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Obwohl der religiöse Glaube nach britischem Recht ein geschütztes Merkmal ist, wird er in der Hochschulbildung nur unzureichend erforscht. In diesem Artikel versuche ich den Unterschied aufzuzeigen, den religiöse Zugehörigkeit für Studierende im Hochschulunterricht und bei dessen Bewertung bedeuten kann. In meiner qualitativen Studie habe ich Ideen aus der Ethnomethodologie, von FOUCAULT, aus Literacy-Studien und der Wittgensteinschen Perspektive im Sinne WINCH verwendet, um das Zusammentreffen von religiösem Glauben und soziologischem Konstruktionismus als ein diskursives Problem zu charakterisieren, das von einer der Wiedergeburtslehre folgenden Studentin verursacht wurde. Ich zeige, wie dieses diskursive Problem beschrieben wurde, nachdem es pragmatisch, wenn auch nicht akademisch, in der Arbeit der Studentin gelöst worden war. Die Lösung bestand in einer interdiskursiven Technik der Präsentation von Ideen, die vom Glauben inspiriert waren, ohne sie in den Dienst einer Argumentationsstruktur zu stellen. Meine Analyse der Materialien zeigt eine Reihe von Überlegungen, die für nicht-religiöse Studierende nicht relevant wären., Religious faith, despite being a protected characteristic under UK law, is under-studied in higher education. In this article, I answer the call for studies that demonstrate the difference that religious adherence can make to the student experience of higher education instruction and assessment. In my qualitative study, I used ideas from ethnomethodology, FOUCAULT's archaeological work, academic literacies, and the Wittgensteinian perspective of WINCH to characterise the meeting of religious faith and sociological constructionism as a discursive problem occasioned by a born-again Christian student. I show how this discursive problem was described after it had been solved, pragmatically if not academically, in the student's writing. The solution comprised an interdiscursive technique of presenting faith-inspired ideas without pressing them into the service of an argument structure. My analysis of materials demonstrates a series of considerations that would not be relevant to non-religious students.

Religious faith, despite being a protected characteristic under UK law, is under-studied in higher education. In this article, I answer the call for studies that demonstrate the difference that religious adherence can make to the student experience of higher education instruction and assessment. In my qualitative study, I used ideas from ethnomethodology, FOUCAULT's archaeological work, academic literacies, and the Wittgensteinian perspective of WINCH to characterise the meeting of religious faith and sociological constructionism as a discursive problem occasioned by a born-again Christian student. I show how this discursive problem was described after it had been solved, pragmatically if not academically, in the student's writing. The solution comprised an interdiscursive technique of presenting faith-inspired ideas without pressing them into the service of an argument structure. My analysis of materials demonstrates a series of considerations that would not be relevant to non-religious students., Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol. 23 No. 3 (2022)

Academic literacies pursues a transformative agenda, which involves ‘exploring alternative ways of meaning making in academia, not least by considering the resources that (student) writers bring to the academy as legitimate tools for meaning making’ (Lillis and Scott, 2007: 13). How we select what the legitimate tools for meaning making are is assumed in these studies, but not established. Given the generally fraught status of religion in the academy, a perspicuous instance of this problem resides in the question of whether religious faith constitutes a ‘legitimate tool for meaning making’. We therefore need to think about how we establish what can and cannot be said to be legitimate tools, and whether this should be decided as a matter of normative principle, or whether it can be arrived at empirically. Further, we would need to consider how such questions are to be properly incorporated into learning and assessment. This article uses qualitative data from studies into religion and higher education to provide some initial thoughts on how these questions could be addressed. It carries out a scoping exercise that sheds light on the possibilities of the employment of religious identity in academic writing. It concludes that religious ideas and identities may on occasion be relevant without implying a threat to disciplinary rigour.Keywords: academic literacies, disciplines, higher education, identity politics, knowledge, meaning making, religion, voice, voice discourse

This thesis addresses academic writing using two practice-led disciplines, academic literacies and ethnomethodology. It is first concerned to evaluate the possibilities of cooperation between these cognate endeavours, and concludes that where academic literacies provides a locus and set of topics for academic writing studies, ethnomethodology can contribute a sharpening of focus and of analytic tools. Ethnomethodology provides a reassuring message in that it confirms the value of detailed local studies, in this case of literacy. However, it is also the source of critique for those literacy scholars who have tried to site their studies in dualisms. This is seen as a rejection of situated studies. There is therefore a prominent methodological focus in this thesis. These methodological issues are then discussed in regard to how they translate into agendas and technologies for the study of social literacies. It is shown that ethnographic-type methods are necessary for such studies, even where they do not qualify as ‘full’ ethnographies by traditional standards. This study itself took on a quasi-ethnographic or ethnographic-type approach, using a longitudinal method to track the academic writing practices of eight undergraduate students with the aim of ascertaining the social and collaborative ways in which their work is accorded plausibility. Material from the study is presented in the form of interview analysis, and in a series of ethnographic case studies that use a variety of material, including interviews with students and staff, student essays, and various other materials that were accrued throughout the administrative life of the essays. Various methods for achieving or according plausibility, on the part of both students and staff, are discussed and analysed. Although all protagonists involved in essay writing and marking looked for and dealt in conventions wherever possible, the material presented here demonstrates that participants were generally aware of the limits to the possibilities of phenomena, and that there may be cause to locate, challenge, change, and adapt to the things that can acceptably be said and done in essay writing.