Two members of staff from the Keele Institute for Innovation and Teaching Excellence (KIITE) have been invited to guest edit a special edition of the Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice (JUTLP): Becoming Well Read; Charting the complexities of academic reading and navigating the reading journeys of undergraduate and postgraduate students.

The special edition will be guest edited by Dr Chris Little and Angela Rhead, both Teaching Fellows and Learning Developers within KIITE. Chris and Angela secured the Guest Editorship of the journal following the success of their Becoming Well Read academic reading symposium held in April this year, which attracted over 50 delegates from over 20 different higher education institutions, with 70% of these from outside of Keele.

JUTLP is an international HE educational journal hosted by the University of Wollongong in Australia. The special edition will be published in May 2020 to coincide with the second Becoming Well Read symposium.

Expressions of interest to contribute to this special issue are invited by submitting a proposal for papers (500 words max). In particular, Chris and Angela are seeking papers that address the areas below (but all proposals will be considered):

• Innovative approaches to teaching or supporting academic reading practices.
• Student perspectives on experiences of learning to read ‘academically’.
• Relationships between reading and scholarship/research/disciplinary identity.
• The role of social reading practices in academic enquiry.
• Academic reading as pleasure.
• Searching and selecting reading (library perspectives).
• Transitions from FE to HE.

The editors would welcome a range of papers, from empirical studies to theoretical pieces and case studies or teaching evaluations.

Key Dates

• Abstract Submission Deadline: 15th July 2019
• Invitation to submit full paper: 26th July 2019
• Publication Date: May 2020

Papers for JUTLP are usually between 5000 and 7000 words, and you can find more details about the criteria and general expectations on the University of Wollongong website. 

For more information and to submit your proposal, please use the online submission form 

Contact the guest editors Dr Chris Little: c.w.r.little@keele.ac.uk and Angela Rhead: a.rhead@keele.ac.uk

Becoming Well Read

Academic reading continues to resonate as an almost universally ‘sticky’ (Schon, 1987) threshold concept for higher level learning at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Many students struggle to utilise academic literature in their own research and writing. The requirement for independent reading, with increasing expectations of ‘criticality’, presents further challenges regarding the process and purpose of academic reading. A significant aspect of academic reading for students across all levels is the challenge of discerning the levels of credibility or influence of particular sources (Moore, 2013). This is particularly significant where a disciplinary view of criticality emerges from an individual engagement with reading and positioning in terms of its discourse, which locates reading as a social practice (Lea & Street, 2006).

Academic writing has been privileged in much of the research and support, creating an important space in university teaching and learning scholarship and practice. Whilst practitioner and student concerns (Brewerton, 2014) reflect a wider concern in HE about the academic ‘skills’ students enter university with (Hermida, 2009) and the responsibilities of universities to respond to an increasing and diverse community (Fung, 2016), academic reading has been subordinated in the academic literacies discourse.