From motivation to text-creating competence of 9- and 10-year-olds when writing fairy tales

The study, which confirmed the existence of such compounds, was held in the 4 groups of 9–10-year-olds (including 111 children, whose competence in writing teachers identified as „weak” and „medium”). Description and conclusions of the research are the content of the study.

I made an attempt to determine the children’s level of text-creating competence according to fairy tales texts which were written by them. I considered the genre itself as appealing to a child audience: the construction of the world presented and the main character make the reception easier, stimulate the imagination, and at the same time allow students to refer described events to their own experience. Using neurodydactic achievments I assumed that the method I used for examining – when the children acted as writers – was also motivating. That was the writing practice method of Dyduchowa, based on the free text technique of Freinet.

While studying children text-creating competence I analysed the ways of implementation of fairy tales’ text pattern (the children were already familiar with the distinguishing features of fairy tale mainly thanks to their reading experiences). During analysis I considered implementation of:

1. the structure of texts (the composition, signals of the delimitation, elements of the frame – the beginning and the ending, the text segmentation, metatext).

2. pragmatic background, that is: the purpose of the text, the sender, the recipient and the transmitting-receiving relations;

3. the cognitive aspect: thematic cohesion, a system of values (in relation to the value system in fairy tales).

4. chosen linguistic and stylistic features of the text.

Finally, according to the results of studies the research shows, how does the creative writing, anchored in a circle of well-known and attractive species and interesting technique, help to overcome barriers of metaliterariness of text and its stylistic determinants.
Keywords: text-creating competence, motivation, writing practice method, creative writing, a fairy tale.
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The second part of my dissertation project will focus on literary reading. The study analyses the assessment of literary reading through a historical perspective on national examinations, from 1968 and onward. What constancies can we see in the examinations and what has changed over time?

The project is situated within a discourse analytical framework (Foucault 1971/1993). The licentiate thesis used methods mainly from narrative analysis with the life story in focus (Linde 1993), and established links to a social and historical context (Cameron 2000, Giddens 1997/2008, Foucault 1974/1987). The continuation of the study has the same framework, but literary reading here is analysed primarily on how reading literature and literary skills are requested in the national examinations. Also, how the assignments invite the student to enter into dialogues with different subject positions (Skei 1997, Davies & Harré 1990, Harré & Van Langenhove 1991), is analysed.

The preliminary results from my second study indicate that the reading of literary texts requires a technical analytical reading (Mehrstam 2009), focusing on the idea that the student must enter into dialogue with the author's subject, especially in the tests from the 1970’s and 1980’s. Also, as the tests are organised thematically, the theme provides a guideline in how both the texts and the world can be understood through reading literature, by way of the presentation of the assignment. In the later tests, from the 1990’s and 2000’s, what is required is mainly a valuation of the literary text. In the more recent tests, from 2011 and onwards, reading of literature is tested with a clear focus on technical analytical readings again, but this time as a test of reading comprehension.

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Literary analysis as a tool to support children’s text making in early school years

Anna Nordlund
Abstract: In my contribution I will argue that education in different literary modes deriving from the main literary genres poetry, fiction and plays should be more prominent in mother tongue primary education in writing, both as tools to support young children’s own text production, and as means to develop a meta-language about text-production and interpretation focusing on how function, form and content interact. By close readings of children’s writing development my research paper will show how literary analysis of children’s texts could contribute to ways of extending children’s repertoire of text production in early school years, and also help teachers develop a meta-language that enables discussion with children on how function, form and content interact in text production, and form a reader’s understanding of a text. My research derives from a belief that young children need to get access to literary competence to be able to share a meaningful language about reading and writing. The prerequisite for this is that teachers are part of an interpretive community and thus share a meta-language to discuss literary modes in texts.

The empirical material of primary school text production presented in my paper derive from a corpus of approximately 700 texts written in primary school in Sweden and collected in the ongoing research project “Function, content, and form in interaction. Student’s text making in early school years” at Uppsala university.

Culler, J. (2002). Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge.

Hedeboe, B. (2009). "Emergence of evaluative stance. Tracing primary school children's development in story writing. Journal of Applied Linguistics. Vol. 6.1, 2009, pp. 23-44.

