Marie Tanner

In between self-knowledge and school demands: policy enacted in the Swedish middle-year classroom

In this article, we focus on the interaction in a Year 5 classroom where students fill in a ‘self-evaluation form’ as a preparation for a forthcoming discussion on progress aiming at the production of an Individual Developmental Plan. Drawing on the theoretical concepts of fabrications and performativity, we understand this as an enactment of policy where both teacher and students become actors and subjects. From using document analysis together with conversation analysis as a methodological approach, we show how the ‘self-evaluation’ in interaction becomes a successful exercise in fabrications as teacher and student negotiate conceptions of the ideal student in relation to self-knowledge and school demands. The article is an empirically grounded contribution to the understanding of how policies are interpreted and made into being by local actors in everyday practices, in this case teachers and students in schools.

Justice through participation: student engagement in Nordic classrooms

ABSTRACT In this article, we approach large questions regarding justice and equality in the Nordic classrooms. A substantial body of previous research emphasises the importance of student engagement in teaching and learning. Drawing on video data from Norway, Sweden and Finland, we focus on whole-class teaching, i.e. situations in which the teacher addresses the class from the front of the classroom, to investigate justice trough participation. We have approached our topic through two concerns: student participation in classroom discourse and student engagement as providing access to content. Our findings seem to pose some serious challenges for the Nordic welfare society vision of classrooms as core societal hubs for justice and equality. While whole-class teaching is one of the primary tools available for attempting to achieve justice and equality for all, this interaction format seems to contain inherent constraints that do not support equitable student engagement. Further, the way the Nordic classrooms have responded so far to the massive digitisation in their societies seems to pose serious questions rather than provide comforting answers.

Taking interaction in literacy events seriously: a conversation analysis approach to evolving literacy practices in the classroom

ABSTRACT In this article, I examine the relation between literacy events and literacy practices in classroom interaction and add to ongoing discussions in the field of NLS about the transcontextual nature of literacy and how local literacy events are linked to broader literacy practices. It specifically focuses on how the link between literacy events and literacy practices are maintained in the institutionally shaped classroom interaction. Conversation analysis (CA) is used to explore the interactional resources and social knowledge relied upon as teachers and students orient to literacy practices in everyday classroom interactions. The analysis focuses on a frequent type of teacher–student interaction during seatwork, desk interaction, i.e. interactions that occur as students work individually at their desks while the teacher moves around in the classroom to help and supervise them. The result shows how teachers and students refer to and use previously shared experiences of institutionally shaped literacy practices in the desk interactions, using both verbal and non-verbal resources. Thus, the literacy events in these interactions are shown both to be embedded in and contributing forward to the progressive shaping of classroom literacy practices that to a large extent seem to be practices of self-regulation and responsibility in individual assignments.

Same and Different: Epistemic Topicalizations as Resources for Cohesion and Change in Classroom Learning Trajectories

ABSTRACT Despite a seemingly fragmented interactional context, teachers and students in classrooms routinely manage to co-construct coherent, inter-related, and individually adapted learning trajectories distributed over days and weeks. The aim of this article is to explore with what interactional resources progressivity is accomplished in learning trajectories by focusing on how participants establish relations of cohesion and change between current and previous occasions that constitute a learning trajectory. Analysis of empirical data shows how participants frequently topicalize aspects of epistemic stance toward a co-constructed learning content. Such epistemic topicalizations play an important role in maintaining cohesion in a learning trajectory, while making it possible for teachers and students to progressively change and differentiate their epistemic stance. Epistemic topicalizations are suggested as a useful analytic concept, grounded in conversation analysis, to describe how cohesion and change are emically managed in interaction to accomplish progressivity in learning trajectories.

Navigating between disorder and control: Challenges and choices when teaching reading strategies in the L1 classroom

Conversations about texts are often presented in research as particularly beneficial to students’ reading development, based on the argument that the opportunity to confront, discuss and negotiate ...