L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature
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\u27There is no writing that is writing without teachers\u27: Teachers\u27 role in the writing process of a seminar paper
No full textThis article is part of a larger study dealing with different aspects of seminar courses in academic colleges of education during 2014-2015, in which teachers are supposed not only to share knowledge of their expertise in a subject matter but also accompany their students through the academic writing process. This study examines teachers\u27 presence, roles in the writing-inquiry process in a seminar course. Our aim is to portray the complexity of this presence and consequently, to provide the basis for a tool that could (should) be developed, that has the potential to enable seminar teachers to diagnose strengths and weaknesses in their teaching and accompaniment of students. Our research questions were: What is the nature of teachers\u27 presence in the seminar course, and How do they cope with the challenges of ac-companying students writing? We interviewed 26 seminar course teachers in six teacher education colleges. Our findings portray these teachers as multi-tasking ‘acrobats\u27: planners; instructors; coaches; assessors, and models. The importance of this research is that it provides a broad and complex picture of teachers\u27 involvement as well as a basis for a tool for self-reflection
Examining the polestar of reading comprehension: One teacher\u27s instruction in one L1 class-room and students\u27 metacognitive knowledge of reading
Get PDFThis qualitative study examines reading comprehension instruction and students\u27 metacognitive knowledge of reading in one L1 classroom at the lower secondary level. The data comprises four consecutive videotaped lessons from the same class in grades 8, 9 and 10 (N = 12), student group interviews, and an in-depth interview with the teacher. The study investigates a) the prominent features of the reading comprehension instruction in videotaped lessons, b) to what extent and how features of the observed instruction is reflected in students\u27 perceptions of L1 lessons, and c) students\u27 metacognitive knowledge of reading, i.e., what strategies they express that they would use to understand complex texts. A key finding is that the observed instruction was mainly dominated by reading comprehension strategies and language skills, which was also reflected in students\u27 utterances of strategies they would use themselves and emphasized as important instructional elements by the teacher. However, while the students overall expressed metacognitive knowledge of how to approach complex texts independently, they also expressed a lack of variation in the provided instruction. The article discusses instructional practices, instructional variation, and the necessity of reading instruction balancing between fostering basic skills and higher-order thinking at the lower-secondary level
Systematically designed literature classroom interventions: Design principles, development and implementation
Get PDFUtilizing the affordances of digital learning materials
Get PDFDue to the all-pervasive digital transformation of education, learning materials have developed considerably in terms of their form, function and content over recent decades. This development from print-based to digital formats carries with it a corresponding transformation of materiality that may not be apparent, yet plays an important role in shaping contemporary learning environments. Obviously, this transformation is of relevance for the design of learning materials and has implications for how we assess and study digital learning materials. However, the process of designing learning materials with a view to utilizing the many possibilities of contemporary digital technologies is no trivial task. Consequently, a focal point in the study of learning materials must concern the utilization of these new possibilities. For that purpose, we develop a framework for analyzing digital learning materials based on the notion of affordance. We use this framework to study how six courses from a widely used digital form of Danish L1 learning material integrate different kinds of affordances into their learning designs. Based on the results of our analysis, we also discuss the implications of this material transformation
What learning materials reveal about Danish L1 as a school subject: Background, methods and results from a collaborative mixed methods study on learning materials in Danish L1 education
Get PDFThe purpose of this article is to give a general presentation of a collaborative mixed methods study on pedagogical learning materials that teachers report using in L1 teaching in primary and lower secondary school in Denmark. The presentation consists of four parts: an introduction covering the background for conducting this mixed methods study, including a contextualisation to support non-Danish readers in understanding the study, a brief description of other Nordic and international research on learning materials, a methodological section describing the mixed methods approach as an explanatory sequential design study, and, finally, a presentation and discussion of the main results of both the quantitative and the qualitative studies presented in this special issue. We conclude that the learning materials for Danish L1 generally have a formalistic approach to the subject matter, dominated by skills-based tasks, and that they are characterised by narrow text choices and decontextualised tasks. None of this is in accordance with the National Curriculum for Danish L1 in primary and lower secondary school
The impact of syntactic and lexical trainings on capitalization of nouns in German in grade five
