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Although a growing body of research has focused on the writing students do in their homes, communities, unofficial spaces of school, and the workplace (see Finders, Camitta, Mahiri, Moje), studies have largely neglected the complex synergistic and conflicting relationships between students' out-of-school literate activity and the writing they do for school. The result, as this dissertation argues, is that we have overlooked the critical ways that non-school literate activity shapes students' participation in the literate practices and discourses of the academy. Drawing on a sociohistoric framework, the study employs Vygotsky's genetic approach to trace the pathways of literate practices as they are employed across multiple contexts. Using data (field notes, interviews, and samples of undergraduates' school and non-school writing) collected during three multi-year longitudinal case studies, the analysis explores the ways that three undergraduates draw from the entire repertoires of literate practices and discourses in order to meet the literate demands of the undergraduate curriculum. Illuminating the diverse literate practices and discourses that are layered into both school and non-school setting, the dissertation argues that out-of-school literate activity can scaffold students' participation in the literate practices and discourses privileged in school and the workplace. It also contends that participating successfully in the literate activity of school is not a matter of setting aside non-academic practices and discourses but rather a matter of productively weaving together diverse literate resources from multiple contexts.
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