Reading against and writing back

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how student learning materials, such as textbooks, are becoming more oriented toward multi-modal approaches using visuality and orality. While such approaches may help students to understand and then to reproduce taught materials, the objective of this paper is to question whether they are serving to promote students’ critical literacy. Design/methodology/approach – The paper assesses the character of current textbooks and other means of student support, such as online learning management systems, and assesses how well they seem able to promote the critical literacy that requires ability in “reading against” and “writing back”. The paper goes on to identify ways in which some parts of the university see orality as preliminary and subordinate to literacy-focused communication, but elsewhere, the pinnacle of students’ work is artistic or creative attainments with lesser need to write complexly literate textual works. Findings – As a means of trying to resolve inherent tensions between differing pedagogical assumptions and methods in the university, the paper proposes ways in which Ong’s (1982, p. 36) nine communication characteristics of “orally based thought and expression” may be able to offer insights into challenges of improving students’ critical literacy. Research limitations/implications – The inherent academic tensions within the university still remain insufficiently theorized. For example, the humanities and social sciences (still) place much store on developing students’ abilities in critical writing, while disciplines such as design or creative arts are much more focused on students’ creative outputs. The paper contributes to a better understanding of such scholars talking past one another. Practical implications – Scholars in different academic camps often note the discrepancies in how their relative pedagogical tasks are to be understood, but typically, it is not clear to them how they might better relate to other parts of the university. The paper aims to elucidate the nature of academic differences that often appear to exist to provide insights into possibly new ways of seeing everyday teaching and learning. Social implications – Ong’s insights into literacy and orality when viewed through a prism of tertiary teaching and learning provide a practical means whereby students and other university stakeholders can develop a better appreciation of the character of the modern university. Originality/value – The novel use of Walter Ong’s model of literacy and orality provides fresh ways of seeing challenges and disputes within the academic community and suggests new ways of seeing students’ work and their teachers’ expectations of them.