When does "Läslyftet" become an infrastructure for learning?
Submitted by:
Anna-Lena Godhe
Abstract:
This presentation analyses a governmental project in Sweden called "Läslyftet", or in English "Boost for Reading". The project aims at improving all teachers’ ability to develop students’ language skills in connection to the subject they teach. From an online platform, teachers are provided with texts and suggested activities to do with their students in the classroom. Teams of teachers meet on a regular basis to discuss the texts they have read, prepare lessons and evaluate the activities that they have tried out with their students. Each team has a supervisor, usually a colleague, who assists them and organizes the meetings. "Läslyftet" is directed towards both primary and secondary level education but this presentation focuses on upper secondary school level.
The questions posed in this presentation concern when and under which circumstances “Läslyftet” becomes an infrastructure for learning. Guribye (2015) argues for an infrastructural approach when researching learning environments, and claims that Star and Ruhleder (1996) notion of infrastructure can inform studies of learning practices. An infrastructural approach aim to answer questions of when “Läslyftet” becomes a meaningful learning environment, as well as under which circumstances different groups of participants are able to productively utilize the infrastructure for learning.
Group meetings with upper secondary school level teachers have been recorded. The material will be analysed in three steps where the first concerns mediated action, the second is an activity theoretical analysis (Engeström, 1998). Finally, the material will be analyzed in order to determine when, and under which circumstances, that “Läslyftet” becomes a meaningful learning environment for the teachers and what facilitates and inhibits this for different participants.
References;
Engeström, Y. (1998). Reorganizing the motivational sphere of classroom culture: An activity theoretical analysis of planning in a teacher team. In F. Seeger, J. Voight & U. Waschescio (Eds.), The nature of the mathematics classroom (pp. 76-103). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Guribye, F. (2015). From Artifacts to Infrastructure in Studies of Learning Practices, Mind, Culture, and Activity, 22:2, 184-198.
Star, S.L., & Ruhleder, K. (1996). Steps towards an ecology of infrastructure: Design and access for large information spaces. Information Systems Research, 7, 111-134.