Incorporating the notion of recontextualisation in academic literacies research: the case of a South African vocational web design and development course

Abstract

This article describes a small scale ethnographically oriented research study seeking to contribute to understanding student academic literacy practices in a South African vocational, web design and development course. In this course digital multimodal assessments are the main means whereby students demonstrate their learning. The findings of the study provide insights into the contextualised ways in which student academic literacy practices are shaped by academic and professional contexts where digital and multimodal practices are privileged. The academic literacies perspective used in this study, while useful for exploring the nature of student academic literacy practices, has not paid enough attention to theorising how literacy practices are shaped by broader contextual influences. To address this limitation the paper speculates about how the Bernsteinian concept of knowledge recontextualisation might be used alongside an academic literacies frame. The inclusion of an empirical focus on recontextualisation can provide an opportunity to explore how knowledge construction and transformation processes in the academic and professional domains result in the privileging of particular academic literacy practices.

Keywords:

• academic literacy practices
• multimodal assessments
• recontextualisation
• South African vocational higher education
• web design and development

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Suellen Shay for her assistance as I refined my core argument in earlier versions of this paper. Mary Lea and Robin Goodfellow acted as critical readers throughout the writing process continually encouraging me to publish my research. My colleagues, Sally Baker, Stephen Pihlaja and Jackie Tuck provided editorial support throughout the writing process.