Academic Literacies: The Public and Private Discourse of University Students

Abstract

Academic Literacies suggests that the narrow focus on academic ways of reading, writing and thinking is limited and limiting for both students and teachers at the college level. Chiseri-Strater uses ethnographic field methods to uncover the multiple literacies that two college students bring to different disciplines and shows how factors such as gender, human development, and private talents are ignored in the college curriculum. She works against Hirsch's restricted view of literacy and offers many suggestions for expanding our notion of what it means to be literate in an academic setting. This book joins the continuing debate over cultural literacy, but unlike Hirsch's and Bloom's works, it offers a new point of view - the students'. Those who plan curricula and set goals for higher education too often ignore these individuals who are the patrons of the system. In addition, composition scholars who are involved in the emerging field of academic discourse communities will find Chiseri-Strater's position of interest. Finally, since the book offers a critique of the dominant mastery mode of teaching in colleges, it should appeal to those woman's studies scholars who are developing a feminist pedagogy that brings women students into the conversation about womens's ways of knowing, perceiving and learning.

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