This presentation is based on findings from my doctoral research. The aim of my doctoral thesis is to inform teaching and learning practices in respect of academic writing. My research explored tertiary student and staff understandings of academic writing and was conducted with pre-service primary education students and staff. Students were in their first and second year of study. This research found that students and staff displayed more understanding of writing at word and- sentence-level than writing at the social or contextual level. It was also found that the divergences between student and staff understandings of academic writing were less in the second year than the first. The reason could be that students underwent a shift in understanding from their first to second year of study.