Kristine Balslev

Transforming Practice through Reflective Writing: A Discursive Approach

In Geneva, students completing teacher training in order to become primary or secondary school teachers, produce a portfolio dedicated to professional development. These texts are analysed using linguistic indicators developed by the TALES/TALK research group through a grid named “Analysis of discourses about Professional Apprenticiship” (ADAP). Amongst others, these indicators describe professional knowledge contents, semiolinguistic processes, reflectivity spectrum and regulation systems. Beyond this descriptive level, a hermeneutic analysis brings student’s underlying concerns to light: value systems, motivations and intentions, tensions between scientific knowledge and experience, construction of a professional self. This chapter presents the rationale and theoretical frame that guide this instrument. We then proceed with a detailed description of the indicators and discourse analysis methodology. To conclude, we posit that construction of highly developed professional knowledge depends on a conscious and voluntary process in which the writers transform their subjective preoccupations into objects of reflection and conceptualisation, using the resources of written language as an instrument to think about professional life experienced situations. Finally, the main claim of this study is that discourse analysis enlightens boundaries between reflective writing used to develop relevant valuations about professional situations and to regulate practices; and between concepts and action rules.

Indicators of Professional Development in Texts Written by Prospective Teachers

The writing of narratives is a frequently used educational tool in teacher education. This activity has several aims, such as bridging the gap between theory and practice, transforming experience into knowledge, and fostering consciousness and reflexivity among prospective teachers. We consider that the writing of narratives, framed with some guidelines, represents a mean to build professional knowledge. To get a better insight into the processes involved in the writing of narratives, this article examines the cognitive and discursive mechanisms that underlie professional development. We rely on indicators of professional development observed through a psycholinguistic analysis of narrative texts. This type of text analysis is anchored in a Vygotskian perspective, according to which language; thinking and action are interdependent in the constitution of an individual’s system of mental representations. In this article, we present an educational artifact for narrative writing, a grid for the analysis of discourses in the context of teacher education (the Analysis of Discourses About Professional Apprenticeship grid), our methodological framework and some results. The use of this grid is illustrated with examples of the prospective teachers’ narratives and questionings. Finally, we suggest that professional knowledge results from the convergence between enunciative undertakings, regulations of action, and conceptions and reflective spectrum. This convergence determines the strength of professional knowledge built. Moreover, the texts that have been analyzed reveal the fundamental questionings the trainee teachers have when faced with the task of textualizing their professional knowledge as well as the meaning they give to their activity.

Emergent Writing in Kindergarten and the Emergence of the Alphabetic Principle

This chapter focuses on effective learning and teaching to write in kindergarten, considering L1. The research is part of a larger program that aims at exploring the relationship between learning to write and learning to read in the classroom, from kindergarten to grade two, where spelling becomes autonomous (children from 4 to 8 years old; see Rieben & Saada-Robert, 1997; Saada-Robert & Balslev, 2001). The actual results focus on the impact of emergent writing practices on the awareness of the alphabetic principle in a comprehensive way. They point out the benefit of teaching writing simultaneously with reading, from the very beginning of school culture acquisition.