Achieving transformation through collaboration: the role of academic literacies

Abstract

The academic literacies model has been transformative in the sense that it offered a new perspective for research into students' writing as well as pedagogic principles that have influenced writing practitioners in many contexts. In this paper I discuss why a more wide-ranging transformation is needed to provide adequate academic literacy support to all students. This transformation would entail the integration of academic literacy instruction into study programmes, delivered as part of subject lecturers’ regular teaching and assessment practices. This would require collaboration between writing/learning development practitioners and subject lecturers, which in turn would need to be facilitated by changes in institutional policies and practices. I argue that the academic literacies model provides both the rationale and the principles for this kind of transformation.

Keywords

• academic literacy instruction
• student support
• higher education policies and practices
• genre approaches.