ARLE 2019
Abstracts for 'ArLERT Research School'

Célia Barbeiro
José A. Brandão Carvalho     		 Research on Writing: Process, Genres and Writing Skills Development
Ilana Elkad-Lehman      Narrative research in L1 education: Theoretical, methodological and practical aspects
Bernard Schneuwly
Glais Sales Cordeiro     		 A method of description and analysis of teaching sequences to understand the teachers’ work and the objects taught in L1 classrooms


Célia Barbeiro & José A. Brandão Carvalho ()
RESEARCH ON WRITING: PROCESS, GENRES AND WRITING SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

ARLE Research School plenary session Tuesday, 09:30-10:30 Room Auditorium 1
Research on writing and on approaches to writing at school has involved different aspects and methodologies, as shown in meta-analyses conducted by several authors (Rijlaarsdam et al., 1996a, 1996b), Hyland, 2016a, 2016b; Camps, 2005; Bazerman, 2008; Plane et al., 2017, among others).
The text, the writer and the context have, at different moments, all been at the forefront of research, influencing school practice with regard to the definition of approaches to writing and to the construction of strategies designed to promote writingskills.
The focus on text goes back centuries, being associated with an old tradition that considers literary texts as artistic "products" or "monuments", and as models for writing practices at school.
The focus on the writing process and the cognitive operations it involves emerged in reaction to that view and has recently been playing an important role in the definition of schools’ approaches to writing, restoring certain connections between the teaching of writing and the teaching of Rhetoric.
The growing awareness of writing’s social function within a community has laid down a new research track that is having impact on the definition of novel teaching strategies that emphasize the role of the context, considered not only as a space of participation and intervention through the use of writing but also as a dimension that models the characteristics of texts according to the functions they are expected to perform within the community that uses them. Taking these three research paths into account, the aim of the workshop “Research on Writing: Process, Genres and Writing Skills Development” is to discuss the issues raised by the trainees’ research projects.
The overall framework of the workshop includes the presentation, by the trainers, of the general guidelines of these three perspectives with reference to theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches, also considering how the perspectives contribute to research on writing and help define effective pedagogical interventions. This presentation will provide a context for the analysis of the trainees’ ongoing research projects and will serve as a background for a discussion of the methodological issues emerging from the poster presentation session about those projects.

Keywords: text, writer, context, writing teaching and learning

References
Bazerman, C. (Ed.) (2008). Handbook of Research on Writing: History, Society, School, Individual, Text. New York: Routledge.
Camps, A. (2005). Pontos de vista sobre o ensino-aprendizagem da expressão escrita. In J. A. B. Carvalho, L. F. Barbeiro, A. C. Silva, & J. Pimenta (Org.). A Escrita na Escola Hoje: Problemas e Desafios (pp. 11-26). Braga: Instituto de Educação e Psicologia, Universidade do Minho.
Hyland, K. (2016a). Teaching and researching writing (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. Hyland, K.(2016b). Methods and Methodologies in Second Language Writing Research. System, 59, 116-125.
Plane, S., Bazerman, C., Rondelli, F., Donahue, C., Applebee, A., Boré, C., Carlino, P., Larruy, M., Rogers, P., & Russel, D. (Eds.) (2017). Research on Writing: Multiple Perspectives. Colorado: The WAC Clearing House.
Rijlaarsdam, G., Bergh, H., & Couzijn, M. (Eds.) (1996a). Theories, Models and Methodology in Writing Research. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Rijlaarsdam, G., Bergh, H., & Couzijn, M. (Eds.) (1996b). Effective Teaching and Learning of Writing. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.



