Academic Literacy and Student Diversity: Evaluating a Curriculum-Integrated Inclusive Practice Intervention in the United Kingdom
Publicated to:Sustainability. 12 (3): 1155- - 2020-02-01 12(3), DOI: 10.3390/su12031155
Authors: Calvo, Sara; Celini, Luciano; Morales, Andres; Guaita Martinez, Jose Manuel; Nunez-Cacho Utrilla, Pedro
Affiliations
Abstract
The sustainability of universities is based, among other aspects, on their ability to adapt to changes and the needs of students, an increasingly diverse population. In this sense, Academic literacy provision at universities tends to be centralized and to offer language support for general academic literacy purposes rather than language development that responds in a more nuanced way to the particular literacy needs of students' disciplines. Yet, in recent years, several studies have supported the integration of academic literacy into subject teaching outlining the principles of an inclusive model of academic literacy instruction. This paper draws on a theoretical framework developed by Wingate to evaluate a curriculum-integrated inclusive practice intervention in the United Kingdom with students from a first-year credit-bearing module at Middlesex University Business School. The study used a mixed methods approach that includes a literature review, secondary data, feedback questionnaire and a focus group to evaluate our teaching method and reflect on the collaboration of the team members to develop this inclusive pedagogical approach. The findings suggest that, on the whole, this intervention was perceived by both the module teaching team and students as positive, welcoming and often crucial for supporting undergraduate students into the disciplinary discourse of their subject of study. Yet, recommendations were made with respect to developing better guidelines for subject lecturers on how to deliver the integrated academic literacy as well as the importance of the participation of students, student learning assistants and graduate teaching assistants in the design of the intervention. This study contributes to the literature on inclusive practice intervention and pedagogical approaches to integrating academic literacy into subject teaching for a diverse student population, contributing to the social sustainability of the universities.
Keywords
Quality index
Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel
The work has been published in the journal Sustainability due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency Scopus (SJR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2020, it was in position , thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Energy Engineering and Power Technology. Notably, the journal is positioned above the 90th percentile.
From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from the Field Citation Ratio (FCR) of the Dimensions source, it yields a value of: 4.55, which indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: Dimensions Jul 2025)
Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-07-27, the following number of citations:
- WoS: 10
- Scopus: 11
Impact and social visibility
Leadership analysis of institutional authors
This work has been carried out with international collaboration, specifically with researchers from: United Kingdom.