Get PDFMany orthographies include syntactic markers not represented in phonology. In general, to correctly use these syntactic markers, learners have to analyze and understand the syntactic context of the word to be written. Capitalization of nouns, a syntactic marker in German, involves marking heads of noun phrases and is challenging for learners. The aim of this intervention study was to evaluate the effects of syntactic and lexical based trainings on capitalization of nouns. 114 Luxembourgish fifth-graders were assigned to two syntactic groups, a lexical group and a passive control group. The syntactic groups focused on two variants of training syntactic structures within the noun phrase. The lexical group focused on lexical characteristics of nouns and the control group received reading input. The posttest results show that the students in the intervention groups profited from the syntactic-based training. The follow-up test shows that the intervention was sustainable, as the improvement remains stable. The study indicates that a greater focus on syntactic structures can effectively enhance the use of syntactic markers of capitalizations. Although this approach is initially harder to acquire, it covers all cases of capitalization
Literature education in Nordic L1s: Cultural models of national lower-secondary curricula in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden
Get PDFThis study aims to shed light on the cultural models of literature and literature education reflected in Nordic L1 curricula by investigating how literature is given discursive significance in the Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish L1 curricula for lower-secondary school, both within and across those four countries. Education in the Nordic countries is a field well suited for comparative analysis as the languages used are closely related and the countries\u27 educational systems and policies are similar. In the study, we discuss how literary texts are given significance compared with other texts and what purposes of literature education are given a prominent place in the L1 curricula. The theoretical framework used derives from Gee\u27s (2014) description of cultural models; we understand the national curricula as linguistically created realms of reality. The comparative analysis suggests that there are similar tendencies as well as distinct national differences. Prominent cultural models identified across the countries are a double position of literary texts and a high expectation on literature education. The study points to a need to discuss the status and purpose of literary texts in the Nordic L1 subjects in order to promote further mutual understanding and inspiration across borders
Danish L1 according to the learning materials used: A quantitative study
Get PDFTextbooks or learning materials are an important and essential link between the intended and implemented curriculum in schools, and they play a vital role in how the curriculum is taught in classrooms. The learning material market in Denmark is open and dominated by private companies with no official approval system, and historically, Danish teachers have had a large influence on which materials they use. Research on the characteristics and use of learning materials is therefore of importance to researchers, policy makers and teachers. Little systematic research has been conducted into the learning materials used in Danish L1, and even internationally, research into the content and pedagogical approaches of the learning materials used is limited. This article highlights the pedagogical learning materials used in L1 in Denmark by presenting a representative survey of which learning materials Danish L1 teachers (n = 639) reported using. The listed materials (n = 2,132) were analysed for content and pedagogical approaches, and Danish L1 is characterized from a learning material perspective. The results show a subject dominat-ed by a repetitive pedagogical approach as well as repetitive spelling instruction and literary analysis, which is not in line with the national curriculum
Concepts of literature in Danish L1-textbooks and their framing of students\u27 reading
Get PDFThis article focuses on concepts of literature, reader and literary reading in five Danish textbooks for lower secondary school from the period 1983-2008. The bases, priorities and orientations of the text-books are studied by the use of Langer\u27s five stances for envisionment building (Langer, 2011), and Witte & Sâmihaian\u27s model of paradigms in literature teaching (Witte & Sâmihaian, 2013). On this basis, the article analyses the aims, approaches, text selection and the reader stances intended in the tasks and assignments of the textbooks. The aim of the article is to present an analysis of the learning designs of the textbooks in order to discuss how the different designs may frame students\u27 encounters with literature, and how they link to paradigms in literature teaching and to current discussions about text and/or reader orientation within literature teaching
Dutch teachers\u27 beliefs on linguistic concepts and reflective judgement in grammar teaching
Get PDFTeacher beliefs have been shown to play a major role in shaping educational practice, especially in the area of grammar teaching―an area of language education that teachers have particularly strong views on. Traditional grammar education is regularly criticized for its focus on rules-of-thumb rather than on insights from modern linguistics, and for its focus on lower order thinking. A growing body of literature on grammar teaching promotes the opposite, arguing for more linguistic conceptual knowledge and reflective or higher order thinking in grammar pedagogy. In the Netherlands, this discussion plays an important role in the national development of a new curriculum. This study explores current Dutch teachers\u27 beliefs on the use of modern linguistic concepts and reflec-tive judgment in grammar teaching. To this end, we conducted a questionnaire among 110 Dutch lan-guage teachers from secondary education and analyzed contemporary school textbooks likely to reflect existing teachers\u27 beliefs. Results indicate that teachers generally appear to favor stimulating reflective judgement in grammar teaching, although implementing activities aimed at fostering reflective thinking seems to be difficult for two reasons: (1) existing textbooks fail to implement sufficient concepts from modern linguistics, nor do they stimulate reflective thinking; (2) teachers lack sufficient conceptual knowledge from linguistics necessary to adequately address reflective thinking