Background: Within classroom research, there has long been agreement on the importance of dialogue and discussion for student learning. However, how the concept of knowledge influences classroom conversation needs further investigation, as this has key implications for students’ active participation.

Purpose: Our research sought to conceptualise the assumption of knowledge in standards-based curricula and explore some implications of teaching based on this kind of curriculum. To do this, we drew on a larger research project undertaken in Sweden, which involved a comparative classroom study.

Methods: Four natural science lessons were examined in terms of student’s opportunities to engage in the teaching content. The analytical framework was based on curriculum theory, the concepts of a lesson as a curriculum event, and students as co-authors of teaching content. We analysed two concepts of knowledge–social realism and transactional realism–in relation to an openness towards ‘critical moments’ during lessons, either noticed or unnoticed, and related them to the logics of curriculum and knowledge.

Findings: When framed by classroom teaching designed from knowledge criteria, students’ opportunities for acting as co-authors can become restricted, with critical moments overlooked because of a teaching focus necessarily limited by curriculum. Thus, opportunities for creating spaces to pay attention to students’ questions and reactions can be constrained.

Conclusions: Standards-based curricula, a concept of knowledge with a strong focus on subject-specific facts and ways of reasoning, together with high-stakes assessment, may lead to fewer openings for genuine discussion and student reflection. This highlights the need to leave larger spaces for teachers and students alike to influence content that engages students.

Ingress: Att påstå att lärarstudenter själva får ta reda på hur man lär barn att läsa är ytterst kränkande för de svenska lärosäten som erbjuder grundlärarutbildning, skriver debattörerna.

This paper draws on an intervention study focussing on translanguaging pedagogies. The study was carried out in 2020–2022 in collaboration with principals and teachers at one school located in a socioeconomic disadvantaged area in Sweden. Drawing on teachers’ logbooks, the aim was to investigate in what ways the theoretical concept of translanguaging is understood and transformed into teaching and learning within multilingual classroom practices with students aged 6–12. The analysed data reveal that opportunities for communication and interaction are designed through the organisation of language groups, the approaches of comparing and translating, and using multimodal and digital reinforcements. Teachers expressed stances around providing opportunities for students to interact and communicate various subject content through all their languages. A shift in pedagogical thinking was made visible regarding how the teachers chose to describe and categorise students’ multilingual and cultural experiences. Identified paradoxes concern students’ experiences of using all their languages for learning, possibilities for integrating several languages in classroom practices, and the status of various languages in society. Possible collaborations between schools and students’ homes were highlighted.

Ingress: Läsning och skrivning, och barns tidiga utveckling av sådana färdigheter, är alltför komplext för att ett enda forskningsparadigm ska kunna ge en tillräckligt allsidig bild, skriver lärarutbildarna i en replik till lärarstudenten Aron Ihse Trägårdh.

Research topic

This paper draws on an ongoing intervention study focusing on the use of picture books, carried out in collaboration with principals and teachers at two multilingual Primary Schools in Sweden. The aim is to develop a model for dialogic reading enabling empowerment, while at the same time supporting the multifaceted mission of literacy education in the Primary School years. The research questions are:

• In what ways do the identified pedagogies support functional reading, immediate and experiencing reading and reflective and critical reading and from what kinds of teaching resources?
• Are multilingual connections made, and if so, how?

Theoretical framework

The project is grounded in Cummins’ (2001) framework for language- and knowledge development, in the sense that fiction content is continuously made comprehensible and used for active communication, striving for the enhancement of vocabulary, meaningful dialogue and text production. The words and phrases, on and between the pages, are processed in various ways, in line with Langer’s (2011) understanding of envisioning literature. As known, early literacy education are to give young students opportunities to take part in practices supporting their functional reading, i.e., automatized decoding, and practices giving them opportunities of immediate and perceptual experiences of reading together with practices supporting their reflective and critical reading (Schmidt, 2020). The ongoing project seeks to integrate these practices of reading, while at the same time motivating students’ agency and reading engagement. Via dialogic reading, in the sense that the teachers are reading a picture book aloud in whole class, while continuously inviting the students to think about and act in relation to the written and visualized content, the strive is to develop the quality of classroom teaching, and the equality of education.

