L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature
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Enjoying the novel but having a hard time: Teachers’ Experience of Reading Graphic Novels for Adults
Get PDFThis article discusses teachers’ experience of reading a graphic novel for adults. Graphic novels have been increasingly integrated in education systems recently, hence the importance of analyzing the experience of the teachers responsible for mediating those texts for their students. The participants were 48 teachers, most of them for language arts, studying for a graduate degree in Israeli colleges. The research question was: What characterizes the teachers’ acquaintance with graphic novels and their response to the genre? The data were collected from a questionnaire completed after reading opening pages of a graphic novel, which included both closed and open-ended questions. The quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and the qualitative data using thematic analysis. The participants attested to shallow familiarity with the genre. While enjoying the encounter with it, many confessed to a difficulty reading due to cognitive overload caused by an excess of verbal, visual, graphic and spatial elements and the difficulty integrating them. The findings thus suggest a need for teachers to study the language of graphic novels and gain experience reading them before they feel comfortable teaching them in class
Into the multiverse - students commenting on audio-visual simultaneity
Get PDFIn this article, I analyze the results of a qualitative study that investigated how a class of seventeen fourth graders (aged 10 to 11) from a primary school in Lower Saxony verbalize and construct the actions, feelings and perspectives of characters in the same shot by relating it to different soundtracks. The lesson was video- and audio recorded. The transcribed conversation was examined with qualitative content analysis. The results indicate the potential for Multimodal Literacy and Literary Learning that lies in the development of narrative interactions between image and sound in their simultaneity. They encourage examination of whether such approaches can effectively combine the dimensions of Frank Serafini\u27s theoretical framework for Multimodal Literacy. They further suggest that the models of progressive literary competence acquisition still give too little consideration to the didactic potential of film in its media-specific multimodality
Old Problems, New Challenges: On the future of teaching German as a national language
Get PDFAlthough comparative studies on L1 education are facing many new challenges today, two ‘old’ issues should not be forgotten: the professional qualification of teachers as part of their academic training, and elementary language education in primary schools. These issues need a theoretical foundation to make L1 education part of the professional practical knowledge of teachers.
In Germany, there is a gap between the subject-related qualification of prospective teachers on the one hand, and their didactic qualification for their professional field of action in schools on the other. What is perceived today as L1 German teaching from school year 1 to 12/13 goes back to two different traditions for which, until a few decades ago, educational institutions of varying prestige were responsible: the Volksschulen (elementary education for the lower classes) initially focusing on "mother-tongue" monolingualism, and the Latin schools (grammar schools for the higher classes) focusing on multilingual education, preparing for academic careers. It was not until the Weimar Constitution in 1919 that Germany also introduced academic qualifications for teachers in elementary education. However, also seminars, pedagogical academies, and colleges that focused on teaching didactics mainly, were established to circumvent university qualifications.
What was developed in the last third of the 20th century in the context of a scientific foundation for the didactics of L1 German has since fallen into oblivion. This contribution aims at presenting a critically reflected continuation of these developments.
L1 Education in Times of Globalization, Digitalization and Super-Diversity: A Plea for an International Comparative Empirical-Interpretive Approach
Get PDFThis introduction first briefly sketches the (history of the) International Mother Tongue Education Network (IMEN). IMEN was founded in 1981 as an information and research network that over the years initiated an empirical-interpretive research program focusing on comparative analyses of the rhetoric and practices of L1 education across a dozen of European countries. Main elements of IMEN’s methodology that will be discussed below were the development of different types of research collaboration, a theoretical framework for comparative analysis, and a method for international triangulation. It then describes how, at the turn of the century, IMEN’s way of doing slow science became increasingly threatened by the requirements of publish or perish mainstream research, and how its research program was confronted with the challenges posed to L1 education by processes of globalization, digitalization, and super-diversity, becoming manifest in the superdiverse nature of student bodies, their sociolinguistic and ethnocultural doings, and the increasingly digitalized modes of teaching and learning they are exposed to. All these elements, in one way or another, also have an impact on the teaching-learning practices in mainstream L1 education and consequently must be addressed by IMEN-like studies. Finally this contribution briefly introduces the contributions to this special issue and suggests that they are a strong argument for a renewed interest in international comparative discussion on and around L1 education and a plea to further collaborative research from an empirical interpretive ethnographic perspective on teachers’ professional practical knowledge and classroom practices that can guide our understanding of the ubiquitous school subject L1 education that aims at preparing students for a global, digital, and super-diverse society
Whose Story? Competing versions of English in a London school
Get PDFIn this article, we look closely at two accounts of parallel lessons in the same London school. Early on in our pre-service teacher education programme, student teachers are asked to write about a lesson they have observed. Soumeya and Faduma each described a lesson where the novel, In the sea there are crocodiles by Fabio Geda, was being read. The observations are of parallel lessons taught by two different teachers. We use these accounts to explore differences in pedagogy and in the versions of English that are instantiated in the lessons. These forms of practice bear family resemblances to many other lessons—and have complex histories. Our interest lies in the ways in which they reflect or contest the view of the subject that dominates the landscape of policy in England toda
The Impact of [Meta] Talk about Writing on Metalinguistic Understanding and Written Outcomes: A Review
Get PDFClassroom talk about language use may support young writers’ capacity to enact choice and control over their written production and is thus a key pedagogical tool in writing instruction (Myhill & Newman, 2016, 2019). However, relatively little is known about the nature of learning transfer in writing instruction, particularly how what is spoken in the classroom influences learners’ written outcomes. This paper, therefore, examines the L1 (first language) and L2 (second and additional language) literature for evidence of how talk about writing influences learners’ metalinguistic understandings (knowledge about language use) and writing choices. It also draws out from the literature approaches that promote the kinds of talk conceived of as impactful in the development of these understandings about and for writing. The findings might usefully inform pedagogical and methodological approaches to instructional interventions that seek to both establish and advance the impact of talk about writing
L1-Didactics and the global pressure from Anglo-Saxon New Literacies: Gained Disciplinarity at Risk?
