Session Information
31 SES 08, The Role of Pupils' L1 for Literacy Across School
Paper Session
Contribution
In 1994 the Swedish upper secondary school was reformed with the main purpose of preparing all students, in both vocational and academic programmes, for an unpredictable future job market. All programmes provided a general qualification for university studies by introducing eight core subjects with the same goals, for all students. Of these subjects, most time was devoted to the subject of Swedish.
The subject of Swedish has historically had the main responsibility to develop the literacy of students. At the same time has the teaching of the subject been characterized by differentiation. The importance of literacy is globally emphasized by the OECD, in the respect of “the capacity of students to analyze reason and communicate effectively as they pose, solve and interpret problems in a variety of subject matter areas” (DeSeCo, 2005 p. 3). OECD also points out that individuals need to develop abilities to “tackle complex mental tasks, going well beyond the basic reproduction of accumulated knowledge” (DeSeCo, 2005 p. 8).
The overall aim in the thesis (Andersson Varga, 2014) is to investigate the tension between the traditional way of teaching Swedish and the intention of the upper secondary school reform of 1994, which aimed at preparing all students, and not only the ones studying in the academic programmes, for further education and for exercising citizenship. More specifically is the aim to explore the writing repertoires that students are given the opportunity to develop, since being a skilled and confident writer who is competent to produce expository texts is a crucial skill in adult life – not only to succeed with academic studies but also for many aspects of exercising citizenship, such as being politically active.
The research questions to be answered are:
- · What are the characteristics of the writing assignments afforded and the texts produced by the students?
- What are the teachers’ conceptions of teaching writing and of different categories of students? How do these conceptions affect the teachers’ expectations on the students’ performances and the framing of their instruction?
- Are there any signs of interruption of social reproduction – i.e. are equal opportunities provided for the students in the different programmes to develop their writing repertoires?
Basil Bernstein’s theoretical framework characterizes the study (Bernstein, 1971; 1977; 1990; 1996; 2000). Concepts used are elaborated vs. restricted code, two variations of language, where the latter is privileged in education; classification and framing, where classification sets up boundaries within relations, for instance between school subjects or between teachers and students and the framing decides the structure of the pedagogy, what parts of the curriculum are taught but also the sequencing and pacing of the instruction, and who is in control in the classroom – whether it is the teacher alone, or if the students have an impact; visible vs. invisible pedagogy, where the former explicitly communicates how students are expected to deal with assignments and the latter more implicitly lets the students develop their competence without detailed instructions; pedagogic discourse, consisting of instructional discourse, for instance subject contents, and regulative discourse, which relates to the ethics of what is being taught; the pedagogic device which is to be understood as the grammar of the pedagogic discourse, consisting of three hierarchical rules: the distributive rules, the recontextualisation rules and the evaluative rules; horizontal vs vertical discourse, where knowledge in a horizontal discourse is context bound, leading to shallow understanding, whereas knowledge in a vertical discourse is typically abstract and conceptual, affording opportunities to generalize beyond a specific case or situation. Vertical discourse gives power to question and challenge.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Andersson Varga, Pernilla (2014). Skrivundervisning i gymnasieskolan. Svenskämnets roll i den sociala reproduktionen. Diss. Göteborg : Göteborgs universitet, 2014. Göteborg. Bernstein, B. (1971). Class, codes and control I. Theoretical studies towards a sociology of language.London: Routledge. Bernstein, B. (red.) (1977). Class, codes and control. Vol. 3, Towards a theory of educational transmissions. ([2.,] rev. ed.) Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bernstein, B. (red.) (1990). Class, codes and control. Vol. 4, The structuring of pedagogic discourse. London: Routledge. Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. London: Taylor & Francis. Bernstein, B. 2000[1996]). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. (Rev. ed). Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. DeSeCo (2005):”The definition and selection of key competencies. Executive summary”. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/35070367.pdf. Hansson, Å. (2011). Ansvar för matematiklärande: effekter av undervisningsansvar i det flerspråkiga klassrummet. Diss. Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet, 2011. Göteborg. Holmberg, P(2006). ”Funktionell grammatik för textarbete i skolan”. I Lindberg, I. & Sandwall. K. (red)(2006). Språket och kunskapen – att lära på sitt andraspråk I skola och högskola. Rapport från nordisk konferens den 7-8 oktober 2005 i Göteborg. (Rapporter om svenska som andraspråk ). Göteborg: Institutet för svenska som andraspråk. Holmberg, P. (2013). Att skriva förklarande text. Text som deltagande i praktiker och aktiviteter. I Text, kontext och betydelse. Sex nordiska studier i systemisk-funktionell lingvistik, s. 53-72. Södertörns högskola. Knapp, P. & Watkins, M.(2007). Genre, text, grammar. Technologies for teaching and assessing writing. Sydney: UNSW Press Martin, J.R. & Rose, D.(2008). Genre relations. Mapping cultures. Equinox. Singh, P.(2013) Unlocking pedagogic mazes. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.