Fostering subject lecturers’ commitment and capacity to engage with students’ academic literacies development [Oral Presentation]
Citation
McGrath, L. and Donaghue, L. (2021) 'Fostering subject lecturers’ commitment and capacity to engage with students’ academic literacies development', Higher Education Institutional Research (HEIR) Online Annual Conference: Inclusive institutional research, University of St Andrews, 22-24 September.
Abstract
The academic literacies students require for success are specific to their disciplinary contexts. This means that
subject specialists are best placed to induct students into the specific genres and discourses of their communities.
Yet students’ literacy development is often ‘outsourced’ to generic skills centre or English for Academic Purposes
(EAP) provision, with subject lecturers remaining chiefly preoccupied with content knowledge development.
Academic literacies specialists have long argued for a collaborative approach, yet university structures impede such
collaboration; some subject lecturers are unaware of their value in this process; for some, academic literacies
knowledge is tacit, meaning they struggle to articulate their expectations; and others lack the pedagogical tools. To
address these issues, we draw on an adaptive process advocated by Benzie et al. (2017), instigating a collaboration
between an EAP specialist, an academic developer and subject lecturers with the aim of supporting the subject
lecturers to reach an understanding of the academic literacies required by their discipline and to plan how these can
be taught and developed in a contextualised way that suits them and their students. Through analysis of interviews
and planning meetings with the subject lecturers, teaching materials they developed, and their reflections on the
process, we provide insights into subject lecturers' conceptualisations of academic literacies, their teaching practices
in relation to academic literacies and their experiences of the collaboration. The project thereby illuminates subject
lecturers' relationship to students' academic literacies development and makes recommendations for future
collaborations.