Reading and writing the self as a college student: Fluidity and ambivalence across contexts

Abstract

The attempt to improve the literacy of young people on vocational courses in further education is a major educational concern. Yet, engagement in pedagogic literacies involves transitions between informal and formal literacies which may or may not make sense to the students making them. Such engagement is related strongly to students’ sense of themselves as readers and writers in a range of contexts outside and inside college.

This chapter draws on the Literacies for Learning in Further Education project in the TLRP. The project is finding that students identify with the reading and writing that they do in some contexts, but not in others. Students vary in the extent to which they identify with the roles and positions inscribed in texts and practices they encounter in college. Our aim is to find ways of making the reading and writing associated with their college courses more compatible with their sense of who they are and who they want to become. In this chapter, we explore some of these issues, and open up discussion about how 'literacy practices' are related to 'identity'.