Session Information
Paper Session
Contribution
According to the latest results of PIRLS, Swedish students have decreased in reading proficiency, especially among the most fluent readers, where reading for deeper understanding is more seldom achieved among readers, and especially among boys. Thus, reading for understanding has lately been more attended to in ways of teaching reading to already proficient readers who are past the beginner's stage. One way of attaining better or deeper understanding is by practising book talk (Chambers, 1985) where children and teacher together discuss events, characters and interpretations of a work of fiction, like a children's book). However, in our study we claim that although the purpose of reading and book-talking is to negotiate understandings and interpretations of fiction, other issues like norms, rules, identifications and relations are negotiated as well (comp. Cummins 2001, Hall 2003.)
The field notes and analyses in this paper are based on data produced during an 18 months ethnographic study with the overall objective to study Swedish teaching in 5th grade at two compulsory schools with children aged 10-12, in a city centre area in Sweden. The negotiation of gender and ethnicity in the classroom was the main focus during the fieldwork (comp Joseph 2009, Nayak 2006). Fieldwork was conducted in formal settings, such as lessons, and teacher team meetings and in informal settings, such as the hallways and the school library, the playground and in the neighborhood. Additional data sources consist of schedules, policy documents, artefacts, etc (Hammersley & Atkinson 1995).
This paper focuses on a sequence where the teacher is conducting a book talk on some events in a popular children's book, which the class has been reading for a long period of time. At first the teacher is focused on getting the readers to reflect on the thoughts of the main characters. However, the conversation changes as a more principal discussion takes place as to whether girls fight like boys do, or differently and what the arguments are for similarity or difference. Thus, the instructional discourse in order to achieve an enhanced proficiency in reading cannot be separated from but is imbedded in wider discourses (Phonix 2009).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Chambers, Aidan (1985). Booktalk: occasional writing on literature and children. London: Bodley Cummins, J. (2001). Negotiating identities : education for empowerment in a diverse society. Los Angeles. California Association for Bilingual Education. Hall, S. (2003). New ethnicities, red D, Morley & D-K Chen (2003) Stuart Hall: Critical dialogues in Cultural Studies. London. Routledge. s 431-449. Hammersley, Martyn and P Atkinson. 1995. Ethnography : principles in practice. London:Routledge Joseph, C. 2009. Postcoloniality and ethnography: negotiating gender, ethnicity and power, Race Ethnicity and Education, 12(1), 11 - 25. Nayak, A. 2006. After race: Ethnography, race and post-race theory, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29:3, 411 - 430. Phonix A (2009) De-colonising: practices: negotiating from racialised and gendered experience of education. Race, Ethnicity and Education. 12:1 s 101-114
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