Academic Literacy???

I’m thinking about the value of academic literacy—I’m thinking about what it’s for or what it’s good for. Why we presume it should or must come prior to workplace literacy. I’m thinking a lot about Joe’s paper on Steinbeck and what that paper says or suggests. I might look at other examples. Academic literacy for what? There is a writer writing absent all the contextual stuff that makes writing meaningful. Similar for Patrice with her give-a-cat-a-pill paper. Perhaps I should look into and think more about the role of academic literacy in this study…but first, I have to find their papers…where are they?


Workplace Scenes

School stories (accumulating literacy)

Genre knowledge and identity (Tony)

Reading through the final chapter of Beaufort's Writing in the Real World, I came across this quote that might serve as a useful framing device for my project:

...as Geisler (1994) states "[t]hose concerned with schooling often lack an understanding of mature practice, and it becomes all too easy for K-12 educators to think of the analytic essay as a final achievement rather than a special genre of schooled literacy" (p. 243). I would extend her observation to postsecondary educators as well. (172)

This could be an excellent framing device for the chapter I am now beginning to imagine, here, when I write:

And an idea: I think one of the most powerful things for me has been seeing, for example, the writing that Joe produced on the job and the writing he was asked to produce in school. Is this a chapter? Is this important? To dramatize this? To illustrate the contrast? I could do the same thing with Diane with her papers and the trail of documents involved in securing a project. I think it might be useful for others to see this, imagine it.