Research design

The research project has an iterative approach with three interventions, each spanning a period of 6-8 weeks. This presentation builds on intervention 2, and the use of the picture book Pudlar and Pommes (Lindenbaum, 2017). The empirical data draw on teachers’ logbooks (n=8), in which they have documented, described, and reflected on their teaching and their students’ learning, and one meeting where the designed teaching has been reflected on collaboratively.

Expected result

Preliminary results will be presented which highlight the importance of young students’ bodily, orally, and multimodally active participation while envisioning literature. Further, the result will clarify when and how specific dimensions of literacy are supported, or not, as well as the fact that they are interwoven. Lastly, multilingual considerations, like collaborations with caregivers and/or mother tongue instruction are identified.

Relevance to Nordic educational research

The paper is relevant in a Nordic context as efficient and empowering literacy education, including multilingual considerations are conditions that are strived for in a Nordic context. 

In Norway and in Sweden, there is an ongoing discussion about young students’ literacy abilities and reading engagement (e.g., Regeringskansliet, 2023; Udir, 2023). The question of how to support young students’ language- and literacy learning as well as their positive reading experiences is of uttermost importance. Picture books constitute a potential for experiencing literature while at the same time creating opportunities of interpreting and thinking critically about the content as well as exploring and learning about language and vocabulary via verbal and visual texts.

The aim of this symposium is to shed light on how classroom practices may support reading engagement while at the same time scaffolding language- and literacy learning through shared picture book reading. Two practice oriented ongoing projects will be presented, one Norwegian and one Swedish. Both projects constitute examples from early literacy education, from preschool to primary school with children aged 1-9 years old. Researchers and teachers have collaboratively planned and designed activities centering around different picture books. These activities were conducted by the teachers and analyzed by the researchers, creating a basis for cumulative pedagogical development.

Common theoretically approaches draw on students’ opportunities of agency (Vaugn, 2020) through literary conversations (Langer, 2011) active language use (Cummins, 2001), and multimodal interaction and communication (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996) in relation to the content of the book. Further, both projects are inspired by design-based research (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012), including iterative interventions over time, however carried out from various methods. 

Den här boken presenterar metodik som leder till att yngre elever lär sig att skriva och läsa samt använda texter som kombinerar skrift, bild och ljud. Syftet är att ge en allsidig uppsättning didaktiska verktyg för språk- och kunskapsutvecklande arbete i tidig läs- och skrivundervisning.

Författarens utgångspunkt är att du som lärare planerar och organi­serar för undervisning som möjliggör för eleverna att visa kunskap på delvis olika nivåer, men inom samma sammanhang. Inledningsvis får du ta del av didaktiska förhållningssätt för under­visning som tar avstamp i villkor och möjligheter för barns språk­utveckling. Utifrån dessa förhållningssätt fokuseras sedan på klassrumsarbete där elever skriver och läser, både gemensamt och sedan alltmer självständigt. Här diskuteras bland annat platsbaserad undervisning, barnlitteraturens potential samt kritisk textgranskning. Genomgående betonas undervisningens betydelse för elevernas lärande och lärarens roll i detta.

Kommunikativa klassrumspraktiker vänder sig särskilt till dig som ska bli lärare i förskoleklassen och årskurs 1–3 eller som nyss blivit klar med din lärarutbildning.

The importance of supporting children's reading engagement and reading comprehension from the early years is widely acknowledged, particular for children growing up in areas characterized by socioeconomic challenges. This mission is collectively shared by teachers and librarians, although with differing starting points and responsibilities. This paper draws on a Swedish study of librarians' book talks with eight-year-old students in Grade 2 and their teachers, and the views these participants express on reading and children's literature. The methods used were observation and interview. In the analysis, different views appear regarding what reading is and might mean, such as the role that children's literature plays in this. The results indicate two prominent narratives regarding reading, where one has a clear emphasis on being able to read and where the other stresses the pleasure of reading. Both these discourses display a narrowness regarding genres other than fiction literature, languages other than Swedish, and formats other than printed books. Further, an image of the reading child as an individual reader appears in both discourses. The results highlight the need for a broader approach that integrates functional reading with processes of reflection and active language use, drawing on the content in children's literature, with an awareness of multilingual considerations. It is argued that children's literature plays an important role in children developing a view of themselves as readers, and discovering that there are many ways to be a reader.