L1-teachers´ didactic deliberations in digitalised classrooms
Submitted by:
Maria Westman
Abstract:
The ongoing digitalisation of society is now pervasive. There is no longer a matter of if but how and to what extent also schools will be digitalised. The aim of this study is to investigate how Swedish L1-teachers communicate their didactical deliberations on writing education and writing development in relation to digitalisation and digital tools. Thus, we want to contribute within the research field focusing on the impact digitalisation may have on subject content knowledge as well as new teaching methods. (Hillman, 2001; Hultin & Westman, 2013, 2014; ed. Lantz-Andersson & Säljö, 2014; Kempe & Selander, 2008).
The study has a qualitative approach. Ten Swedish teachers teaching Swedish as L1 from primary school up to lower secondary school participated in four “didactical platforms” organised by researchers. The aim of the didactical platforms was to create meeting areas for the teachers to focus and discuss didactical questions. The teachers were requested to individually present the didactical deliberations, considerations and choices made when working with writing development specifically, using digital tools in their teaching. After that, a didactical discussion took place in the group. Four two hour-long didactical platforms where videotaped and transcribed. The material was then analysed with focus on communicative discourses.
The preliminary results disclose two dominating themes in the teachers´ communication on didactical deliberations, considerations and choices concerning writing education in relation to digital tools, here construed as communicative discourses: 1) assessment (particularly formative assessment) and 2) organisational factors (temporal and spatial). Another salient theme, when talking about writing education and writing development, was teaching content, (the what-question). However, this theme was not related neither to didactical choices, nor digital tools, and seemed to be subordinate to the discourses of assessment and organisation.
However, the communicative discourses are not formulated either within a societal, political or within a historical subject matter vacuum. The teachers’ didactical choices can be understood in relation to national educational discourses, in terms of policy documents and curricula; didactical trends in terms of popular methods (e.g. genre school) as well as educational and subject related traditions (e.g. progressivism, skill discourse).
Keywords: didactics, digital tools; didactic choices; writing education; teacher discourses; L1 education
References
Hillman, Thomas (2001). Re:design for Learning: A study of the co-construction of a technological tool for mathematical learning. Doktorsavhandling. Ottawa, Canada: University of Ottawa.
Hultin, Eva & Westman, Maria (2013) Literacy Teaching, Genres, and Power, Educational Enquiry, 2013, Vol. 04, No. 02, 279-300.
Hultin, Eva & Westman, Maria (ed.) (2014). Att skriva sig till läsning: erfarenheter och analyser av det digitaliserade klassrummet. Malmö: Gleerups.
Lantz-Andersson, Annika & Säljö, Roger (ed.) (2014). Lärare i den uppkopplade skolan. 1. uppl. Malmö: Gleerup.
Kempe, Anna-Lena & Selander, Staffan (ed.) (2008). Design för lärande. Stockholm: Norstedts akademiska förlag.