Developing academic literacies through understanding the nature of disciplinary knowledge

Much academic development work that is framed by academic literacies, especially that focused on writing, is concerned with disciplinary conventions and knowledges: conceptual, practical, and procedural. This paper argues, however, that academic literacies work tends to conflate literacy practices...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sherran Clarence, Sioux McKenna
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: UCL Press 2017-02-01
Series:London Review of Education
Online Access:https://www.scienceopen.com/document?vid=063f987f-6725-4cea-bab9-04c433b3de90
Description
Summary:Much academic development work that is framed by academic literacies, especially that focused on writing, is concerned with disciplinary conventions and knowledges: conceptual, practical, and procedural. This paper argues, however, that academic literacies work tends to conflate literacy practices with disciplinary knowledge structures, thus obscuring the structures from which these practices emanate. This paper demonstrates how theoretical and analytical tools for conceptualizing disciplinary knowledge structures can connect these with academic literacies development work. Using recent studies that combine academic literacies and theories of knowledge in novel ways, this paper will show that understanding the knowledge structures of different disciplines can enable academic developers to build a stronger body of practice. This will enable academic developers working within disciplinary contexts to more ably speak to the nature of coming to know in higher education.
ISSN:1474-8479