Syftet med fallstudien är att bidra med didaktisk förståelse för relationerna mellan skrivande och andra former av kommunikation, liksom för sådana faktorer som möjliggör och/eller hindrar yngre elevers gemensamma textskapande i klassrummet. Forskningsfrågorna berör hur dialogiskt parskrivande tar form, när tre elevpar planerar och parskriver en berättelse samt hur de stödstrukturer som erbjuds fungerar för dessa elever. Elevernas samtal om texterna och textkonstruktionerna förstås i studien som beroende av de sammanhang med lärare, elever och aktiviteter i vilka de uppstår.

Resultatet visar att berättelseskrivande är en komplex och mödosam process för de unga eleverna. Komplexiteten består i att hantera skrivandet utifrån att beskriva ett händelseförlopp och att samtidigt förhålla sig till sådant som att ljuda och skriva/konstruera en mening, verbalt och på digital skrivplatta. Resultatet belyser att elevernas dialoger innebär ett verbaliserande av textskapandet. Under parskrivandet synliggörs skrivprocessen såväl som berättelseskrivandets kreativa möjligheter. Elevdialogerna visar att eleverna förhandlar om – vad de ska skriva om, och hur detta ska konstrueras/transformeras skriftligt. I förhandlingarna strävar eleverna efter ömsesidighet i beslutsfattandet. Eleverna använder förutom samtal även andra semiotiska resurser, såsom sång och simultant tal, vilket visar på engagemang i textskapandet. Eleverna visar också engagemang genom att fantisera om och agera ut berättelsen muntligt på sätt som liknar barns lek, vilket leder till att den verbala berättelsen blir större än den skriftliga. Övergripande visade sig parskrivandet, inramat av lärarens instruktioner och intervenerande i skrivaktiviteterna, stötta elevernas berättelseskrivande. Eleverna stöttade varandra med sådant som att generera idéer, komma ihåg idéer, behandla berättelsens övergripande struktur samt ljudande, stavning och meningsbyggnad. Elevdialogerna visade även exempel på spänningar och motstånd och då i samtalen om innehåll och textkonstruktioner. Den slutsats som kan dras av detta är att lärare behöver ställa frågor som kan ge dem ledtrådar till hur spänningarna mellan eleverna har uppstått, för att få guidning i hur elevernas samtal och skrivande kan stöttas.

This case study examines eight-year-old students’ talk about storytelling within a Swedish primary school classroom and the subsequent meaning-making that they engage in. The study aims to establish a pedagogical understanding of the relationships between writing and other forms of communication and identify enabling and/or hindering factors in writing classes that include younger students. The research questions interrogate how dialogic co-writing develops when three students plan and co-write a story. Furthermore, the study address how the offered scaffolding functioned for these students.

In terms of theory, the study draws on New Literacy Studies and dialogical learning. Students’ talk about text and text constructions are taken as situated within a social practice that is constituted by the context of teachers, students, and the enacted activities. The study is informed by action research which, among other things, entails that the lessons that were observed for this study were planned in collaboration with two teachers and the teacher-researcher. The empirical data consists of video recordings, audio recordings, photographs, and field notes. The writing activities were analyzed using qualitative content analysis, primarily with reference to transcriptions of the students’ dialogues which concerned the students’ planning and writing on digital writing pads.

The results of this study reveal that story writing is a complex and demanding process for young students. The complexity consists of dealing with the act of writing in terms of describing the plot whilst simultaneously relating language sounds to letters and constructing sentences. Also, results show, that the students’ dialogues implied a verbalization of the students’ text-making. During the co-writing activity, the writing process and the creative possibilities of story writing were made visible. Furthermore, the students’ dialogues demonstrate that their collaboration was carried out through negotiations concerning What? and How? they might write and how the results of these negotiations should be transformed into text. During these negotiations, the students strove to achieve a sense of reciprocity with regards to their decisions. While negotiating, the students also used semiotic resources in addition to talk, including singing and simultaneous speech, thus revealing writing engagement. The students also showed engagement by fantasising and acting the story out verbally similar to children’s play. Consequently, this made the verbal story wider than the written one. Overall, when framed by the teacher’s instruction and intervention during the writing activities, the paired writing activities lent support to the students’ story writing. Moreover, the students supported each other in contexts where they were tasked to generate ideas, remember ideas, develop the story's overall structure, and address issues related to phonics, spelling, and sentence construction. The students’ dialogues also contained examples of tension and resistance in their interactions that dealt with the story content and text construction. One conclusion is that teachers should ask questions that can provide them with clues to the basis for the tensions and thereby guide the teacher in how to scaffold their student’s interaction and writing.

In this paper, pluralistic and social writing practices in primary school are at center (Hamilton, 2007; Lave & Wenger, 1991). Studies stress dialogue for learning as being a complex process, at the same time having great potential for language and thought (Mercer & Littleton, 2007). An action research inspired case study will be presented (cf. Elliott, 2009; Yin, 2018). The study involved 8-year old students and was carried out with the purpose of enhancing writing proficiency, working towards narrative feature goals regarding orientation, plot and ending (National Agency of 2011). Drawing on video recorded teacher introductions and audio recorded peer interactions, including students’ composed texts, the aim is to present and discuss tentative results about what enable and/or hinder students´ story writing. Empirical concerns are three pairs of students in one classroom, jointly planning and writing a first and second version of a narrative during four lessons, and the support (cf. Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976) they were given in this process. Aiming at presenting emerging themes (cf. Graneheim & Lundman, 2004), the analysis concerned student conversations regarding what enabled and/or hindered their story writing. The results shed light on various facets of reciprocal learning within the writing process. Peer writing made communication possible in implicit and explicit ways, and overall proved to be a successful mediating tool. This, alongside other mediating resources, will be presented. Reaching mutuality or not appeared to be an important feature of students’ negotiations about what to write. At the same time, orientation, plot and ending were, more or less prominent, incorporated in all narratives. Results are not generalizable but constitutes didactical implications on how to enhance mutual inspiration for creativity and genre knowledge.

In recent decades, the importance of language in various subjects has gained more attention in research, however mainly in linguistic research. When it comes to studying the language as a tool for learning and communicating history, the research field is still fairly unexplored.

For history as a scientific discipline and for history as an educational subject, the language is central in several aspects, as an object and as a tool. The language is what you actually study in the form of source material and the tools you use to decode, interpret and describe.

The subject-specific language consists largely of concepts for the specific methodological aspects, concepts of specific epochs and different theoretical concepts for interpretation and analysis. In addition, there are a number of terms that are typical for the historical time you study. In order to analyze and understand the historical context, you must also master these time-related concepts.

In this article I investigate how a group of 9-grade pupils use subject-specific language in the form of the subject- specific concepts of change and continuity when describing historical development in the national test in history.

The study shows that the pupils use the concepts, but with different functions. The concepts structure to a certain extent the student's answers, but they rarely have an explanatory or contextualizing function. Some pupils present their answers to show that they use the prescribed concepts. They do not use the concept in order to describe or explain the historical context.