Rethinking Literacies in University Education: Perceptions of Australian Non-English Speaking Background Students

This study considers how cultural background and linguistic variables impact on students' participation in the specific literacies of the university at graduate level. In particular, the study gives scope to students' perceptions about their learning experiences in the first semester of their studies and makes available how they perceive the curricular, pedagogical and evaluation issues that together create the possibilities of literacy learning. The researchers point to the importance of social structure and discourse community conventions in shaping and constraining individual knowledge and suggest how success and failure seem to be discursively and institutionally constructed. The researchers drew on student data they collected over a semester. Three research methods were used including observation, written questionnaire, and follow up face-to-face interviews. These methods captured insider perspectives about students' use of their first or preferred language in accessing relevant learning materials, the match between teaching and learning styles, and the demands of set listening, speaking, reading and writing tasks. Also presented are implications of pedagogical practices in terms of how they legitimate particular ways of knowing and of being student.