Mary R. Lea

The "Academic Literacies" Model: Theory and Applications

Although the term academic literacies was originally developed with regard to the study of literacies in higher education and the university, the concept also applies to K–12 education. An academic literacies perspective treats reading and writing as social practices that vary with context, culture, and genre (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Street, 1984, 1995). The literacy practices of academic disciplines can be viewed as varied social practices associated with different communities. In addition, an academic literacies perspective also takes account of literacies not directly associated with subjects and disciplines, but with broader institutional discourses and genres. From the student point of view, a dominant feature of academic literacy practices is the requirement to switch their writing styles and genres between one setting and another, to deploy a repertoire of literacy practices appropriate to each setting, and to handle the social meanings and identities that each evokes.

Digital literacies in higher education: exploring textual and technological practice

Concerns are frequently raised about undergraduates being so immersed in web‐based technologies in their broader lives that they have difficulties engaging in more conventional study practices, such as academic reading and writing essays. The research reported on here examines this issue through a literacies lens. The project findings illustrate the complex interrelationship between literacies and technologies with the potential to disrupt conventional academic literacy practices. However, they also offer strong evidence for students’ ongoing reliance on the authority of the institution when it comes to accessing and utilising web‐based resources for their assignments. The authors suggest that, in order to understand the changes that are taking place for learners in today’s higher education, more attention needs to be paid to textual practice around learning and less to the technologies and their applications.

Opportunity and e‐quality: Intercultural and linguistic issues in global online learning

In this paper we investigate some of the ways that cultural and linguistic differences manifest themselves in global online learning environments. We start from the position that the providers of educational opportunity across national and geographic boundaries have a responsibility to consider how their materials and practices can help to promote cross‐cultural understanding. We discuss some of the negative implications of taking a ‘centre and periphery’ view of participants in an internationally‐marketed online MA program, but offer some data on student performance to justify using that perspective to initiate a more in‐depth investigation of their experience of cross‐cultural interaction during the courses. We present some of the outcomes of a qualitative study of student talk about these issues, and identify the topics of ‘cultural otherness’, ‘perceptions of globality’, ‘linguistic difference’, and ‘academic convention’ as focal constructs around which their experiences could be recounted. We discuss how to interpret these narratives, in terms of our aim of promoting cross‐cultural understanding through online education, and also in terms of action needed to address perceived inequalities in the educational opportunity offered by the courses as they stand.

Supporting Writing for Assessment in Online Learning.

This article explores some specific issues involved in online learning and assessment. It draws on data from a postgraduate course for professional educators, delivered globally online, and highlights the relationship between students’ online discussion and their written assessed work, arguing that we need to focus on both of these in terms of the writing demands they make on students. In so doing it utilizes a theoretical framework which conceptualizes writing as contextualized social practice. The paper illustrates the complexity of the rhetorical demands being made on students in these new environments of teaching and learning and, in focusing on writing, complements present approaches to online learning which have, to date, tended towards collaborative and constructivist perspectives. The article highlights the relationship between pedagogy, technology and assessment. It concludes with a discussion of the design of an online writing resource to support student writers on this particular masters programme.

Changing academic identities in changing academic workplaces: learning from academics’ everyday professional writing practices

In this article we examine issues of academic identity through the lens of academics’ everyday workplace writing, offering a complementary perspective to those already evident in the higher education research literature. Motivated by an interest in the relationship between routine writing and aspects of professional practice, we draw on data from interviews with 30 academics across three different universities. Our discussion is illustrated with excerpts from interview data, and is organised around three emerging themes: ‘reconstructing academic identities in a shifting academic workplace’, ‘considering new articulations of disciplinarity’, and ‘moving on from the golden age’. We conclude that the reconstruction of academic identities, through engagement with established and emerging workplace documents, may well be enabling academics to build new identities within the changing university.

Reclaiming literacies: competing textual practices in a digital higher education

This essay examines the implications of the ubiquitous use of the term ‘digital literacies’ in higher education and its increasing alignment with institutional and organisational imperatives. It suggests that the term has been stripped of its provenance and association with disciplinary knowledge production and textual practice. Instead it is called into service rhetorically in order to promote competency-based agendas both in and outside the academy. The piece also points to a tendency to position teachers in deficit with regard to their technological capabilities and pay scant attention to their own disciplinary and scholarly practices in a digital world. It concludes that there is a case for building on established theoretical and conceptual frameworks from literacy studies if we wish to integrate advantages of the digital landscape with thoughtful teaching practice.