Visual and non-literal representations as academic literacy modalities

Abstract

The normative understanding of academic literacy relates mainly to textual reading and writing. While texts might well be dominant, other literacies such as numeracy and visual literacy are equally dominant in higher education studies. The context of academic literacy is here located within five first-year diploma subjects where visual literacy and numeracy emerged as dominant modalities for subject content representation. Lecturers’ perceptions of reading requirements for their respective subjects and a review of summative assessments provided the data for content analysis using academic literacy specifications as data codes. Literature on academic literacies and disciplinary literacies provided the framework for data analysis and discussion. The findings revealed a constellation of textual-visual-numeracy modalities that necessitated modal shifts in translating and transforming subject content across modalities. This study foregrounds the need to support first-year students with discourse analysis of visual and non-literal representations to provide epistemological access to the field of practice.