From High School to College: Student Perspectives on Literacy Practices

There are few naturalistic studies of how individuals experience and perceive the literate transition from high school to college. This yearlong study followed 4 female language-minority students through their last semester in high school and first semester in college. Taking a literacy-as-social-practice perspective, the study focused on these students' perceptions of reading and writing they encountered across the curriculum. The study found that what students found new or more challenging in college literacy practices was not necessarily predicted in a developmental perspective, but was better understood as contextualized in their high school literacy experiences. The article argues that high school literacy practices should not be seen merely as an underformed version of collegiate practices, but rather should be interpreted in light of the particular population and purposes secondary schools serve. The study shows that a social-practice perspective can serve as a useful supplement and counterpoint to cognitively oriented approaches to literate development in young adults. In particular, it is argued that they hold potential to render the emic perspectives of learners themselves more prominent in literacy research.