A historical and contrastive account of higher education reading and writing studies published in Latin America

Higher education reading and writing studies have developed for at least two decades in Latin America. However, little systematic research reveals the emerging shape of this disciplinary space. To fill this gap, this article compares publications from different countries and moments based on the variables of authors, languages, focuses, topics, orientations, levels, areas, genres and types. An international team analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively 81 articles on reading and writing published during the last 15 years in four leading journals according to the expert community from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia. Results show that most articles do empirical research on writing; they tend to study the development of undergraduate writing and prefer the Humanities and Social Sciences; they mostly focus on the research article; they are written by authors from various countries, in Spanish and Portuguese. From a historical point of view, reading as an isolated competence gradually disappeared and hybrid, epistemologically more explicit frameworks increased. Regional contrasts indicate that reading and writing are mostly understood as educationally situated processes in the Colombian journal and as specialized discourses in Argentinean and Chilean, with the Brazilian journal positioned in between. Furthermore, Brazilian and Colombian journals promote local researchers whereas Argentinean and Chilean offer more international authors. This disciplinary consideration on reading and writing studies in Latin America has scientific, educational and political relevance to foster disciplinary advance, validation, institutionalization and expansion.