Chapter 3 Shaping influence of discourses
3.8 Orientations to the teaching of literacy
3.8.3 The academic literacies approach
The academic literacies approach has been termed the social practices model by Ivanic (2004). This Discourse emanates from the New Literacy Studies and sees texts (oral or written, with their linguistic and creative aspects) and the processes of composing them as contingent on the social interactions in which the literacy event is situated. Writing is conceived as a social and ideological practice which aims at
revealing the rhetorical nature of texts. The development of this approach was guided by the research by the NLS scholars such as Street (1984); Brice-Heath, (1983) and Scribner and Cole 1988). Though these early analyses and ethnographies were concerned with literacy in people‘s everyday lives, rather than on research in education or higher education contexts, the field has grown to include studies of higher education contexts (see Lea and Street, 1998; 2000; Lea, 2004;
Lillis, 2001). From these later studies and analyses, the Discourse of academic literacies was coined (Lea and Street, 2000; 1998) initially to explain how discipline based Discourses determined specific sets of practices. The approach to pedagogy that later emanated from this work was concerned with ways of making discipline specific norms and practices more explicit to the students.
Unlike other approaches discussed before, the academic literacies approach was a response to an influx of new students whose primary Discourses differed from those that were preferred in the university (Lillis and Scott, 2007). It also aimed to reform or transform higher education and go beyond the mere teaching of skills (in remedial response to ‗deficit‘ or to solve the ‗literacy crisis‘) to engage with the social, cultural and contextualised nature of writing in the university (Russell, Lea, Parker, Street and Donahue, 2009; Lea, 2008). Key figures in advancing the notion of academic literacy include Lillis and Scott (2007); Lea and Street (2006; 2000; 1998); Street (2005, 2003, 1995, and 1984); Lillis (2003); Barton and Hamilton (2000), and Gee (1996). These scholars argue that literacy is not only context dependant, but is also embedded in ideology (Street, 1984).
Lillis (2003) suggests that while the academic literacies approach is more than the learning of discrete skills, or enculturation into the discourse, the approach builds on the insights gained from the other approaches discussed earlier. This is captured in the following citation:
whilst a ―skills‘ approach to writing, with its implicit model of language as a transparent medium, is often taken as the only, or ―common sense‘ way of thinking about communication/writing in official discourse, the academic literacies frame enables us to see that a skills approach represents one particular, albeit a powerful, way of conceptualising language, literacy and student writing in higher education (Lillis, 2003 p. 195).
Thus, the approach also seeks to bring to the fore another aspect of academic literacy neglected in both the skills and the academic socialisation approaches.
According to Lea and Street, (2000 p. 33), it is the ―understanding of the nature of student writing within institutional practices, power relations and identities‖ that is missing in the skills and academic socialisation approaches. Therefore, an academic literacy approach moves the focus away from how practitioners can help students develop literacy, to how students and teachers of courses on academic literacy understand and participate in institutional and disciplinary literacy practices.
Scholars working within this method are critical of writing courses that purport to teach students a generic type of essay, and they argue for the need to construe writing in terms of epistemology rather than as a cognitive skill (Lea, 2008). This is because what counts as knowledge is viewed differently in different contexts, making it a challenge for the student to switch practices between one context and another and handle the social meanings and identity that each of the contexts presents (Lea and Street, 2000). Furthermore, an ―academic literacies approach sees institutions in which academic practices take place as constituted in, and as sites of discourse and power‖ (Lea and Street, 2000, p. 35). This is because disciplines read and write themselves in certain ways that can potentially frustrate students who come from contexts which are unrelated to the university. This follows that an academic literacies approach puts emphasis on identities and social meanings beyond the discipline (Case and Marshall, 2010). In this way, an academic literacies approach informs how both students and academics talk about literacy. This provides a foundation for a reflective analysis of individual discourses and practices, and the effects of others in the social context. Moreover, understanding how disciplines ‗read and write‘ themselves also allows social agents (students and academics) to question the social practices that they engage in. All of these factors attest to the idea proposed by Street (2001; 1984) that literacies are ideological and contested because what is taught and the manner in which it is taught depends on the nature of the social arrangement in a particular context (Street, 1984).
The key word in this discourse is participation. Students learn by engaging in purposeful and socially constructed literacy events, rather than through explicit teaching. Participation in a discourse community entails the student developing the voice, identity and agency that is commensurate with the practices of that field. If so, to become an engineer denotes acting, speaking, thinking and writing like an
engineer. Naturally, the academic literacies approach is related to theories of situated learning, in particular Lave and Wenger‘s (1991) CoP. The implication of an academic literacies approach is that academics should allow students to learn these practices by participation in authentic disciplinary activities. Simply put, there is no room for generic essay writing in an academic literacies approach.