Much academic development work that is framed by academic literacies, especially that focused
on writing, is concerned with disciplinary conventions and knowledges: conceptual, practical,
and procedural. This paper argues, however, that academic literacies work tends to conflate
literacy practices with disciplinary knowledge structures, thus obscuring the structures from
which these practices emanate. This paper demonstrates how theoretical and analytical tools
for conceptualizing disciplinary knowledge structures can connect these with academic
literacies development work. Using recent studies that combine academic literacies and
theories of knowledge in novel ways, this paper will show that understanding the knowledge
structures of different disciplines can enable academic developers to build a stronger body of
practice. This will enable academic developers working within disciplinary contexts to more
ably speak to the nature of coming to know in higher education.