Boundary crossings: Networking and transforming literacies in research processes and college courses

Abstract

Researchers in the field of academic literacies have shown that, for many students, entering higher education involves a renegotiation of identity, that the education system privileges certain literacy practices over others, and that studying seems to have little in common with the ways of knowing, valuing and communicating which students bring with them from other domains of their lives. This lack of relation raises an important theoretical issue for literacy studies: if literacy practices are socio-culturally situated, to what extent are the boundaries between one context and another impermeable?

In order to address this question, this paper draws on research in the broader context of post-compulsory education in the UK, investigating the interface between students’ literacy practices in their lives beyond college, and those involved in participation, learning and demonstrating learning on their vocational and academic courses. It examines boundary crossings firstly between the literacy practices of research and of teaching in the collaborative research methodology, and secondly between literacy practices in different domains of students’ lives. It argues that the characteristics of literacy practices with which students identify in their lives beyond college can be harnessed as resources for learning and for transforming the communicative landscape of further and higher education.