Applied linguistics is focusing greater attention on the importance of developing multilingual EAL (ME) students’ academic literacy skills within disciplinary contexts in post-secondary education (Jacobs, 2007). Despite this shift from a generic to discipline-specific approach, few studies have examined course-aligned models of support for ME learners in university courses in fine arts. This presentation attempts to address this gap by focusing on an interdisciplinary collaboration between a language education and fine arts faculty to design a course-aligned model of support in light of Wegner’s (1999) community of practice for ME students in a Canadian university. Data in this qualitative case study were gathered from classroom observations and language support sessions, pedagogical documentation, and student questionnaires. Data analysis has revealed that the theoretical foundations of the arts program can both limit and enable the model of academic literacy development. The latter may require scaffolding, structure, and rule-governed practices while the former encourages creativity and thinking “outside the box”. The findings can help Faculty and curriculum developers better understand issues in developing discipline-specific models of support for ME students. Recommendations for content-area faculty teaching linguistically diverse classes and curriculum developers designing models of support for ME students are offered at the end.
