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The purpose of this study is to explore Master’s students’ literature reviews to better understand the literacies required for engaging in complexity in this genre and to inform graduate student pedagogy.

In this qualitative study, data were collected in the form of student literature review papers (23 drafts and 23 final versions) from students attending a research seminar course in an all-course Master’s program. All papers were analyzed for citations patterns, genre awareness and levels of complexity.

Results highlight the nature of complexity in this genre – that this complexity is underpinned by discursive issues such as “truth”, “claims” or “facts” that often mislead novice academic writers, and recognizing that knowledge contested in academic contexts is important to understanding and teaching students about complexity in writing.

One of the most challenging writing tasks graduate students face, is the literature review. Literature reviews require sophisticated conceptual maneuverings. Despite being analytical in nature, many students find it difficult to engage with the layers of complexity required in this genre. How do we make the complexity in literature reviews more visible and accessible? The argument in this paper is that understanding the nature of complexity in literature reviews can enhance writing processes and intentional explicit pedagogy.

University students often struggle with academic writing because of the challenges involved in negotiating the hidden rules and implicit discursive practices in academic writing. An academic literacies approach has emphasized writing as social practice and recognized that the literacy practices of the university are often epistemological. Blogs provide an opportunity for students to immerse themselves in situated, socially interactive writing in academic contexts. This study sought to explore blog writing from an academic literacies perspective. Data were collected from of two cohorts of students (Winter 2010 and 2011 terms) participating in a small university fourth year seminar class. The data consisted of blog postings from the two cohorts, interviews with the instructor, and course evaluations. The blog posts and comments were analysed using an intertextual analytical framework. Findings indicate that students do develop academic literacies through blog writing because of particular features of blogs: the immediate audience, the flexibility of purpose of blogs and the informal style of language.

Liliana Alzate-Pérez is a fifth semester student in the Bachelor's in English-Spanish Education (Licenciatura Inglés-Español) at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia. She serves as a Research Assistant at the Research Group on Pedagogies and Didactics of Subject Knowledge (Pedagogías y Didácticas de los Saberes). She has helped with data collection and analysis procedures on two research studies: An exploratory study about teacher education policies in Medellín and a study regarding school violence. She is also a member of the Student Research Group on Second Language (SRG-L2), currently drafting a project about impact of teacher education programs. In addition, she works at a partnership project between UPB and local newspaper El Colombiano for the inclusion of the newspaper as a pedagogical tool. She has also been teaching a biology preparation course for the Colombian ICFES High School standardized test at UPB High School for four years. Her first research presentation was about her study (along with Mr. Gómez-Yepes) on teacher education practices in the new curricular proposal at the Faculty of Education at a research symposium at UPB. Her primary research interest is in the field of teacher education, specifically in the area of teacher education policies. Additional research interests include issues of technology and literacy in the high school setting, working in the inclusion of different educational needs in the curriculum, and the development of creative strategies for teaching improvement.

This chapter provides a broad overview of the practical applications of three technology-based teaching and learning tool: wikis, blogs, and WebQuests. These Web-based communication tools allow teachers and students to increase student engagement by enhancing experiential type learning. A variety of studies is presented to demonstrate how these three types of collaborative technologies can be used as inquiry-based and reflection-based active learning tools to foster higher levels of effort and participation by students. This chapter presents a variety of perspectives about how to make the learning process for both instructors and teachers more engaging, more gratifying, and more personally meaningful. In doing so, these technologies serve as enabling technologies by promising new ways to increase academic engagement and motivation. The ultimate goal in using these technologies is to develop students as lifelong learners and to foster a high value for learning and the development of higher order thinking skills that grows over time. The experiential nature and authenticity of the activities that these technologies can be used for helps achieve this purpose. Of course, technology involves a constant evolution and new technologies will always appear in the future but this does not mean that they should be viewed as passing fads or not worthy of implementing. These tools can be viewed as opportunities to expand our definition and concept of teaching and learning in the modern, post-industrial era. To that end, this chapter explores the innovative use of these technological tools to better engage students and enhance the learning process.

Decolonizing involves dismantling deeply entrenched colonial systems of knowledge and power by disrupting colonial patterns of thought, questioning how teaching and learning occurs, and critiquing the colonial practices that are merged into the fabric of higher and adult education. Within this process, scholars and practitioners engage in interrogating teaching and learning approaches and developing a critical consciousness regarding what knowledge is valued and how this value is acquired. Within higher and adult education, limited research has explicitly considered the ways in which conceptions of andragogy and its accompanying instructional approaches might be deconstructed within the context of decolonization. The purpose of this chapter is to deconstruct and decolonize foundational higher and adult learning conceptual and theoretical frameworks that are routinely embedded within courses and programs. The conceptual and theoretical frameworks selected and analyzed include self-directed learning, transformative learning, and action learning as conventional examples of individual and collective instructional approaches employed within higher and adult learning settings. Maōri scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith's (2012) nine characteristics of theory that contribute to colonizing discourses and 25 Indigenous projects/principles are employed as the lenses that frame this analysis. These lenses include social science and methodological approaches and strategies that decolonize populations and promote Indigenous epistemologies.