Academic literacy skills are universally considered as a valuable and integral part of academic development in higher education, yet they often remain peripheral to or are completely absent from many qualifications. At the presently selected institution, there is little consensus on the most effective model to design for and implement as far as…

In recent years, the profusion of methodologies available to teachers, thanks to the advancement of emerging and converging technologies, has created significant educational opportunities, but it also poses new challenges. Among these is the need to train teachers to exercise solid pedagogical judgment when implementing these approaches in the…

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in academia has prompted various debates on the uses, threats, and limitations of tools that can create text for numerous academic purposes. Critics argue that these advancements may provide opportunities for cheating and plagiarism and even replace the art of writing entirely. To reclaim the…

This article examines Higher Education students' experiences of academic reading as a grudging act: something that is performed reluctantly or half-heartedly, because it has to be done. Drawing on group interviews with 30 social science undergraduates, registered at a research-intensive UK university, we offer a reflexive thematic analysis of…

This article reports on recent research which found that academic communication skills are a problem for a surprisingly large proportion of English-speaking Australian students. Despite the widely-held recognition of the importance of academic literacy instruction in Australian higher education, literacy skills have previously been largely…

This paper develops the pedagogical implications of xenolexia, a concept introduced as a phenomenon in the learning and teaching of academic writing (Beighton, C. 2020. "Beyond Alienation: Spatial Implications of Teaching and Learning Academic Writing." "Teaching in Higher Education" 25 (2): 205-222.). Complementing this…

Feedback is an essential aspect of the teaching and learning process since it can objectively describe the learner's performance and guide him through revising their work to improve their academic performance. Studies regarding its application in education have recorded significant pedagogical benefits at the teaching and learning levels. The…

At the turn of the twenty-first century, researchers delineated reading, writing, creativity, and problem-solving as necessary proficiencies for high school and college students, highlighting college's role in producing such skills (Department of Labor's Secretary's Commission on Achieving the Necessary Skills, 1991; Fasko, 2001; Pascarella &…

From James Baldwin's (1962) "A Letter to My Nephew," which laid bare the brutalities of being black in 1960s America, to Chanelle Miller's published victim impact statement addressed to her assailant, which provided vocabulary and was kindle for #MeToo, examples abound demonstrating the ways in which the open letter continuously surfaces…

In this article, I bring to the center of inquiry the role of emotion in scholarship, knowledge production, and scholarly endeavors. I discuss the ways in which emotion, in varied forms and intensities, shapes how one may respond to particular bodies of knowledge and academic initiatives. In a complex manner, I engage with Kuan-Hsing Chen's…

A theoretical understanding is offered to help explore how students attempt to reconcile divergent narratives around the purposes of Higher Education in relation to their own writing. Drawing from the twin notions of centripetal and centrifugal forces, the paper discusses the ways that students both follow and resist convention in their own…

Institutional ethnography (IE) is a feminist approach to research focusing on the organising power of texts and language. This paper explores "how" to analyse texts in IE while considering the importance of reflexivity and accountability to feminist research. Based on a five year study of UK university audit processes, I developed a…

This paper offers a reconceptualisation of international students' transitions into and through UK higher education. We present two case studies of students which explore their transitions in terms of their academic speaking skills from pre-sessional courses into their disciplinary studies. Students describe how the development of their confidence…

Higher education initiatives to support students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are widespread. However, there is pervasive concern within public discourse that such widening participation efforts have contributed to a 'dumbing down' of higher education. There are classed dimensions to evaluations of (dis)advantaged students' university…

The aim of this study is to capture and analyse perspectives on higher education from the views of five students through in-depth interviews. The students' statements are analyzed in order to gain an understanding of their experiences of developing academic literacies in their university studies. They are regularly visiting the university study…