Academic literacies research is commonly described by its focus on student writing in higher education. Typically the contextual focus of this research has been located within the traditional university setting where writing and...
moreAcademic literacies research is commonly described by its focus on student writing in higher education. Typically the contextual focus of this research has been located within the traditional university setting where writing and particularly essay writing has come to be the primary mechanism through which students are required to demonstrate their disciplinary learning. However, the reach of the academic literacies perspective has continually extended beyond this original research setting. Researchers working in the vocational higher education and further education sectors have increasingly relied on this framework to explore and understand student writing and learning (Coleman, 2007, 2012, 2013, forthcoming; Jacobs,2005; Ivanič & Satchwell, 2007; Michelle et al,2000; Satchwell & Ivanič, 2007;). Recognising this significant shift in its site of application, Lea has persuasively argued that ‘Academic literacies has now moved beyond its initial concern with undergraduate writing practices to embrace a diverse range of contexts in and around the academy’ (2012:108). In my research I have brought an academic literacies perspective to bear on vocational academic contexts where written assessments, like essays, are less prominent and learning is typically demonstrated through the creation of a range of different visual, audio-visual, multimodal and digital texts.
The contemporary higher education landscape has been significantly affected by the impact of two general trends, the role and impact of the professions and the increased recognition given to multimodal texts and resources. As a result the nature and forms of texts associated with everyday teaching and learning practices have changed. Thesen and van Pletzen (2006) assert that meaning and learning in higher education are increasingly being expressed through literacies and textual forms other than written language. While Ivanič and Lea (2006) suggest that a consequence of the expansion of vocational and professional courses in higher education has been the reframing of what counts as knowledge in the academy. Students are therefore being required to demonstrate this knowledge through a diverse range of written and non-written assignment texts (Lea, 2013). The primacy given to written assignments, especially the essay, has therefore become somewhat dislodged. In vocational higher education settings, privileged assignment texts are those that bear a direct resemblance to the types of textual products produced in professional practice. My research looks at the vocational higher education context where these two trends are amplified and have particular consequences for assignment practices.
A significant characteristic of the vocational higher education environment is the stronger focus placed on the development of skills and knowledge directly related to the professional context. Thus the curriculum actively attempts to engage students with the kinds of professional practices associated with their future careers (see for example Pardoe, 2000). A key consequence of this requirement, to attend to professional knowledge and practice within the academic context, is that the manner in which learning is demonstrated is not limited to the traditional essay and assignments can include a range of written and non-written forms. This is especially the case in course environments where my research is located; the visual communication and media fields like film production, graphic design and multimedia. In these courses the assessments require students to produce the kinds of textual artefacts that are relevant and resemble those used in professional practice, for example, film clips, storyboards, posters, logos and websites. New Literacy Studies scholars, especially those aligned to the New London Group (2000) have provided the theoretical basis for the acknowledgement that language is merely one of the modes of communication, representation and meaning. Thus even within the traditional university context researchers have highlighted how academic writing is only part of a more varied range of the socially and culturally constructed language and communicative practices in higher education (Archer, 2006, 2008; Thesen,2006 and Thesen and van Pletzen, 2006). A prominent focus of the vocational higher education settings is the validation of the kind of texts privileged in the professional settings, which Lea and Stierer (2000) aptly note relies less significantly on the written forms and practices once dominant in higher education.
As a result of accommodating the professional environment and its knowledge, practices and texts, particular challenges and contestations have surfaced within the vocational higher education context. My research highlights the consequence, particularly for which literacy practices are given status in curricula and assessment, when professional and academic knowledge and practices are brought together in the educational context. These underpinning tensions have also been raised by academic literacies researchers like Archer (2006), Mitchell et al (2000) and Thesen (2001) who have highlighted the impact on assignment practices when students and lecturers have to manage course environments that rely on the construction of both written and other forms of assignment texts (Archer, 2006; Mitchell et al, 2000; Thesen, 2001). In certain instances the curriculum and pedagogic approaches have been able to harness and embrace the multimodal affordances of different textual practices and draw on the semiotic resources that students bring to the learning environment (see Archer, 2006). However, the challenge, as Mitchell et al found when researching the essay writing practices of dance students, remains that dominant or privileged literacy practices associated with writing continue to ‘function to legitimate…the conventions of the academic largely text-based institution’ (2000:90).
In my presentation I will illustrate how an academic literacies perspective has been generative for the exploration and understanding of how students in various vocational higher education visual communication and media courses produce their assignments. In particular I highlight how the concept of literacy practice can productively be used in a conceptual and analytical manner to explore and understand how meaning and learning is constructed and demonstrated in academic contexts where essayist literacies are merely one aspect of a wider, multimodal communication landscape. My presentation will also lay bare the continued tensions that exist between written and other textual modes. In particular I highlight the specific role of writing in this context, as a carrier for theoretical knowledge. This role reinforces and legitimates the sustained dominant position assigned to writing, and especially essay writing. A final consideration I raise through my presentation is the significance of theorising the specific context of vocational higher education, an area that is somewhat under-theorised by the academic literacies perspective. I propose a possible avenue through which such theorisation could be directed drawing on the curriculum theory of knowledge recontextualisation (Bernstein, 1996, 2000).