Multi-Genre Pedagogy

Research Project, 2025 – 2028

This project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of multi-genre pedagogy for teaching rhetorical flexibility (or "recontextualisation") across academic and non-academic genres. The importance of such work is grounded in the modern demands placed on scientists to communicate their findings to a broad range of audiences through a variety of evolving genres. Thus far, writing pedagogies have focussed on teaching specific genres, whereas this project aims to develop the ability to deconstruct and reconstruct new genres in order to achieve effective writing recontextualisation. To achieve this, task sequences built on multi-genre pedagogy will be implemented in up to four classrooms in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Norway. Pedagogical effectiveness will be evaluated through student interviews, student texts, and comparisons with a credible control condition. The project seeks to evaluate both the pedagogic outcomes of multi-genre pedagogy, i.e. do we find evidence that multi-genre pedagogy develops recontextualisation in students, and the metacognitive processes involved, i.e. how multi-genre pedagogy shapes learning processes. The findings will have implications for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses in higher education, addressing an urgent need to help scientists communicate their findings in ethical and effective ways to multitudes of audiences.