A bluffer’s guide to academic literacies: can we communicate a complex set of ideas in simpler terms?

I have often felt sceptical about the idea of academic literacies (AL), which presents a highly influential account of ‘how students learn to write at university’ (Lea and Street, 1998). AL theory has had a significant impact on the field, but some things about it bother me. Key ideas are frequently expressed in very abstract terms (it is hard to justify this comment in an academic context, but bear with me). Research has recognised difficulties in outlining AL’s core principles to students (Lea, 2016, p.91), and ‘the exact nature of the relationship between [its component] approaches’ (Hilsdon, Malone and Syska, 2019). It can be hard to convert the lofty AL aims of emancipation or transformation into practice. As theories go, it clearly thinks of itself as on ‘the right side of history’, and perhaps it is. However, having recently spent time wrangling with AL literature, I have developed more of a (grudging) respect for its insights and possible uses in practice. Drawing on theoretical writing and case studies of AL in use, this session aimed to identify the AL insights which are most relevant for the day-to-day practice of Learning Developers and present them in more concrete terms. In doing so, I hope to make this theory ‘meaningful, relevant and accessible to all’ (for Hockings’ definition of ‘inclusive’, see Hockings, 2010, p.1). After brief comments on its context and aims, I presented a short series of my ‘translations’ from AL into everyday English for use in everyday Learning Development practice.