Hellspong, L. & Ledin, P. (1997). Vägar genom texten: handbok i brukstextanalys. Lund: Studentlitteratur

Liberg, C., Espmark, L. Wiksten, J. & Bütler, I. (1997) Upplevelsepresenterande, händelsetecknande, berättande och språkinlärning. RUUL (Reports from Uppsala University Linguistics) 31. Uppsala university: Department of Linguistics.

Pramling Samuelsson, I. Niklas Pramling. (2010). Stockholm: Norstedts.

Skoog, M. (2012) Skriftspråkande i förskoleklass och årskurs 1. Örebro Studies in Education 33. Örebro University.

Wolf, L. (2004). Till dig en blå tussilago. Att läsa och skriva lyrik i skolan. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Although much research has previously addressed elements of classroom discourse and the practices of pupils’ debate and discussion, I argue there is a need to expand the framework for analysing the forms of such oral classroom activities, particularly regarding expressions of differences in opinion. Commonly applied analytical tools generally recognize just two forms, adversarial and deliberative (see Durkin, 2008; Jerome & Algarra, 2005). By operationalising a conceptual set of categories defining how differences in opinion are expressed within the classroom, I show that this is too narrow. A third form (agonistic) can be recognized based on Chantal Mouffe’s theory of democracy and politics, and another relativistic form that I call poststructuralist. Thus, in my presentation I propose an analytical framework with a set of four forms to address the nature of debate. Each form encompasses a particular view of conflicts, relations between the participants and probably linguistic characteristics.

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  Mari-Ann Igland
  
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  To study digitalisation as a process of change at school- and classroom level, the project´s researchers will follow all classes starting at the cooperating municipality´s three schools in August 2014 through lower secondary school. The project´s short name – Response – is on the one hand hinting at text based literacy practices as the main focus of the field work, where literacy events, including oral communication, writing, reading and the use of digital tools, are studied with a keen eye for the interplay between subject orientation and technology. On the other hand, Response is a name that points at dialogism as a theoretical foundation and framework for understanding educational core values like in-depth learning, and student engagement. Response and dialogue in this sense is not a tecnical issue, but rather a matter of the context sensitive eventness in meetings between teachers and pupils. The first paper will present this theoretical framework in greater detail and outline the case design of the Response project.
  
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  Arne Olav Nygard
  
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  The City Centre School is the largest of the three schools in the study, with 700 students from grades 1 to 10, with between three and five parallel classes. The City Centre School has an important role in the municipality as a pioneer school when it comes to systematically implementing one portable computer per student, and much of what has become the municipality’s ICT strategy comes from initiatives from this school. A team of three researches are split across the tree parallel 8th grade classes, studying literacy practices in the classrooms by observing and taking pictures across most lessons during the day. In one of the classes we are starting to observe more closely a particular project in the discipline Religious and Ethical Education, where the teacher implements the computer game Minecraft, a “sandbox” or “open world” type computer game allowing users to construct and interact within worlds, in conjunction with mind mapping software. The class does not use a textbook in this discipline; they gather and organize sources digitally. The paper will focus on how the students use technologies such as Minecraft and mindmapping software to organize and present knowledge in the discipline.
  
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  Dag Husebø
  
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  The North East School is a 1-10 grade school with approximately 600 pupils
  
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  and two classes on every grade level. The school has a clear policy keeping all pupils together in all lessons despite potential special need issues. The consequence of this inclusive pedagogical policy for the eighth grade investigated here, is that most of the time at least two teachers are collaborating in planning, conducting and evaluating the teaching going on. There has been a recent change in the leadership at the school and there is also a generation shift going on among the teacher staff. The teachers in the eight grade are in their late twenties, mostly women. They have had few previous experiences of thinking and practicing along with the use of digital tools. At the outset of the field work (autumn 2014) the research team rarely observed incidents where digital tools were consciously used while working with response neither to texts nor in classroom events. Searching for new ways of practicing has, however, lead the teachers to develop new creative ways of working, also collaborating with the pupils in this respect. Findings indicate that the pupils’ discursive response has influenced the teachers practice in this respect, vice versa, that trying out new ways of teaching has influenced the way the pupils study.
  
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  Mari-Ann Igland