The politics of remediation – cultural disbelief and non-traditional students

The chapter presents alternative perspectives to a deficit approach to students’ identities and academic ability at the same time as foregrounding discriminatory institutional practices. My ethnographic research found evidence of repeated Othering of a small group of students with diasporic connections studying at a London university. Consequently, I suggest successful exposure to academic culture, which includes reading writing and knowledge-making, can only occur after engagement and participation is made possible for all students. In practice this means that, rather than kettling students into language support units for additional help, there should be a sensitive approach to language and literacy development where attendance remains voluntary. I remain uncomfortable with monolithic interventions at institutional level as they can feed into native-speakerist discourses which can demonise the ‘non-western’, ‘non traditional’ Other. Student-centred and contextually-sensitive approaches to academic writing development can create opportunities within the university curriculum for the ‘nontraditional’, ‘non-native’ students’ experiences to be valorised through writing and assessment practices which contribute to the suspension of cultural disbelief.