in interrogating disciplinary content in business.

Keywords

• Business education
• content literacy
• disciplinary literacy
• critical literacy
• literacy practice