On being an insider on the outside: new spaces for integrating academic literacies

Abstract

Currently most academic literacy (AL) courses in South Africa are decontextualized and generic, suggesting an autonomous view of literacy. This view is challenged by the new literacy studies, which see literacy as social practices embedded in context. Recent developments in AL research emphasize the need to focus on discipline-specific strategies that embed ALs in disciplines of study, rather than approaches which decontextualize AL. At a tertiary institution in SA, a literacy-as-social-practice approach to ALs was implemented through an institution-wide project focusing on integrating language and content in an attempt to transgress the narrow disciplinary boundaries that characterize the tertiary curriculum. This paper explores how 20 AL practitioners and disciplinary specialists integrated AL teaching into various disciplines. The findings suggest that higher education needs to create discursive spaces for the collaboration of AL practitioners and disciplinary specialists, to facilitate the embedding of AL teaching into disciplines of study.