Academic/scientific literacy and legitimate peripheral participation: an ethnographic study of legal practice communities

Abstract

This study discusses the practices of academic/scientific literacy in specific contexts, in which the focus is on the legitimate peripheral participation of learners in concrete practices of specialists in an office of legal practice in a Law School. At the theoretical level, from a multidisciplinary perspective, we associate several theories, such as the Socio-Cultural theory, regarding the social activity in the learning of a language and how such theory helps in the formation of concepts. We relate it to the construct of the language sociological perspective, from Bakhtin, on the heterogeneous, dialogical and intertextual aspect of the utterances. The research seeks to understand the process of knowledge construction in legal disciplinary contexts, presenting a clipping of data production from an interview with students as well as the legal laboratory coordinators. We present the background of text production and the perception of these participants regarding this social practice.

Keywords

• Academic Literacy
• Legitimate Peripheral Participation
• Legal Practice Communities