The troublesome guidance towards academic literacy.

Abstract

According to research findings, students having graduated from upper secondary school, ought to be sufficiently prepared for meeting the demands of higher education, and for further developing their textual competences within the discipline specific contexts. Nevertheless, according to lecturers and librarians in higher education, students are still in need of guidance in their textual work. The question is what the students need and who are qualified for guiding the students. The overall goal is to promote a meaningful writing process, when assisting the students towards the planned academic learning outcome. The article discusses «Writing courses» as a phenomenon, in light of writing theory and literacy research. According to international research findings, writing in higher education is part of a disciplinary discourse, and disciplinary literacy skills are essential for building textual competences within a specific disciplinary community. Thus the essential factors in guiding students in their writing process, are genre conventions, text organization and argumentation. However, the students also need guidance in searching relevant literature as well as dealing with sources in a correct manner. The article emphasizes the significance of textual knowledge when guiding the students in higher education. However, librarians and lecturers possess different knowledge, and are part of different disciplinary discourses. There is therefore a need for debating what guidance in writing is to be, and how lecturers and librarians can complement each other and together offer constructive and relevant guidance.