Investigating literacy, cultural capital, academic achievement and socio-economic status among first year university students

The dramatic shift in undergraduate student diversity has presented pedagogical challenges for university teachers, particularly in areas of literacy. There are concerns among Social Science and Arts educators around increasing incidence of informal writing, plagiarism and disengagement with reading. This paper supports an argument that these pedagogical challenges relate, in part to the literacy cultural capital of students. To determine the relative influence on literacy cultural capital of socio-economic status (SES) and academic achievement, this paper reports the analysis from a reading engagement survey administered to first year sociology students at ACU. The findings invite debate as to whether university educators should be ‘tailoring’ curriculum content to suit the multiliteracies of a diverse student body, or rigidly upholding ‘elite’ academic literacy at the exclusion of all else.