Academic Literacy and Student Diversity: Evaluating a Curriculum-Integrated Inclusive Practice Intervention in the United Kingdom

Sara Calvo,Pedro Núñez-Cacho Utrilla,Luciano Celini,Andrés Morales,José Manuel Guaita Martínez

doi:10.3390/su12031155

Abstract

The sustainability of universities is based, among other aspects, on their ability to adapt to changes and the needs of students, an increasingly diverse population. In this sense, Academic literacy provision at universities tends to be centralized and to offer language support for general academic literacy purposes rather than language development that responds in a more nuanced way to the particular literacy needs of students’ disciplines. Yet, in recent years, several studies have supported the integration of academic literacy into subject teaching outlining the principles of an inclusive model of academic literacy instruction. This paper draws on a theoretical framework developed by Wingate to evaluate a curriculum-integrated inclusive practice intervention in the United Kingdom with students from a first-year credit-bearing module at Middlesex University Business School. The study used a mixed methods approach that includes a literature review, secondary data, feedback questionnaire and a focus group to evaluate our teaching method and reflect on the collaboration of the team members to develop this inclusive pedagogical approach. The findings suggest that, on the whole, this intervention was perceived by both the module teaching team and students as positive, welcoming and often crucial for supporting undergraduate students into the disciplinary discourse of their subject of study. Yet, recommendations were made with respect to developing better guidelines for subject lecturers on how to deliver the integrated academic literacy as well as the importance of the participation of students, student learning assistants and graduate teaching assistants in the design of the intervention. This study contributes to the literature on inclusive practice intervention and pedagogical approaches to integrating academic literacy into subject teaching for a diverse student population, contributing to the social sustainability of the universities.

Highlights

Overcrowding, globalization, internationalization and the policies related higher education, have developed a complex and diverse student population in different parts of the world [1,2,3]
Of the 166 students who participated in the feedback questionnaire, 77% stated that class and online activities were performed at the correct level
The discussion that arose was related to whether the professors of the subject were skilled enough to teach academic literacy: “I think X’s [LDU staff member] session was good, this leads me to the idea that the integration of writing skills is very important but wonder whether we are the right people to teach that topic, because yes, we have written essays, and we know what is required for academic writing but teaching is different and I wonder if it is better to get X or somebody else like him to run those sessions.”. Another subject lecturer responded to the issue slightly differently by commenting: “To be honest, I am quite happy to carry on like this, to keep the in-class activities because they are first-year students and they may agree that obviously people from the LDU can do it better than us, but these are first-year students and the material is going to be quite basic anyway.”. These findings demonstrate that refining collaborative approaches to integrate academic literacy can be a slow and heuristic process [46]

Summary

Introduction

Overcrowding, globalization, internationalization and the policies related higher education, have developed a complex and diverse student population in different parts of the world [1,2,3] In this environment, the sustainability of universities, understood as their survival in the long term, involves attending to the diversity of their students and being inclusive. In recent years, few studies have supported the integration of academic literacy into the teaching of subjects that describe the principles of an inclusive model of academic literacy instruction [5,6] This is in line with Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that focused on inclusive education skills. Using inclusive policies in the university that allow students from many countries to access a quality university education reinforces equal development between countries

Methods

Results

Conclusion