Public lecture
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
Unpacking the Relationship Between Literacy and Academic Success
Federico Navarro
Universidad de O’Higgins, Chile
It is often assumed that reading and writing play a fundamental role in learning achievement and academic success across different fields of knowledge in secondary and higher education. However, there is no conclusive evidence proving this link, nor is it clear which aspects of reading and writing have a greater or lesser impact on performance. This presentation will offer the results of a four-year research study involving approximately 900 students, tracking their trajectories through secondary and higher education in Chile. Using a mixed-methods approach and combining instruments such as tests, surveys, and interviews, the project aimed to analyze the relationship between academic performance and standardized reading and writing test results, students' conceptions of reading and writing and their self-efficacy, as well as their academic and vernacular literacy habits and practices. The findings show that standardized reading and writing tests correlate with academic performance over time, but only a writing test with meaningful purposes and a focus on student agency avoids reinforcing underlying socioeconomic gaps. Additionally, epistemic conceptions of reading and writing, along with higher self-efficacy, correlate with better academic performance, in contrast to reproductive conceptions and lower self-efficacy. Finally, the study found that students with higher performance levels engage in reading and writing collaboratively and integrate their literacy practices both within and outside educational settings. These findings provide a multifactorial perspective on reading and writing and can guide evidence-based literacy pedagogy.
Contact name:
Bojana Petric
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Federico Navarro
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Prof Federico Navarro holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics and is a Full Professor and former Dean at Universidad de O’Higgins in Chile. He was the founding chair of the Latin American Association of Writing Studies. He has led 10 research projects on writing and has published over 150 papers across 12 countries.