Considering academic literacies as conflicting literacy practices

This paper describes a small scale collaborative research project designed to promote undergraduate students’ academic literacy through proactive methods of support embedded within the content of an early childhood education module. Two of the professionals involved in the project offer perspectives which relate some findings from the project to their growing understandings of conflicting literacy practices. An early childhood lecturer considers the disequilibrium arising from conflict as a necessary condition for creating knowledge. A specialist subject librarian then uses the concept of knowledge communities as the basis for a discussion of ways in which students and university staff may negotiate conflicting literacies. The paper concludes by drawing parallels between literacy as social practice in early childhood and related understandings of the challenges of learning and teaching academic literacies in higher education.