Heteroglossic spaces : interrogating academic literacies in teacher education

This paper explores the challenges of implementing critical writing pedagogy in conditions of increasing cultural and textual uniformity of literacy and emphasises the need for a pedagogy that takes into account the heteroglossic nature of writing space and its relation to the multiple textual practices of students. In practical terms, we argue for such literacy practices in teacher education that would require students not only to understand the complexities of language and literacy but to actively engage them in a diverse range of textual practices that would both stretch their repertoires as language users and sensitise them to the cultural-semiotic diversity of contemporary classrooms. This task becomes more urgent in the current era of standards, accountability and classroom pedagogies that are not attuned to the particularities of students’ textual practices and the communication networks in which they participate.