Literacies for academic and professional purposes: Two collaboration projects with the University Library

Abstract

Academic literacies among high school students and university students have been a highly discussed topic for several years in Sweden as well as other countries. Results of PISA show that high school students’ reading skills deteriorate and university teachers have given alarming reports on students’ decreasing abilities on the critical assessment of sources and academic writing. In Sweden the new curriculum for high schools sharpens the demands on students to develop a critical and scientific approach and a main learning outcome is that high school students shall ‘have the ability to critically examine and assess what they see, hear and read’ and that they ‘can use books, library resources and modern technology as a tool in the search for knowledge, communication, creativity and learning’ (Curriculum for the Upper Secondary School 2011, p. 8f). The new curriculum is also a concern for Higher Education (HE) since it is of great importance that high school students are well prepared for University studies. The fact that more heterogenous groups of students coming from different linguistic and socio-cultural contexts get access to HE, has meant that teachers need to design new pedagogical approaches that take socially situated circumstances into account. In this paper we will present two projects conducted at Södertörn University where the University Library has been involved in focusing both on students’ academic literacies and the connection between academic and professional practice. One project is an Introduction to academic writing and concerns new students. The other one concerns teacher candidates and aims to prepare them for their future professions as high school teachers. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the University Library can collaborate with other institutions to support students to develop academic literacies that are useful for both their studies and for their future professional practice.