Revisioning student learning: Applying disciplinary literacy to curricula design

Why do students succeed? More poignantly, why do students fail? This article offers a series of scaffolded models to render disciplinary literacy overt, explicit and clear. We show how ‘disciplinary literacy’ is a phrase, trope, and concept that underpins theoretical models to enable student success, while respecting the diversity of student backgrounds and pathways into formal learning. Most importantly, this article reveals the value of reconciling the relationship between the research and teaching functions of academic life. We present models that operate in the spaces between research and teaching, success and failure, form and content, content and context. Our goal is to transcend the labelling of learners, such as ‘at risk’ or ‘high achievers.’ Instead, our models occupy the spaces of learning, rendering them granular, customised and
transformative, and ready for deployment in curricula design.