Dear all

The deadline for submissions for the

JLDHE Special Edition on Academic Literacies

is approaching!

We would very much like to hear from you by 31^st May if you have a paper or other contribution in mind. Please see the full call for papers below.

Apologies for cross-posting

Call for papers: ‘Academic Literacies’

We are excited to invite submissions for a forthcoming ‘Academic Literacies’ special edition of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education (JLDHE), to be published in November 2019 by:

The Global Forum for English for Academic Purposes Professionals (BALEAP); and
The Association for Learning Development in Higher Education.

Focus of the Special Issue

Some twenty years ago, Mary Lea and Brian Street published a highly influential paper in the journal Studies in Higher Education, entitled ‘Student writing in higher education: an academic literacies approach’.

This issue, featuring an introductory article by Ursula Wingate, will mark twenty years since the publication of Lea and Street’s paper and aims to stimulate new interest in this still-neglected approach to the development of teaching and learning for the needs of contemporary higher education. Lea and Street’s paper was based on findings from an ESRC-funded ethnographic study into the expectations and interpretations of academics and students of undergraduate writing tasks. The research reported that the implicit models of student writing underlying much teaching and assessment practice in universities ‘do not adequately take account of the importance of issues of identity and the institutional relationships of power and authority that surround, and are embedded within, diverse student writing practices across the university’ (1998, p. 157). Adopting a practices rather than a skills approach, they argued, avoids assuming that:

The codes and conventions of academia can be taken as given . . . [rather] in order to understand the nature of academic learning, it is important to investigate the understandings of both academic staff and students about their own literacy practices, without making prior assumptions as to which practices are either appropriate or effective. This is particularly important in trying to develop a more complex analysis of what it means to become academically literate. We believe that it is important to realise that meanings are contested amongst the different parties involved: institutions, staff and students. (Lea and Street, 1998, p. 158)

This is a ‘stance towards student writing . . . [which] conceptualises student writing as a socially situated discourse practice which is ideologically inscribed’ (Lillis, 2003, p. 192). Many Learning Developers, teachers of English for Academic Purposes, and others found this stance appealing because it implies both a practical and ethicalpedagogy, validating the meanings students bring initially to their learning experience. This means taking account of students’ prior knowledge and their social, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, rather than assuming that only the academically authorised meanings have value. The emerging conception of a new pedagogy based on academic literacies suggested involving students: as legitimate participants in curriculum development; in the organisation of teaching and learning activities; as well as in subject specific knowledge creation and research in inclusive and socially relevant HEIs.

In spite of its wide appeal and the many citations of Lea and Street’s work in research and published work since the article appeared, examples of widely adopted or sustained academic literacies approaches in practice – especially driven by institutional policies – are still scarce.

Suggested Topics

The editors invite submissions of case studies, theoretical, research-based or opinion papers on the subject of Academic Literacies in 21^st Century HE. The concept of Academic Literacies as proposed by Lea and Street should be salient in all submissions. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Academic writing as a socially situated discourse practice;
The future of the concept of Academic Literacies;
Case studies in the use of an Academic Literacies approach;
Contested meanings of Academic Literacy between and among students and educators;
Academic writing in diverse communities;
Students’ voices in academic writing;
Challenging uncontested disciplinary assumptions;
‘Boundary crossing’ in knowledge creation.

Timeline

We aim to publish the special edition in November 2019.

Key dates are summarised below:

Manuscript submissions due: 31 May 2019
Decisions and feedback on manuscripts: 30 August 2019
Revised manuscripts due: 1 October 2019
Anticipated Publication: November 2019

Manuscript Submission Instructions

When submitting your manuscript, please review the About the Journal page for the journal's section policies, as well as the Author Guidelines. Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting, or if already registered can simply log in and begin the 5 step process.

NOTE: When submitting your manuscript, please include ‘Special Edition on Academic Literacies’ in the title.

Call for Reviewers

If you would like to put yourself forward as a reviewer for the special issue, please Register as a Reviewer and list ‘Academic Literacies’ as a review interest.

Suggested Reading

Archer, A. (2006). A multimodal approach to academic ‘literacies’: Problematising the visual/verbal divide. Language and Education, 20(6), 449-462.

Goodfellow, R. (2005). Academic literacies and e-learning: A critical approach to writing in the online university. International Journal of Educational Research, 43(7-8), 481-494.

Gourlay, L. (2009). Threshold practices: becoming a student through academic literacies. London review of education, 7(2), 181-192.

Lea, M. R., & Street, B. V. (1998). Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies approach. Studies in higher education, 23(2), 157-172.

Lea, M. R., & Street, B. V. (2006). The ‘academic literacies’ model: Theory and applications. Theory into practice, 45(4), 368-377.

Lillis, T., & Scott, M. (2007). Defining academic literacies research: Issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy. Journal of applied linguistics, 4(1), 5-32.

Murray, N., & Nallaya, S. (2016). Embedding academic literacies in university programme curricula: a case study. Studies in Higher Education, 41(7), 1296-1312.

Russell, D. R., Lea, M., Parker, J., Street, B., & Donahue, T. (2009). Exploring notions of genre in ‘academic literacies’ and ‘writing across the curriculum’: Approaches across countries and contexts.

Wingate, U., & Tribble, C. (2012). The best of both worlds? Towards an English for Academic Purposes/Academic Literacies writing pedagogy. Studies in Higher Education, 37(4), 481-495.

Wingate U. (2015) Academic Literacy and Student Diversity. The Case for Inclusive Practice, Multilingual Matters, Bristol.