Becoming citizens: Dialogical document work in the classroom of the People’s Home (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Documentation, 2018
Purpose. The purpose of this paper is to historicise research conducted in the fields of Information Seeking and Learning and Information Literacy and thereby begin to outline a description of the history of information in the context of Swedish compulsory education. Design/methodology/approach. Document work and documentary practices are used as alternatives to concepts such as information seeking or information behaviour. Four empirical examples of document work – more specifically informational reading – recorded in Swedish primary classrooms in the 1960s are presented. Findings. In the recordings, the reading style students use is similar to informational reading in contemporary educational settings: it is fragmentary, facts-oriented, and procedure-oriented. The practice of finding correct answers, rather than analysing and discussing the contents of a text seems to continue from lessons organised around print textbooks in the 1960s to the inquiry-based and digital teaching of today. Originality/value. The paper seeks to analyse document work and documentary practices by regarding “information” as a discursive construction in a particular era with material consequences in particular contexts, rather than as a theoretical and analytical concept. It also problematises the notion that new digital technologies for producing, organising, finding, using, and disseminating documents have drastically changed people’s behaviours and practices in educational and other contexts.
KnE Social Sciences, 2020
The article actualizes the humanitarian aspect of the problem of preserving text reading in a new technological environment as a number of specific institutionalized and communicative practices. This phenomenon as one of the fundamental subsystems of culture, based on the results of sociological research, is considered in the context of the implementation of value, training and educational functions. Reading is not merely a process of consumption of a certain kind of information, it is not just a technology of interiorization of texts and an essential resource of communicative and cultural memory, but also a factor that largely determines the general and historical culture of a generation, and as a result, the cost of the products materialized by it, left to descendants. The highlighted intergenerational contradictions/gaps, as proved, show that reading in the era of post-literacy should be the most important resource for the formation and development of the communicative and cultur...
The Politics of Reading, Agency, and Participation
When discussing reading instruction and the identities of young people, the agency of the individuals reading is far too frequently disregarded. Reading is an intentional and active process. What we choose to read, how we read it, and for what purpose are key considerations that young people and educators must make regularly. These can lead to joyful reading, but these are considerations tied to activism, politics, and participation in modern society. As such, I want to recognize the fact that reading is an of civic innovation (Mirra & Garcia, 2017). The possibilities of democracy, invention, and ingenuity live in the dreams and imaginations of young people today. They are born from the alchemy that happens when texts connect with and spur action in readers. As literacy educators continue to challenge the meaning of texts in classrooms and in the lives of young people in 2018 and beyond, we must instill liberatory and action-oriented reading practices.
Stories of Alphabetisation, Stories of Everyday Citizenship
Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 2012
This article studies the notion of everyday citizenship, understood as episodes repeating themselves from 'event' to 'practice', by journeying into several sites of adult migrants' literacy education in contemporary Finland in a storytelling format. Its primary focus lies on the politics of gender in literacy classrooms and the informal sites of literacy learning. It also seeks to develop a method of writing about social change in a politically loaded context which has caused the 'field' of literacy education to remain silent to wider society about its everyday practices.
History of Education, 2016
This study investigates reading activities in Swedish primary school classrooms during the late 1960s. Sound and video recordings of 223 Swedish lessons held between 1967 and 1969 are used to analyse the activity of reading as taught and performed. The results indicate that the practice of informational reading, often based on finding predetermined, explicit ‘facts’ in textbooks through individual, silent reading, was common. The practice of experiential reading, based on fiction, imagination and the joy of reading, was not only less common, but also often compromised by instrumental concerns. In the national curriculum of the time, the practice of informational reading was related to study skills and was intended to prepare all pupils for higher level education. While often appearing overproportioned, superficial and fragmented, these reading practices were still intentional objects of learning and teaching, and were grounded in the democratic and egalitarian ideals of Swedish post-war educational policy.
Literatur als Mittel der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Begriff der Gerechtigkeit
2012
This paper is based upon the notions that literature provides many avenues to create powerful discussions with our students, and that stories are excellent vehicles for advancing critical thoughts and eventually creating action. It also relies upon the insight that encouraging our students to speak up and speak out is a significant goal in our new international era of civic interest. Several books are discussed that are excellent examples of stories that can encourage the reader to take a stand and behave like an ’upstander’. Two classroom activities are described; Town Hall Meeting and Constructed Controversy. It is shown how they can be applied with books by Frank Asch, Sam Swope, Paul Fleischman and Martin Waddell.Članak se zasniva na stajalištu da književnost pruža mnoge načine uspostavljanja sadržajnih diskusija s učenicima. Priče su izvrsno sredstvo za poticanje kritičkoga mišljenja, a potom i djelovanja. Potaknuti učenike na jasno izražavanje svojega mišljenja značajan je nas...
Policy analysis and document-based literacy research
Wiley Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, 2013
In Lisa Patel Stevens's undergraduate training as a print journalist, a professor handed her the journalistic charge succinctly: A newspaper should convey what it was like to be alive on that day in that place. Fairly straightforward, right? However, even a cursory scratch of the surface of that statement agitates and enlivens the complexity that spills over the capacity of texts to capture lived realities neutrally. For example, depending upon the news source, the fl ooding of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster of climate patterns or a human-made disaster of civil engineering. Also depending upon your lived experiences, the reporting of these events may be, in and of themselves, textual acts that perpetuate racial inequities in the United States. It is within this complexity of texts as representative and agentive that policy analyses and document-based literacy research fi nds itself.
Constructing the Desirable Reader in Swedish Contemporary Literature Policy
Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2020
This study contributes to a growing number of critical studies of reading that are seeking to understand how reading is constructed socially and politically. It addresses issues concerning why certain types of reading are deemed more appropriate than others in various contexts and historical eras. The aim of the study is to explore constructions of reading, reading promotion, and readers that can be identified in Swedish literature policy 2012-2013 in order to make explicit the implicit assumptions embedded in the politics of reading. This is achieved through a discourse analysis of the Swedish Government Commission report on Literature from 2012 and the subsequent Government Bill from 2013. The analysis focuses on the construction of the ‘problem’ that reading is supposed to solve, the subject-position of the reader, and the knowledge practices that underpin the construction of the ‘problem’. The analysis reveals that the main ‘problem’ is the changing reading habits of the Swedish population and the decline in the reading ability of Swedish children and youth. This is seen as a threat to several important societal values, such as children’s learning and development, democracy, “the culture of reading”, Sweden’s economic competitiveness, and the market for literature. Responsibility for the problem is placed on the school system, parents, and the use of computers and the Internet. The remedy is seen as the promotion of the right kind of literature. Furthermore, the analysis illustrates how the subject position of the appropriate reader is formed around the notion of the harmful non-reader. Similar dividing practices are constructed around youth/adult, pupil/teacher, child/parent, and son/father where the latter is expected to make the former a reader and thereby a desirable subject. The analysis also shows how two contradictory knowledge practices are joined together in the policy texts, where seemingly rational, objective, and empirical research is paired with humanistic Bildung values.