An Investigation of Transfer in the Literacy Practices of Religiously Engaged Christian College Students.

Abstract

This study examines the literacy practices of religiously engaged Christian college students who participate in a single campus ministry at a large, public university in the Midwest. It takes religiously engaged Christian college students as a case study of the ways that literacy practices and discourses transfer among discourse communities, in particular the curricular and extracurricular domains of students’ lives. The study brings together research traditions from the social sciences and composition studies, drawing on observations of the campus ministry alongside interviews with students about their reading and writing practices. It therefore provides instructors with a more expansive picture than has previously been available of how Christian college students navigate the relationships between academic and religious ways of knowing. Findings suggest that students are often agentive in the ways that they bring religious and academic literacy practices into relationship with each other. In fact, opportunities to transfer or compartmentalize literacy practices are actually a mechanism by which students make sense of the expectations for reading and writing that they experience as they navigate their collegiate lives. Far from being passive reproducers of knowledge in either community, students are using their reading and writing activities to position themselves as productive members of both their religious and academic communities.