Get PDFWithin Scandinavian teacher education L1-didactics and literacy have, since the 1990s, developed from delimited areas of knowledge to full academic disciplines. This scientific essay asks whether achieved L1-didactic disciplinarity is at risk encountering increased influence of New Literacies. Historical roots and further development of L1 and L1-didactics in Norway and Scandinavia, are outlined, extracted from other resources. Further relevant disciplinary concepts are problematised, in two ways, firstly facing the challenge of mediating between languages and secondly searching possible epistemological processes behind increased academisation of L1-didactics in teacher education. Four processes are discussed in detail: Literacification, referring to increased political dissemination of and research on literacies. Disciplinarisation, concerning processes of generating school subjects and academic disciplines. Didactisation, integrating knowledge of both learners and subject matter. Internationalisation, referring to application of international political, linguistic, and academic policies, pedagogies, and practices. Finally epistemological and methodological challenges are discussed in light of a possible tension between L1-didactics and New Literacies, especially whether competence-based (new) literacies may obstruct Bildung-oriented L1 and L1-didactics. In case, clarification of curricular means-and-ends are disrupted and both L1-didactics and New Literacy research challenged. Although final answers are not given, the study has offered extended epistemological contexts for further discussions
Literature Manuals in Times of New Mediacy in Sweden
Get PDFThe present article focuses on the role of the teaching and learning of literature in a large-scale Swedish, professional development programme for teachers called the Reading Lift. More specifically this study, using qualitative content analysis, examines the educational function of the most prominently referred to literary didactic theory and method developers in the program: Judith Langer, Aidan Chambers, Louise M. Rosenblatt, and Rita Felski, but also the relationship between literary didactics, literacy, and fiction. The results show a strong domination of Langer-inspired manual and strategy-based approaches, primarily promoting efferent reading stances. More holistic hermeneutic and dialogic approaches in support of aesthetic reading, represented by Chambers, Rosenblatt and Felski, are less common. Further, there is a strong alliance between the literacy concept and the systematic and manual-based literary didactic approaches. Also, in the literacy discourse, literary works of art have become not just texts amongst other texts, and foreign, but are also framed as hypermediacy. Based on our results we tentatively suggest that a shift in paradigms of literature education has taken place, from literature pedagogy, grounded in print culture, to literature didactics, situated in new mediacy and the digital
Exploring silent, small-group and adult mediated reading with nonfiction picturebooks: children\u27s responses and educational potential in elementary school.
Get PDFFollowing the editorial rise of the nonfiction picturebook, a growing line of research has been initiated to analyze its educational potential and its place in children\u27s reading. However, the number of empirical studies on children\u27s responses to nonfiction picturebook reading remains limited. Therefore, this study focuses -from a qualitative analysis based on participant observation, involving 97 elementary school participants between 8 and 9 years old and covering 48 hours of recording- on the reading of nonfiction picturebooks from three different reading conditions: silent, shared in small groups, and adult-mediated. The results reveal differences among the three reading approaches, evidencing a greater positive response to nonfiction picturebooks during individual and adult-mediated silent reading, a greater ability to foster critical and personal responses when mediated, as well as the fundamental role of illustrations and visual composition in fostering curiosity and critical reflection. However, small-group reading generated a greater number of negative responses, indicating the need to investigate it independently to more effectively harness its formative potential for children\u27s readers, given that it is questioned in this study. Therefore, this paper provides a detailed analysis of these different reading conditions with nonfiction picturebooks and their implications for educational practice
Direct vocabulary teaching practices by preschool teachers
Get PDFThe purpose of the present study was to investigate preschool teachers’ practices. The sample consisted of 274 preschool teachers working in different regions of Crete in Greece. The data were collected via an online questionnaire comprised of 22 items inquiring about the sample teachers’ demographic characteristics and occupational status, as well as about the activity settings and the techniques they use to teach vocabulary directly in their classrooms. In relation to the indicated activity settings and the direct vocabulary teaching techniques, the sample teachers recorded the frequency of their use on 5-point Likert scales. The results showed that story reading was the most frequent activity setting for implementing direct vocabulary teaching. Furthermore, data analysis showed that contextualized and de-contextualized vocabulary teaching with an emphasis on the receptive aspect of vocabulary and multimodal vocabulary teaching with an emphasis on the productive aspect of vocabulary were the two basic dimensions that described the preschool teachers’ practices. In addition, the results showed that contextualized and de-contextualized vocabulary teaching was reported to be used more frequently than multimodal teaching, while both teaching practices were related more strongly to the other activity settings besides story reading