Institutions play a hugely significant role in shaping literacy practices, with consequences for individuals, organisations and wider society. A concern with institutional context has enabled researchers to focus on literacies within domains of power, to substantiate a critique of the vested interests shaping policies and working practices, and to raise questions about which literacy practices are institutionally valued. At the same time, current theorisation in literacies research emphasises the need to take account of the fluid nature of literacy which follows from its fundamentally social character, particularly in times of hypermobility and rapid change. Texts, writers and readers constantly move across time and space, shifting between different study, professional and life contexts, in and out of different roles and institutions. Boundaries between these domains are increasingly blurred. This symposium explores emerging questions about how we understand the continuities and discontinuities between different institutional and professional contexts, including academic contexts. Key questions for the symposium: How do writers and readers negotiate the demands of shifting institutional contexts and practices? With what consequences? How do writers, readers and texts move between different academic and professional domains? How best can these shifts be researched and theorized, and how can our understanding be applied?
Room 1 AILA 2021 aila2021@gcb.nlInstitutions play a hugely significant role in shaping literacy practices, with consequences for individuals, organisations and wider society. A concern with institutional context has enabled researchers to focus on literacies within domains of power, to substantiate a critique of the vested interests shaping policies and working practices, and to raise questions about which literacy practices are institutionally valued. At the same time, current theorisation in literacies research emphasises the need to take account of the fluid nature of literacy which follows from its fundamentally social character, particularly in times of hypermobility and rapid change. Texts, writers and readers constantly move across time and space, shifting between different study, professional and life contexts, in and out of different roles and institutions. Boundaries between these domains are increasingly blurred. This symposium explores emerging questions about how we understand the continuities and discontinuities between different institutional and professional contexts, including academic contexts. Key questions for the symposium: How do writers and readers negotiate the demands of shifting institutional contexts and practices? With what consequences? How do writers, readers and texts move between different academic and professional domains? How best can these shifts be researched and theorized, and how can our understanding be applied?
Bojana Petric
Laura Mccambridge
Annika Shaswar
Emily Peach
