Fundani Centre for Higher Education Development recently held a regional colloquium to discuss scholarship, research and academic literacies in the South African context.
The colloquium provided a space for collegial engagement among the universities in the Western Cape to participate in a conversation that attempted to mark-out, reclaim and re-assert a possible role for an academic literacies research perspective within their higher education context.
The colloquium brought together an interesting mix of established scholars and emerging voices connected by their adoption and use of an academic literacies perspective to frame and direct their explorations of student writing and learning in the South African higher education context.
Held at the Cape Town Hotel School, the colloquium also featured academic literacies expert Mary Lea, a Reader in Academic and Digital Literacies in the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University in the UK, as a respondent.
Academic literacies is a field of enquiry which emerged in the mid-1990s and focuses on student writing in higher education.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Learning and Teaching, Prof Anthony Staak, says the majority of students who enter universities are not able to write and read at the level which is required at university and providing support to them was taken seriously at CPUT .
“Fundani is at the centre of most of these efforts,” added Staak.
Written by Kwanele Butana
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