Carina Hermansson

Analyzing literacy education: the Scandinavian scene

The Scandinavian countries are historically and culturally closely connected, and share an international image as democratic welfare states in which everyone has equal access to education and participation in society. Compulsory schooling was introduced quite early in the Scandinavian countries: in Denmark in 1814, in Sweden in 1842 and in Norway in 1889, and since then literacy has been highly valued in these societies and has been considered important for providing access to education, the labor market and citizenship. The similarities between the countries also relate to an intensive and widespread use of modern information technology throughout their societies, that seems to produce a situation in which ‘the world on paper’ (Olson 1994) is supplemented and partly replaced by ‘a world on screen’ (Snyder 2001), and to a growing influx of migrants and refugees which has transformed the countries into more complex multicultural and multilingual societies. Against this background, the purpose of this special issue is to examine the ways in which various analytic perspectives on literacy practices create a potential for insights that may advance our understanding of literacy in contemporary educational settings in which diversity and multiplicity have become key features. There is no simplistic, homogeneous conceptualization of literacy that may describe the diversity of literacy practices existing in educational settings of the twenty-first century. These practices are embedded in an increasing variety of modalities and processes and, thus, are blurred and complex. A media-filled world folds and unfolds experiences, tools and discourses around, for instance, moving pictures, screen-based and print-based texts, computer games, and adventure or popular media genres. Also, diversities regarding social, political, economic and religious circumstances are embedded in contemporary literacy practices. As such, literacy practices in educational settings are continuously transforming, variable and fluid. On the other hand, these literacy practices are under increasing pressure from transnational edu-political discourses calling for accountability, best practice, efficiency and quantitative comparisons between nation states. Within this discourse, an image of homogeneity and stability is produced that tends to over-determine literacy practices based on a small set of idealized objects, perceived as mutually exclusive and binary. When these contradicting movements are localized in educational settings, tensions are created between

Processes of becoming-writer: thinking with a situated, relational and nomadic analysis to literacy research

ABSTRACT This paper arose out of a shared concern about how to explore young children’s ways of becoming-writers. A framework based on the nomad thought of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari was used to develop the analysis. A situated, relational and nomadic analysis offers insights into how processes of becoming-writers are produced, how they emerge and transform, as shown in this qualitative study of two Swedish early childhood classrooms. The analysis shows how social, cultural, linguistic, material and technological aspects interconnect and transform, and how this interrelatedness influences and forms six-year olds as writers. Young students constitute themselves as writers of classrooms through relating to the conventional norm of writing while simultaneously engaging in exploratory, creative and unpredictable processes of writing.

Nomadic writing in early childhood education

This article explores how the processes of writing and writers emerge and transform in two examples of Swedish early childhood educational writing practices. Students’ writing is a multifaceted activity involving a myriad of interconnected elements; however, to make sense of what is going on, more knowledge is needed about the connectivity, the movement and the unpredictability inherent in these activities. Taking a posthuman and nomadic perspective, the article studies how text and writer are co-constituted through the interrelations between human elements and non-human elements. The article concludes that conceptualizing writing as nomadic provides a way to view young childrens educational writing as sites of experimentation, thus guiding the pedagogical attention to the productive potential of the writing situation.