Learning as a Literacy: Needs of Beginning University Students
A Call for Contributions from Readers

Author: Denis Lander and Gloria Latham

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

Keywords: Freshmen, first year experience, transition, school to university, literacy.

Article style and source: Moderated. Original ultiBASE publication.

D: In Melbourne, Australia, the academic year ends in November. Evaluation of courses becomes a time for reflecting on how we meet the needs of our students. Discussion with First Year students in the Bachelor of Education course this year, raised again the difficulties of the transition from school to university. One expression of this is that students are often overly concerned with surface aspects of coursework rather than with knowledge or understanding. They often focus on procedural rather than conceptual aspects of subjects, particularly when working on assessment tasks. The most commonly asked question about assignments is the number of words required.

G: It doesn't surprise me at all that First Year students attend to word counts and other procedures. These are such a dominant part of their assessment in the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE). As one student put it in our First Year survey, "...at Uni we don't get the same explanations of how to pass our assignments." I am the First-Year Coordinator for the B.Ed. at RMIT and have recently had two daughters move through the VCE (years 11-12), so I am acutely aware of the disparity between ways high schools and universities look at learning. As well, our lives today require a new language of learning to adapt to the diversity of communities, workplaces and technologies (Cope & Kalantzis, 1995). Therefore, our First Year students are not merely moving from year 12 to year 13, they are shifting from all that has kept them balanced, safe and secure since they began school. I am not sure educators realise just how enormous this transition is for these students.

D: So, you are saying that it is like going to live in a foreign country. There are not only new procedures and requirements, but a new language to master, expectations to understand and values to assimilate. One of the expectations is that students in a university will operate with greater autonomy. Further, university education is not just about acquiring knowledge of a discipline but, also, of developing more sophisticated and critical ways of thinking. There is a good deal of research describing the way in which students' approaches to learning develop during their university education (Boud, 1988; Perry, 1988; Ramsden, 1992). We might describe these collectively as how they learn to learn. Does this amount to a literacy?

G: It most certainly counts as a literacy in my view. By analogy with the term 'multiliteracies' coined by the New London Group (Cazden, et al.,1996), I think we can make a case for learning as a literacy. The most fundamental thing our students can acquire is learning how to learn. That means learning in a range of contexts.

D: Well, if we can think of there being a literacy of learning, that provides a whole new focus on what their needs are and how we might address them. The literacy of learning in schools is clearly not the same as that in higher education. We should be doing something to help them become literate in the sort of learning appropriate to the university context. Most universities have set up Learning Skills Units for this purpose. However, even the good ones (such as UniLearning provided by Melbourne University and the University of Western Sydney, MacArthur) tend to focus on surface features such as study skills, writing essays and reports, referencing and time management. Further, they are about telling students what to do rather than giving them new experiences of learning. While they provide instructions, suggestions and handy hints, they operate from outside the learning environment. Teaching and Learning strategies may be an attempt to bridge the gap. The rationale for these is that student learning can best be supported by improving teaching in universities. It seems to me there are flaws in this. The first is that it focuses on teaching instead of learning. The second is that this depends on reforming the teaching behaviours of university lecturers. A more intractable bunch of people to reform it would be hard to imagine! Where does this leave the students?

G: What is important in this rationale for a 'literacy of learning' is that students don't focus on the rules and procedures from one context to the next but on learning to learn. They need to reconceptualise ways of learning situated in the university culture. Maybe we can identify some of the skills, values, attitudes and expectations that go to make up this literacy.

D: Mapping the features of this literacy in the university culture might be beyond the scope of this discussion, but perhaps we could identify some elements that characterise learning in this environment. I would nominate a degree of autonomy, questioning and analytical approaches to subject matter, reliance on and evaluation of evidence, reflection and collaboration. Making connections and reflecting on their learning is very important. Learning needs to be constructive, rather than transcriptive as it most often is in schools. What have I missed?

G: They need to adopt a critical stance, have an opinion, uncover the assumptions behind ideas and learn how to develop an argument. They need to learn that each discipline has its own 'literacy' and how they can, as Frank Smith says, become 'members of the club' (Smith, 1988). Creativity and originality should be highly valued in a university culture, therefore, students need to learn about it by participating in creative activities. This involves not just challenging convention or doing things differently, but pushing the boundaries while still working within the framework and requirements of a discipline.

D: That is quite a list. They will pick up many of these over time, as they work in a discipline. However, it seems to me that there are still strategies we might use to help students acquire the generic parts of the literacy of learning in universities.

G: The First Year subject we teach, Introduction to Learning and Teaching, directly addresses some of these needs don't you feel? I think that, for a lot of students, who have never questioned the way they learn, it opens up a window on what learning is. Perhaps, even more important, it gets them doing it. It explicitly puts them through the paces of doing learning in ways they may never have experienced before. I am thinking of the way we encourage them to step back from their own learning and critically reflect on it.

