Threshold to discipline discourse: An English literature first year limen into advanced literacy

Abstract

The heroes of mythology and fantasy are typically faced with plot progressions that are ‘troublesome, challenging, [and] transformative’. Yet these words from Wisker and Robinson (2009, p. 318) are descriptive not of mythology’s generic formula but of the conceptual thresholds confronting novice scholars negotiating academic literacy. The challenges to heroes often entail their ’humbling’ as they mature; yet this word describes the learning processes that enable ’critical moments of irreversible conceptual transformation’ (Meyer & Land 2005, p. 376). The development of advanced literacy, ’a social process of enculturalisation into the values and practices of specialist communities’ (Schleppegrell, 2002, p. 10) enables such transformation. This paper investigates a pedagogy enabling the development of advanced literacy. Any course for first year students must provide a threshold into the discipline. Like the liminal spaces within literature — the Erceldoune forest where True Thomas accesses a rule-bound yet enabling fairy world, for example — the liminal first year course needs to give ready access and to effectively link different cultures of the diverse entrants with those of academia.