. Writing in the literacy era: Scandinavian teachers' notions of writing in mother tongue education. A contribution to The inescapability of language, a special issue of L-1, guest edited by Iris Pereira and Brenton Doecke. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 12, pp 1 -29. http://dx.doi.org/10.17239/L1ESLL-2012.03Abstract This study is part of a Scandinavian research project, Nordfag.net, that investigates Scandinavian mother tongue teachers' didactic profiles and conceptions of the mother tongue education (MTE) subject through an ethnographic approach. The purpose of the present study is to discuss the aims of the teaching of writing in MTE in the light of contending MTE paradigms and discourses of education tied to the concepts of Bildung and literacy. 26 teachers' diaries and interviews are examined through two analytical approaches. The first approach is a phenomenological investigation of the teachers' descriptions of their practice and their pedagogical goals, locating different teacher profiles in the material. The second approach is a discourse analysis of the teacher profiles, aiming at connecting these with larger discoursal and paradigmatic notions of the teaching of writing in MTE. Three fairly distinct teacher profiles are found, viewing writing in MTE as respectively a strategic, a ritual and a communicative endeavour. Through the discourse analysis the notions of writing as well as the positioning of teachers and students in the profiles are foregrounded, and the different discourses are discussed as possible answers to the contemporary educational challenges of MTE.
Research of L1 education is recently established in the Nordic countries. Since the turn of the century we have seen the emergence of national and Nordic research networks, conference and publication series, research programs, and the designation of positions as professors and associate professors. Studies of Nordic L1 research have taken stock of the disciplinary sub fields, but empirical studies of the L1 school subject as a unitary field are still in demand. The aim of this study is to investigate the emergence of Nordic L1 research and its present profile(s) through PhD research. The present study examines the abstracts of Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish L1 PhD dissertations defended between 2000 and 2017. The results point to a growing field. A general observation is that the research focuses on reading and writing, whereas oral and aesthetical expressions are minor topics. Another result is a set of national differences which are related to governmental policy documents and school curricula. Further, the research has become more internationally oriented during recent years. The L1 research is characterized as a professionalized region (Bernstein, 2003) with strong didactization (Ongstad, 2004), and a potential for powerful disciplinary knowledge (Lambert, 2017).
This chapter examines the different writing cultures in secondary and upper secondary Danish schools and investigates the issue of transitioning between these two writing cultures by focussing on the experiences of one adolescent student writer, Sofia.The study elucidates the writing cultures and the "possibilities of selfhood" (Ivanič, 1998) experienced by Sofia, and examines her responses to these shifts in her written papers as well as in interviews. A focal point in the shift in subject writing culture is the use of texts in assignments; in the study of Danish as a subject at lower secondary texts are meant to provide models for student writing whereas in upper secondary Danish, close analysis of texts is expected. Further, whereas lower secondary students are positioned as personally reflective writers, in upper secondary, they are positioned as objectively reasoning writers.Through close analysis of two selected "constellations of writing" comprising prompt, student paper and teacher response, combined with interviews, Sofia's transition between the two writing cultures is explored. The analyses document that Sofia is a proficient writer with extraordinary textual resources who identifies strongly with the possibilities of selfhood as a writer offered in lower secondary school Danish. In her first upper secondary paper, she draws on these resources only to find that they do not promise success in the new context, as she fails to decode the new text analytical genre expectations. Whereas the lower secondary paper is interpreted as a key incident in Sofia's trajectory as a writer in Danish, representing what may be termed a long term 'Bildung' experience, the transition paper is interpreted as an experience of unsuccessful institutional and disciplinary transition which may have contributed to limiting Sofia's potential for writing and writer development.
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