Resumen

COETSEE, Ydalene. The road to optimal academic literacies support: Striving for better alignment between theory and practice. SPiL plus (Online) [online]. 2017, vol.53, pp.40-58. ISSN 2224-3380.  http://dx.doi.org/10.5842/53-0-733.

One of the Stellenbosch University (SU) Language Centre's most valuable contributions since its inception has been the endeavour of striving towards better alignment between theory and practice for the facilitation of academic literacies. A decade ago, SU's language support to mainly first-year students used to be generic modules according to which texts were read and produced by students in line with the preferences of lecturers. Since then, literature has documented a significent shift in the direction of embedded modules, meaning that students only deal with themes and genres applicable to their specific discipline. Although Language Centre staff were initially slow in actualising this shift, mainly because of the economy of scale, over the past few years they have developed and facilitated subject-specific and purpose-made modules in most SU faculties. The time and effort spent on this kind of reconceptualisation is not always estimated in its true value, as the full impact thereof is difficult to measure quantitatively. Moreover, in most instances Language Centre staff have to collaborate with SU faculty staff who tend to categorise academic literacy skills as lower category skills (soft skills), compared to scientific skills (hard skills). This study focuses on one such a case of collaboration between the Language Centre and the Department of Chemistry and Polymer Science at SU, the so-called Pet Ionic Compound (PIC) project. Innovation fund support was obtained in order to integrate the outcomes of academic literacies and those of the Department of Chemistry and Polymer Science in the field of chemistry in such a way as to ensure improved learning for students in extended degree programmes. This article reports on the impact of such collaboration over the past three iterations of the project and aims to supplement the literature on the effect of theoretical grounding on academic literacies practice. Various student and lecturer documents were analysed through open coding to undertake a qualitative measurement of the impact of this specific project on students' perceived knowledge of chemistry and their academic literacies development. The article also endeavours to explicate that although this kind of collaboration requires time and effort, such collaboration should be encouraged in an attempt to optimise student and lecturer success.

Palabras clave : academic literacies; chemistry; collaboration; embedded; theoretical development.

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