Developing academic literacies through understanding the nature of disciplinary knowledge

Sherran Clarence,Sioux Mckenna

doi:10.18546/lre.15.1.04

Abstract

Much academic development work that is framed by academic literacies, especially that focused on writing, is concerned with disciplinary conventions and knowledges: conceptual, practical, and procedural. This paper argues, however, that academic literacies work tends to conflate literacy practices with disciplinary knowledge structures, thus obscuring the structures from which these practices emanate. This paper demonstrates how theoretical and analytical tools for conceptualizing disciplinary knowledge structures can connect these with academic literacies development work. Using recent studies that combine academic literacies and theories of knowledge in novel ways, this paper will show that understanding the knowledge structures of different disciplines can enable academic developers to build a stronger body of practice. This will enable academic developers working within disciplinary contexts to more ably speak to the nature of coming to know in higher education.

Highlights

In 2007 Theresa Lillis and Mary Scott published a seminal paper in the field of academic literacies research, arguing that it was a critical field of inquiry, and that it had both a recognizable epistemology – that of literacy as a social practice – and an ideology – that of transformation
This paper has argued that academic literacies development work provides an overt focus on texts as social practices, situated within value-laden, ideologically shaped contexts within higher education and created by students who may or may not find these contexts congruent with prior home and school backgrounds (McKenna, 2004)
Bringing a focus on the structure of knowledge to this academic literacies approach sharpens the ability of academic literacies development work to make sense of the ways in which the practices of the academy emerge from the nature of specific disciplines

Summary

Introduction

In 2007 Theresa Lillis and Mary Scott published a seminal paper in the field of academic literacies research, arguing that it was a critical field of inquiry, and that it had both a recognizable epistemology – that of literacy as a social practice – and an ideology – that of transformation. Cecilia Jacobs (2013) draws on Lillis and Scott’s argument to argue for the need to find a shared ontology for academic literacies, to bring what is often a fragmented and segmentalized field of research and practice into closer connection She postulates that this may enable cumulative building of the knowledge we have generated through both practice and research across local and global contexts. To develop a shared ontology, disciplinary knowledge structures and characteristics should be centred in conversations about what being academically ‘literate’ is in different contexts within universities This would allow academic literacies development work to be done in and across the disciplines in ways that build an increasingly shared basis for future research and practice. Knowledge itself acts to shape and determine what counts as context, and how one needs to read, write, think, and act within such contexts.seeing knowledge structures as distinct from, but always connected to, processes of knowing or producing knowledge is an important part of academic literacies development work

Academic literacies research and practice

Building a bridge

Conclusion

Notes on the contributors

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