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Over the last few decades, Higher Education institutions in Sweden and across the globe have been working on widened participation, sustainable development, and increased accessibility to university studies. The impact of these initiatives can be seen in today’s student populations, which are characterised by diversity and a wider range of academic skills. Other effects, however, include (a) concerns about lowering standards, (b) a discourse of deficit that focuses on the knowledge and skills students lack, and (c) a remedial approach to tackle said deficits. A common (mis)conception is that students lack language skills (e.g., language proficiency, writing skills) and that referring students to writing centres will solve the issue. However, research (e.g., Blåsjö, 2004; Barton, 2007; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012; Wingate, 2012; Catell, 2013; Solheim et al. 2022) shows that integrating literacy efforts within disciplines is a more effective way to scaffold student learning. 

This presentation reports on preliminary findings from an ongoing empirical study on teaching practices for the development of university student’s academic literacies in the social sciences. In particular, the focus is on the changing views of teaching staff on scaffolding and the role of academic literacies in the students’ learning journey. 

The study rests on Academic Literacies (Lea & Street, 1998; Lillis, 2003; Lea, 2004; Eklund Heinonen et al., 2018) as its theoretical framework. The data consists of: (a) video-recorded ethnographic interviews with two lecturers in an undergraduate programme in the Social Sciences; (b) text analyses of, e.g., assignment instructions, feedback provided by lecturers, and samples of student writing; and (c) workshop-style sessions where the informants were given opportunities to explore hands-on strategies to scaffold the development of their students’ academic literacies.

The results show a change from a discourse of deficit and a remedial approach to integrating academic literacies in the discipline. More specifically, the findings illustrate the lecturers’ changing views in relation to:

1.    The students’ needs: From basic proficiency to disciplinary practices. 

2.    The lecturers’ own abilities: From outsourcing to collaboration.

3.    Teaching practices: Modelling, strategy use, and formative feedback emerge as useful scaffolding tools. 

4.    The role of writing in the development of content knowledge.

This study highlights the benefits of a collaboration between researchers at a writing centre and subject lecturers. The results show that applied linguistics can contribute to scaffolding the students’ learning journey by fostering engagement with disciplinary discourse to build disciplinary knowledge.