The scrumpled geography of literacies for learning

Abstract

This paper draws upon the experience of the Literacies for Learning in Further Education research project in the UK. The project explored the literacy demands of a number of curriculum areas and the literacy practices of students in their everyday lives, in order to identify those 'border literacies' which may act as resources for learning and attainment within their college courses. Drawing on Literacy Studies and aspects of actor-network theory, this article outlines the conceptual innovations that we found necessary arising from our data analysis, extending existing work on situating practice and boundary crossing to posit a conceptual landscape that we term the scrumpled geography of literacies for learning. This landscape is one in which purification, naturalization and translation are key concepts, where literacy practices are enacted as network effects of a folding of a range of micro-practices into conglomerations.