NOKEN model: A critical literacy inquiry framework for mapping and building undergraduate academic essays

Abstract

Academic essay writing requires undergraduates to transform reading into coherent, evidence-based, and ethical argumentation. Yet higher education often separates reading, inquiry, drafting, feedback, and revision, limiting students’ ability to develop arguments from critically evaluated sources. This developmental study designed and evaluated the NOKEN model, a locally resonant critical literacy inquiry framework for integrated academic reading-writing instruction. NOKEN comprises Navigating critical issues, Organizing ideas and evidence, Knowledge-building through inquiry, Evaluating perspectives and argument plans, and Negotiating academic voice. The study involved two expert validators, three prospective lecturer-users, and 30 students in an academic writing course at Universitas Papua. Following analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation stages, data were collected through document analysis, validation sheets, practicality questionnaires, and essay tests. Descriptive statistics, normality and homogeneity tests, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and normalized gain analysis were applied. The model achieved high validity (M = 3.74/4.00) and practicality (M = 3.73). Students’ mean scores increased from 78.75 to 87.73, with a normalized gain of 0.42 and a significant difference (p = .001). NOKEN appears feasible, practical, and promising, although controlled multi-site studies are needed to verify its effectiveness, transferability, and long-term instructional impact fully.