Language teacher´s academic literacy: a comparative study in three mexican universities [recurso electrónico] / Karina Flores Osuna ; director, Jitka Crhová

Licenciatura en Docencia de Idiomas

Tesis (Licenciatura) - Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Facultad de Idiomas, Tijuana, Facultad de Idiomas, Mexicali 2019

Incluye referencias bibliográficas.

This thesis forms a part of a research project that holds as purpose describing the development of
literacy of teacher-researchers in the field of language teaching in three Mexican universities
through their narratives. The research project is part of the macro project of the research network
RILE“Red de Investigadores en Lenguas Extranjeras”, which was financially supported by the
Secretary of a Public Education.
The narratives of the teachers were obtained through semi-structured interviews that
enabled us to obtain large chunks of information from the studied subjects. Life stories and the
development of literacy were analyzed through the procedures of the content analysis. The
patterns and pathways of academic literacy development in language teachers (first reseacrh
question) could be established in this process, where five central teams arose: 1.1 the academics
developed their literacy through their prior schooling and participation in academic/teacher
training courses, 1.2. via academic productivity, 1.3. engaging in research projects, 1.4. through
the development of specific academic skills related to reading, and finally, given the specificity
of the sample, 1.5. biliteracy and bilingualism development theme emerged in the analysis of the
data obtained through language teachers’ narratives.
The second research question, addressed in this project, was to identify the key moments
in the process of developing teacher-researchers ́ academic literacy.
These narratives allowed us to extract information in order to analyze it by specifying the
elements that the research questions contained. We were able to discern the key elements that

were required in order to interpret our results. The analysis of the narratives of the 31 teacher-
researchers from three public universities in Mexico, being represented one Northern, one

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Central and one Southern University, displayed similar patterns in as much as the development
of the academic literacy and biliteracy. The university teachers have developed literacy mainly
in both Spanish and English languages. Spanish, as the mother tongue of the vast majority of the
teachers, is also the language in which the major part of them publishes their academic texts.
Lastly, the narratives used in this investigation will not only serve as insight to the most
important moments in terms of academic literacy development, but also to acknowledge the
difficulties they had to overcome in regards to academic skills in writing and the factors that
affected their academic productivity that are not necessarily tied to their writing skills.