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Academic literacies:
writing in HE
Dr Colleen McKenna
University College
London

2. Session aims
-Explore theories and
approaches to writing
development in HE
-Consider writing development
in participants‟ own contexts
(teaching, departmental)
-Work with case studies which
show how writing can be
made visible and embedded
in curricula
-Think about our own writing
practices

3. Background
• Writing is often not
explicitly addressed in
HE teaching.
• Frequently, the link
between learning a
subject and learning
to write about that
subject is not made.
• The „deficit model‟ still
prevails in much of
HE. 3

4. Writing in the
Disciplines

5. Writing in the Disciplines
(WiD) (1)
• Writing is inseparable from
intellectual development
• Academic writing practices
differ across subjects.
• Writing development
should be situated in the
discipline.
• Writing intensive courses
are part of the curriculum.
• Much emphasis is placed
on feedback and dialogues
between students and
tutors.

6. WID (2)
• Emphasis on process rather
than product
– Writing is part of learning, not
simply the demonstration of
learning
• A WiD approach Involves a
range of written forms
• WiD views students as
joining a conversation

7. WiD and making writing
visible
• Writing „disappears‟ with
socialization in a discipline:
„Writing becomes so embedded in
activity that it tends to disappear as an
object of conscious attention. As it
becomes routine, we forget that we
once had to learn to write in
specialized ways‟. (David Russell)

8. Exercise 1: Free
writing
Think of a time when you had
to engage with a new set of
writing conventions. (eg. new
discipline, new language,
new area of study/work.)
Please write about this, using
a free writing technique, for 3
minutes. (Your piece won‟t
be read aloud.)

9. Academic Literacies

10. Academic Literacies
• UK researchers - Lea and
Street - 1998
– Investigated writing practices
in different disciplines
• social science (new literacies
movement) rather than
humanities
• Highly influential in
approaches to writing
development in UK

11. Models of student
writing – Lea & Street, 2000
• Study skills
– Deficit model
– Student writing as technical skill
• Academic socialisation
– Acculturation of students into
academic discourse
– Writing as transparent medium
• Academic literacies
– Writing as social practice
– Power, identity
– Discourse communities

12. Academic literacies
• Ability to use written
language is not a
single skill
• Literacies can be
developed and
extended by
participating in social
activities which require
their use.
• Entering a new
cultural context will
involve a new phase
of literacy
development
• Developing and
extending ability to
use written language
never ends
• Ivanic 1997

13. Questions for
discussion
1. Where does writing
development features in your
curricula?
2. Where would you situate
your department‟s approach
to student writing in relation
to findings of Lea and
Street?

14. Writing as Social
Practice

15. Writing
• Embodies and constructs knowledge
(see WiD)
• Is always situated or located in specific
contexts
• Involves social and institutional
relationships and constraints
• Is associated with issues of identity.
15

16. Writing as social practice
Academic literacy is not a neutral,
unproblematic skill which students
simply have to acquire, but
multiple, complex and contested
set of social practices which
should be given more explicit and
critical attention by all members of
the academic community.
- Roz Ivanic Writing and Identity

17. Writing and identity
„I‟ve got to identify where I stand in
the [...] framework of the
research and how my research
slots in, and contributes to the
literature […] so I see my
literature review now as more [of]
a finely honed contribution,
developing academic authority,
making a contribution to the
discipline.‟ DSLT student A
„this is my research, I‟ve seen this
in my data, this is relevant, this is
how I’m going to say it.‟ DSLT
student B
(Research with PhD writers, Fergie et al,
2012)

18. Writing exercise : Please take
your piece of writing and make
notes on its history, context and
production…
•What areas of knowledge and
sources were you drawing on?
•How did you set about writing it?
•Where were you when you wrote
it?
•What was it for? Who was it for?
•What happened to it?
•What did you think of it then?
•What do you think of it now?
18

19. What do these ideas
mean for practice(s)?
• Middle ground pedagogy –
Art Young/Sally Mitchell
• Writing and thinking – John
Bean
• Case studies
– Queen Mary
• Modern Languages
– UCL
• Doctorate in Speech and
Language Therapy- DSLT,
Suzanne Beeke

20. Writing process/product
continuum
Open Closed
Generating, Finished Form:
Testing Assessment
Questioning
Private Public
Process Product
Feedback
Redrafting,
Revision Peer review
Underexploited Overused in
in learning? learning?
Sally Mitchell, 2006,
drawing on Art Young

21. Linking writing and
critical thinking
“Writing is both a process of
doing critical thinking and a
product communicating the
results of critical thinking.”
“Homework and other activities for a
course should engage students in
complex thinking about significant
problems. To accomplish this end,
teachers need to structure activities to
help students become personally
engaged with questions addressed by
the course.”
John C. Bean (2001)