D: For the interested reader, a description of the forerunner to the subject Gloria is referring to can be found on my web site I guess the current version, Introduction to Learning and Teaching, is pretty unusual in that both the content and process are about learning. The subject matter it covers is learning from the perspective of educational psychology. Basically, the aim is to design a learning environment that embodies processes relating to the ideas dealt with in the content. For example, it is built on a cycle of collaborative activities students engage in (experience, processing, planning, project execution, presentations, reflection, experinece, and so on). I think it relates to the literacy of learning most closely in establishing a learning community with its own procedures, rules and traditions, and in getting students actively collaborating in researching projects, developing presentation skills (peer teaching) and reflecting on their own learning. All of these are common features of learning in university settings so, in a sense, it becomes a microcosm of such a learning environment.

G: One of the things I like about this subject is that when students own the idea of learning to learn, they are no longer driven by assessment but do it for its own sake. In terms of what students get from it, though, I think you can actually see the first indications of the literacy of learning appearing. Here are some examples from the written reflections of our First Year teacher trainees.

S1. Well, I think it wasn't until I'd completed my previous reflection, the third one this semester, that it finally clicked in my head as to what I'm really meant to be achieving in these reflections. In my first reflection I said that it took me awhile to realise what I'd learned and discovered. I think even then, after writing that, I still didn't know. I now feel so much more informed and open minded about things to do with learning and teaching. It is not as open and shut as I first thought it was.

S2. I was thinking about all the exercises we've done over the semester and the reflections we've had to write. Thinking about that has made me realise that everything we do has meaning and importance. Each task and assignment has led me to learn something new about teaching and learning....Everything is a learning experience.

S3. Learning has been given a new meaning to me over the semester, and that is that it can be fun. I never in my wildest dreams thought that learning could be fun. At school, learning was never fun, it was always socialising that was fun. Somehow I know that I have to be able to make learning fun for the kids, and not just school. Learning would be far easier for kids if they enjoy what they are learning. A question I have though is, how are we going to know what is important to teach each individual, as Iím sure that each child will have fun learning different things in different ways. With thirty kids in the classroom these days, it seems like a daunting task.

S4. This subject encouraged me to open doors rather than close them. Its not a neat package tied up in an essay with a ridiculous , irrelevant grade stamped on it but an ongoing learning process. It has no conclusion, no end as long as there are connections to be made. Today I know that who I am as a learner and a person is more important than what I will ever teach.

S5. I believe the most significant thing I have learnt is that learning is not alone, but is connected to everything and that as a learner what I have learnt (consciously and subconsciously) from school, society, family and culture are equally effective in shaping my attitudes and thoughts. What I learnt as an eight year old being told to be quiet and that my abilities were limited is linked to what I am learning now as an adult trying to understand that silence is not always golden and that my possibilities as a human being are only as limited as I make them. Everything is linked and connected.

S6. At the moment I am wondering about why we learn. Is it a totally self-directed, self-centered process? I can't believe that to be the case. It must have to do with the desire of people to relate, or interact with each other. We need the other person to hear our thinking, to rebound or answer our thinking. That's what gives thoughts a purpose. Maybe I'm getting closer to the role of a teacher?

D: I still find it a spine-tingling exercise to read their reflections because these sparks and leaps always seem to appear. Originally, we called it the LEAP (for Learning through Experience, Action and Processing) program, until we found that this acronym had been appropriated by half the learning organisations across the globe. Anyhow, I do think it helps students take the first steps, if not a full leap in every case, towards acquiring the literacy of learning. It is just a one-semester, two-hour-class-per-week-subject, so it is not going to change the world. But it is a start, and I think there is a real need for subjects like this that address the literacy of learning directly in a fairly generic fashion.

G: How might we reconceptualise First Year university courses to introduce students to the literacy of learning? Lets open up our discussion to you readers. I know we can learn a tremendous amount through dialoguing with one another. Denis and I invite you to add your thoughts to this article so that we can have some asynchronous discussion on what it means to learn in a university culture and to hear about what you do to foster the literacy of learning in your students.

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References

Boud, D. J. (1988) Developing Student Autonomy in Learning. London: Kogan Page.

Cazdin, C., Cope, B., Fairclough, N., Gee, J., Kalantzis, M., Kress, G., Luke, A., Luke, C., Michaels, S. and Nakata, M. (1996) A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66, 60-92.

Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (1995) Designing social futures. Education Australia, 30, 5-7.

Perry, W.G. (1988) Different worlds in the same classroom. In P. Ramsden (Ed.) Improving Learning: New Perspectives. London: Kogan Page.

Ramsden, P. (1992) Learning to Teach in Higher Education. London: Routledge.

Smith, F. (1988) Joining the Literacy Club: Further Essays Into Education. London: Heinemann.

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