Ilana Elkad-Lehman (Israel)
NARRATIVE RESEARCH IN L1 EDUCATION: THEORETICAL, METHODOLOGICAL AND PRACTICAL ASPECTS

ARLE Research School workshop Monday, 11:30-13:00 Room T10
ARLE Research School workshop Monday, 14:30-16:00 Room T10
ARLE Research School workshop Monday, 16:30-18:00 Room T10
The proposed workshop is designed for researchers who are interested in or actually performing qualitative studies, particularly from a narrative approach. The aim is to combine theoretical, methodological and practical aspects in narrative research in L1 areas.
Since the days of what is known as the narrative turn, narrative is perceived as legitimate knowledge that is an important research stratum in a variety of professions. The narrative brings to the fore the authentic voices of research participants. In the case teaching the native language and its literature, these are the voices of teachers and students. The narrative approach highlights their lived experience, memories, thoughts, emotions and attitudes toward L1 teaching and learning, and the way they structure the narrative offers the possibility of representing the meaning they assign to these processes. In doing so, hierarchies are collapsed, allowing the researchers to approach academic occurrences that are not strictly lingual or educational, but have important (undeclared) sociocultural and psychological aspects. This way, the representation of voices in research is an act that promotes social justice. Since narratives can describe processes in time as well as internal thinking processes, they may be highly beneficial in research, and in the research of teaching in particular.
The workshop will address definitions of narratives and their different kinds: whether verbal in an interview or an authentic situation or textual (in diaries, letters, blogs and social media posts), whether life stories or small stories. We will discuss ethical issues arising in narrative research and experience narrative interviewing and active listening to narratives using Josselson’s (2013) approach. Finally, we will be acquainted with two approaches to narrative analysis (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach & Zilber, 1998; Spector-Mersel, 2011), and experience applying them to the analysis and interpretation of the narratives of a teacher engaged in teaching Hebrew language and literature to immigrants, of students learning literature instruction, and of a literature teaching instructor.
The workshop will conclude with a critical discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the narrative approach to researching L1 in terms of required resources, interpretation, validity of conclusions, and the impact of research on the design of educational policies.
Parts of the workshop may be expanded or reduced according to the participants’ emerging needs. As part of the joint learning process, workshop participants will be invited to present dilemmas from their own research work and benefit from the group’s help to promote their studies.

Josselson, R. (2013). Interviewing for qualitative inquiry: A relational approach. New York: Guilford. Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Zilber, T. (1998). Narrative research: Reading, analysis and interpretation (Vol. 47). Thousand Oaks, CA:Sage.
Spector-Mersel, G. (2011). Mechanisms of selection in claiming narrative identities: A model for interpreting narratives. Qualitative Inquiry, 17(2), 172-185.




Bernard Schneuwly & Glais Sales Cordeiro (Switzerland)
A METHOD OF DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS OF TEACHING SEQUENCES TO UNDERSTAND THE TEACHERS’ WORK AND THE OBJECTS TAUGHT IN L1 CLASSROOMS

ARLE Research School workshop Monday, 11:30-13:00 Room T11
ARLE Research School workshop Monday, 14:30-16:00 Room T11
ARLE Research School workshop Monday, 16:30-18:00 Room T11
Our research aims at describing and understanding what is taught in L1 classrooms. To this end, we ask teachers to allow us to videotape their lessons on a given object to teach, the same different teachers: the relative clause in grammar, the opinion text in writing, a fable and a short story in literature, a picture book in preschool classes. For each “taught object”, we have 15 to 30 videotaped teaching sequences of 2 to 8 lessons of 20 to 60 minutes. This faces us with the following problem: how to obtain an overview allowing sequences to be compared in order to analyze constants and variations in the work of teachers and the objects taught?
Our research group has developed a description and analysis method in order to give as legible a description as possible of the product of the co-construction of the objects taught in the classroom without losing too much content that would no longer allow us to grasp its meaning at all. It is called, using connotations coming from the etymology of the word and cinematography, « synopsis ».
The reduction of information by the synopsis must make it possible to understand the structuring ofa sequence without resorting to the transcripts. The degree of reduction of the synopsis is defined pragmatically: for each teaching sequence, it is a question of obtaining a document which allows a description of the principal parts and actions, and the principal contents approached, always with this aim of making comparisons between sequences possible. The form of this reduction must model the necessarily sequential and hierarchical organization of a teaching sequence. The direction of the reduction, what it reveals and what it leaves out, is determined by the objective of the research, namely the (re-)construction of the taught object created in the interaction between teacher and pupils. What is reduced or summarized by the researcher is essentially the content worked on, taking into account of course the form through which it is transmitted.
The objectives of the workshop are as follows:
- be familiar with the principles underlying the teaching sequence description and analysis process to obtain a “synopsis”;
- master the basics of the process;
- place it in the broader context of research aimed at understanding the teacher's work in constructing objects taught with students.
The workshop is structured as follows:
1. Presentation of the theoretical background of the method (based on a guideline distributed to the participants of the workshop)
2. Discussion of a partial synopsis in relation to the transcript of the teaching sequence he reports on
3. Practical work of reconstituting a part of a synopsis to re-establish its hierarchy
4. Comparison of the solutions proposed by the participants of the workshop
5. Discussion of the proposed approach in relation with the research questions of the participants of the workshop.