Atle Skaftun

The problem of semantic openness and constructed response

During the last three decades the constructed response format has gradually gained entry in large‐scale assessments of reading‐comprehension. In their 1991 Reading Literacy Study The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) included constructed response items on an exploratory basis. Ten years later, in Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2001, the constructed response format is ascribed special significance as bearer of central insights to the definition of reading literacy. This article focuses on the significance of the scoring guides and the relation between these guides on the one hand, and the text and the items on the other hand. A discussion of this relation as it is to be found in PIRLS 2001 is performed, showing both examples of success and more problematic aspects in the operationalisation of the intentions expressed in the theoretical framework for the test. Handling the problem of semantic openness is essential in representing depth of understanding and represents a field of possibilities for further research and development.

Glimpses of dialogue: transitional practices in digitalised classrooms

ABSTRACT This socio-culturally informed qualitative study examines digitalised classrooms in Norwegian secondary schools, with a focus on the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) and dialogic aspects of literacy practices. In the article, we foreground two cases: one on the use of digital mind maps and one on a writing process with online response. These cases display productive results of the tensions between old practices and new technology in that they open up spaces for dialogic interaction. This experience calls for a deeper historical contextualisation, and in the article we refer to different time scales: First, the restricted time scale of practices observed in the local school contexts over an academic year; second, the somewhat wider perspective of 20–30 years of educational research addressing technological innovation; and third, the extensive time scale of cultural history, with an analogy to the slow move from orality to literacy in ancient Greece. On this basis we suggest the term ‘transitional practices’ as an appropriate reference to all of these three time scales. Against this background, the glimpses of dialogue observed are seen as promising precursors of future development, but also as vulnerable plant shoots that may very well shrivel and die if they are not supported.

Towards an Integrated View of Literacy

No abstract available. (Published: 23 September 2015) Nordic Journal of Literacy Research, Vol. 1, 2015, pp. 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.17585/njlr.v1.167