From the micro to the macro: embedding support for academic writing across an academic school/faculty

Recent research into academic literacies has explored the efficacy of embedded support for developing academic writing within discipline-specific academic programmes. This approach means that writing specialists work alongside discipline specialists (Jacobs 2005), or that discipline specialists themselves integrate writing pedagogy into their programmes (Wingate, Andon and Cogo 2011), in order to focus on the typical genres and language of their discipline. While there are a number of case studies of this approach within specific subjects (see Ganobcsik-Williams 2006), little has been written on the advantages and challenges of implementing such an approach across an entire school/faculty.
This practitioner-oriented workshop will provide a case study of faculty-wide implementation of embedded provision in a post-1992 university in north London within the School of Law, encompassing Law, Sociology, Criminology and Politics, and totalling 160 hours. The rationale for adopting an embedded approach will be presented, and the different kinds of embedding will be described. The range of materials used across the School to develop writing will be demonstrated. Workshop participants will then be invited to work in groups in order to find solutions to the many challenges facing such a project, ranging from institutional buy-in to some of the difficulties of collaboration between writing and disciplinary specialists.
The workshop will conclude by pulling together recommendations as to how such a project can be further developed in order to address some of its present shortcomings, so as to make a stronger case for embedding the teaching of writing faculty-wide.