L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature
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Literature—a high risk implementation route to literacy?
Get PDFThis article is about the implementation of a literary module in a large scale Swedish professional development programme for teachers called the Reading Lift, which was introduced in 2014 in response to alarming PISA results. While the government-assigned preparatory work stressed the importance of literature and literary didactic methods, this area was reduced significantly in the hands of the National Agency for Education. For upper secondary school, the Agency did not initially plan for any literary content. This article examines what happened when L1 teachers demanded a literary module. Specifically, we study how the module was implemented and how literature is viewed. The study is based on interviews with researchers who contributed with content on behalf of the Agency and qualitative content analysis of the literature module. Results show that the module represents a focus on knowledge and art, unlike the instrumental and skills focused perspectives on literature for compulsory school, explored in an earlier study. One explanation for this, is that the influence of street-level agency bureaucrats was reduced due to various circumstances. The result was to the benefit of literary education but at the same time a high-risk route for the Agency’s requirements for measurability
Reported Evidence-Based Writing Practices and Teachers’ Beliefs in Catalonia, Spain: An Exploratory Study
Get PDFThis paper investigates the reported frequency of the use of evidence-based writing practices (EBWPs) by teachers (N = 51) in primary and secondary school classrooms in a sample of schools in the Barcelona metropolitan area (Spain), and how teacher beliefs contribute to the reported use of EBWPs. The results showed that the teachers declared to implement most of the EBWPs from previous studies. The three most frequent declared practices were 1) give praise individually for writing, 2) teaching writing strategies for planning and writing skills, and 3) using text assessment as a guide to shape instructions. Regarding teachers’ beliefs about teaching writing, the study focused on teachers’ attitudes and teacher efficacy. The results on attitude showed that teachers had a positive attitude toward writing. Results regarding teacher efficacy showed that teachers felt quite efficacious, especially when they were required to determine the level of difficulty in written assignments. A factor analysis of the EBWPs showed that the two main factors for the frequency of reported use of EBWPS were strategy teaching for evidence-based writing and writing practices based on text assessment. PLS regression analyses showed that the reported frequency of use of EBWPs was highly predicted by the feeling of efficacy of teachers
Understanding L1 and L2 teachers’ talk about ‘digitalisation’: Discourses during the process of integrating digital technology in the educational practice
Get PDFIn Sweden, The Swedish national strategy for the digitalisation of the educational system has led to a vast number of projects. This study builds on material from a continuing professional development project among L1 and L2 teachers in Swedish on a local school level. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of how the teachers perceive the integration of digital technology in the educational practice by deconstructing their discussions in a Critical discourse analysis perspective. Research questions: 1) What perceptions about the integration of digital technology in the educational practice can be discerned? 2) How are these perceptions related to the teaching profession and the teaching of Swedish? and 3) How do the teachers build their understanding through the discussions? The study shows how a discourse of challenges dominates the teachers’ discussions and that the integration of digital technology in the educational practice is partly perceived as a threat to the teaching profession and, to some extent, the teaching of Swedish. A key finding is that in the way the discussions are enacted, ‘digitalisation’ becomes the reason for what happens. Consequently, the abstraction of ‘digitalisation’ seems to be a hindrance to the development work
The literacies of a competitive esports team: Livestreaming, VODS, and Mods
Get PDFThis article explores a variety of literacy practices that exist with competitive esports, namely livestreaming, moderating/Mods, and VODs/VODcasting. Nearly two decades of research have indicated that videogaming provides rich experiences for developing multifarious and diverse literacy practices, but, to-date, little research examines the literacies born out of the rapidly growing and evolving videogaming market of esports. This study provides insight into the way a team functions to provide meaning-making experiences surrounding livestreaming, moderating, and VODcasting within the burgeoning esports culture. Drawing from a two-year snapshot of a larger five-year ethnographic examination of a competitive collegiate esports team, this study is guided by the theoretical perspective of distributed cognition. Data that inform this study stem from interviews, observations, and artifacts in both face-to-face and digital spaces. Findings indicate that the esports-related literacies of livestreaming, moderating, and VODs/VODcasting, transcend and overlap meaning-making experiences—in-the-moment and in reflectivity—suggesting that the role of the team is vital to the literacies found within the esports ecosystem
A critical review of digital game literacies in the English classroom
Get PDFThis paper reviews research into the use of digital games in the L1 English classroom. It deals specifically with qualitative case study research investigating the potentialities of these new social, cultural and textual forms. The aim is to provide a critical review of the research to identify how teachers have been using these new forms of meaning making and to explore the literate practices associated with the study of digital games in the English classroom, as well as the games selected and the forms of classroom play utilised. Analysis of the 16 studies which met the inclusion criteria reveals that digital game literacies present opportunities for meeting the historical imperatives of English teaching, but also for providing new ways of thinking about how we support students to know themselves and the world. Connecting with students’ lifeworlds, developing traditional and contemporary skills, questioning representations within texts, and supporting the aesthetic dimension of textual experience, were reported to be important outcomes that could be achieved through learning about digital games in English
