Co-constructing academic literacy: Examining teacher-student discourse in a one-to-one consultation

Abstract

One-to-one consultations have become standard practice in university learning centres as they offer a “just-in-time” approach to developing individual students’ academic literacy practices. However, they are arguably an expensive luxury. In order to obtain a clearer understanding of how student learning occurs in the interactive context of one-to-one academic literacy sessions, this paper presents a detailed analysis of one such session. The data provides evidence of the student’s learning as the session unfolds, and identifies the discourse strategies used by the learning adviser which scaffold this development. On the basis of our analysis, we theorise that learning advisers need to be flexible in their use of discourse strategies in one-to-one sessions, depending on student need. We suggest on the basis of this case study that, while some students will benefit from a didactic approach including explicit explanation of literacy skills, they also need encouragement through collaborative discourse to take an increasingly autonomous and engaged approach to academic literacy.