Academic writing and the art of the possible

Abstract

Over the last thirty years the demographic profile of Australian universities has changed significantly to include increasing numbers not only of international students, but also of local students whose first language is other than English, mature age 'second chance' students, VET articulants, and students from migrant, indigenous, rural, or lower socio-economic backgrounds. Such a change has coincided with an institutional shift towards a corporatised and vocationalised higher education environment. This paper addresses the challenge of supporting the learning needs, particularly the literacy learning needs, of the new demographic within a changed environment. It addresses three concerns: firstly, that traditional approaches to literacy support are inadequate and inappropriate to the needs of non-traditional students; secondly, that a vocationalised curriculum does not address basic literacy; and, thirdly, that corporatisated higher education privileges economy, efficiency, and standardisation over contingent learning support needs. The paper considers how these concerns might be negotiated by offering the case of a literacy support program that engages with a vocational/corporate discourse to create new possibilities for meeting students' literacy support needs.