Teaching verb spelling through explicit direct instruction
Get PDFHomophonous verb forms are notoriously difficult to spell. Two intervention studies - one with secondary-school students and one with university students - compared the effectiveness of an Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) teaching approach that was very interactive with traditional instruction (TI) on Dutch homophonous verb spelling. The two approaches differ in the attention dedicated to the identification of the grammatical functions of verb forms and in the teacher’s guidance of the students, which affects the interactivity during the classes. Students were pre-tested and post-tested on their knowledge of grammar and spelling of homophonous verb forms embedded in sentences. Both the EDI and the TI courses consisted of 4.5 hours of training. Secondary-school students’ verb-spelling performance improved, irrespective of the type of instruction. University students’ verb-spelling performance increased after both interventions, probably resulting from their improved grammatical knowledge. Importantly, the EDI students’ performance increased more than the TI students’ performance because the EDI students had learnt to rely more on their grammatical knowledge or make better use of their increased grammatical mastery. These results are in line with our hypothesis that the explicit interactivity that is inherent to EDI is beneficial for teaching verb spelling to students beyond primary-school level, who already possess some grammatical knowledge
Writing creative and argumentative texts: What\u27s the difference? : Exploring how task type affects students\u27 writing behaviour and performance
Get PDFThe aim of this study was to gain insight into writing processes of secondary school students when confronted with fictional and expressive creative writing prompts compared to argumentative writing prompts. Twenty participants (Grade 10-11) each wrote eight texts, four based on creative prompts, the other four based on argumentative prompts, within a set time. A keystroke logging program recorded participants\u27 writing processes. Texts were rated on global quality. Writing motivation and creativity were measured as well. Results showed that creative text production processes had specific features. Students\u27 writing processes were faster, more stable and resulted in longer texts, and fewer revisions. Furthermore, creative as well as argumentative text quality improved if students wrote longer texts in short production cycles. Explorative analyses showed that learner characteristics correlate with writing behaviour as well as with text quality. Students wrote longer texts, had higher writing speed, and wrote better texts when they reported a more positive attitude towards writing and considered themselves more creative. Finally, students who believed in their own creative ability and/or believed that writing requires personal commitment wrote significantly better creative texts. These findings are discussed in the light of the aim to re-introduce creative writing in the Dutch curriculum
Year 8 students’ interpretations of short stories in the Danish L1 literature classroom: Distinct ways of writing and knowing
Get PDFLower secondary students’ written responses to literature in the first-language (L1) classroom have received only limited scholarly attention in Denmark. To develop a greater understanding of this form of text participation, this article examines how year 8 students (age 13–14) use literary terms and construct evaluative stances in interpretations of contemporary short stories. The article introduces a functional linguistic and sociological framework which enables the identification of fine-grained meaning-making patterns and their subsequent translation into broader knowledge tendencies. The principal finding is the presence of three distinct and, to a certain extent, contending knowledge tendencies reflected and co-created in the students’ written language use. The detected differences in ways of writing and knowing render visible challenges associated with using literary terms and expressing the appropriate degree of subjectivity at the lower secondary level. Additionally, the identified differences also render visible the transitional nature of the L1 literature classroom at this educational level in Denmark. Taken together, the findings indicate the need for intensified discussions among teachers and researchers regarding what is important, and why, when students are required to engage in interpretive writing tasks in the L1 literature classroom
Writing from the edge: Reflections on \u27Twenty Years of L1\u27
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Linguistic discrimination in pedagogical evaluation: A study of teachers of Hungarian language and literature in Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania and Hungary
Get PDFThere is a paucity of research on dialect awareness among teachers, particularly in Hungary. The aim of our research was to explore, and demonstrate the existence of linguistic discrimination. The research involved more than 550 Hungarian Language and Literature teachers and teacher trainees from Hungary (N = 216), Slovakia (N = 128), Romania (N = 108) and Ukraine (N = 50). Data were collected primarily through a technique similar to matched-guise tests, however, the method of the present research had some additional complexity. The pilot test (N = 50) and the large-scale research (N = 502) clearly supported the assumption that linguistic discrimination was widespread in pedagogical evaluation. Oral performances were recorded which varied in content, language variety and code/mode of language use. Oral performances produced in the standard variety and/or in the elaborated code of language use were favored. By contrast, oral productions in dialectal and restricted language—despite the fact that their content was correct—received unfavorable evaluation. Linguistic variability in oral productions with the same content resulted in as much as a full grade of difference in the mean of grades. The differences were statistically significant for each sample, hence the prevalence of linguistic discrimination is proved