22. • Case studies
– Queen Mary
– UCL

23. Case Study 1:
QMUL
… It means writing in the class -
from warm-up exercises („what do
you want to find out today?‟) to
analytical summaries - one
sentence, one paragraph, one
page. It means short homework
assignments - say, a 300-word
account of the seminar, to be
shared in the next session. It
means a writing journal. More
formally, it means two 1000-word
assignments, which count
towards the final assessment - but
here the crucial thing is that these
will be discussed, self-assessed
and peer reviewed and then re-
written… (Fernandez and Marsh,
2002, cited in Mitchell, 2006)

24. Case study 2: UCL
• Module on writing a PhD
integrated into Professional
doctorate in Speech and
Language Therapy (DSLT)
• Runs through the 2nd year
• Regular meetings, writing
tasks, peer and tutor
feedback
• Addresses theoretical and
practical issues
• Located in WiD and Ac Lits
paradigms

25. Case Study 2: course
topics
• Thinking writing and learning journals
• Reading and evaluating
• Note taking
• Communicating with the reader:
writing for different purposes
• Developing an argument
• Purpose, focus and structure of the
literature review
• Style
• Writing and Identity: Putting yourself
into your writing
• Editing

26. • Please look through the case
studies. Which of these
approaches might be
possible in your teaching?
• How might you create space
in your curricula to address
writing and learning?

27. • What interesting writing tasks
are used in your department?

28. Approaches to writing
development in HE
Writing and the discipline (Monroe,
Russell)
Writing as social practice (Lea &
Street)
Writing and identity/voice (Ivanic)
Writing as dialogue; multilingual
authors and politics of anglophone
journals (Lillis)
Thinking through writing (Elbow,
Creme)
Writing and digital literacies
(Goodfellow and Lea)
Writing and power (Clark and
Ivanic; Blommaert )
Academic literacies as an
alternative model for learning and
teaching (Haggis)

29. “The experience of pleasure is interesting.
What both the diversification of writing
practices and the closer attention to
students‟ writing appear to do is to
change the communicative relation
between teacher and student. The
teacher who consciously sets up
opportunities for writing and pays
attention to its purpose and value
moves into a closer engagement with
the learner. . . Students as a result, it
seems, become more capable of
positively surprising their teachers, and
bringing about disruption to the
established pattern of
communication …” -
Sally Mitchell, 2006

30. References
• Bean, John C. (1996) Engaging Ideas: The
Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing,
Critical Thinking and Active Learning in the
Classroom. Jossey-Bass.
• Elbow, P. (1998) Writing without Teachers.
OUP.
• Fernandez and Marsh 2002 cited in
Mitchell, S. & Evison, A. (2006) Exploiting
the potential of writing for educational
change at Queen Mary, University of
London. L. Ganobcsik-Williams (ed.)
Teaching Academic Writing in UK Higher
Education.
• Fergie, G.; Beeke, S.; McKenna, C. and
Creme, P. (to appear 2012) „Designing,
piloting and evaluating a module to
support doctoral research students in
speech and language therapy‟.
International Journal of Teaching and
Learning in Higher Education.

31. References
• Goodfellow, R. and Lea, M (2007)
Challenging e-Learning in the University: a
Literacies Approach. SRHE/Open
University Press.
• Haggis, T. (2003) Constructing images of
ourselves? A critical investigation into
'approaches to learning' research in higher
education, British Educational Research
Journal, 34 (1) pp.89-104.
• 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. & Stierer, B. (2000) Student
Writing in Higher Education: New
Contexts. Buckingham: Open University
Press/SRHE.

32. References
• Mitchell, S. & Evison, A. (2006) Exploiting
the potential of writing for educational
change at Queen Mary, University of
London. L. Ganobcsik-Williams (ed.)
Teaching Academic Writing in UK Higher
Education.
• Monroe, J. (2006) Local Knowledges,
Local Practices: Writing in the Disciplines
at Cornell. Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press.
• David Russel l(2005) Institute of
Education. "Writing in the Disciplines and
'the institutional practice of mystery.'"
Institute of Education, Universityof London.
London, November 2005.

33. References
• Russell, David R.; Lea, Mary; Parker, Jan;
Street, Brian and Donahue, Tiane (2009).
Exploring notions of genre in 'academic
literacies' and 'writing across the
curriculum': approaches across countries
and contexts. In: Bazerman, Charles;
Bonini, Adair and Figueiredo, Débora eds.
Genre in a Changing World. Perspectives
on Writing. Colorado: WAC
Clearinghouse/Parlor Press, pp. 459–491.
• Thinking Writing -
http://www.thinkingwriting.qmul.ac.uk/
• Young , Art (1999) Teaching Writing
Across the Curriculum, Third Edition.
Prentice Hall Resources for Writing, Upper
Saddle River, NJ,