Perspektiver på literacy i lærerutdanningen

En undersøkelse av norsklærerstudenters literacy og refleksjoner om tekstopplæring

Abstract

The thesis explores aspect of future L1 teachers’ literacy and reflections on text that may impact how they are prepared to handle and to teach literacy. I discuss the following overarching issue: How are future L1 teachers prepared to teach literacy after two year of teacher training? The study is empirical and conducted within the teacher education, with student teachers, mainly future L1-teachers, as participants. The data material consists of results from a digital survey and qualitative interviews. Observation during a course in didactics in the teacher education contribute to the context. The thesis explores the future L1- teachers’ literacy through three distinct perspectives. Firstly, by examining student teachers’, including future L1 teachers’, literacy practices in engaging with texts distributed on social media. Secondly, by examining future L1 teachers’ understanding of literacy and how they explain and justifies their teaching practices during internship. Finally, the thesis investigates future L1 teachers' legitimation language as they reflect on their internship experience. The aim of the study is to gain insights into future L1-teachers literacy and their reflections on literacy in the L1- subject. The findings have implications for the L1 subject in teacher education. Literacy serves as the foundational theoretical framework in this study, offering insights into how language mediates our experience and shapes the way we think and act. The thesis is theoretically rooted in literacy perspectives relating literacy to a cultural need in a textually mediated world, and perspectives connecting literacy to goals of civic participation, knowledge acquisition and power. The thesis draws on insights from literacy scholars such as Robert Scholes, David R. Olson, James Paul Gee and Allan Luke. In addition, perspectives and concepts from Basil Bernstein's code theory contribute to explaining mechanisms in pedagogical processes. For instance, how content is selected and adapted in the student’s reflection on classroom practice and how students understand the L1 subject as a distinct subject. The first article examines student teachers’ reading practices when engaging with a selection of authentic texts distributed on social media. As a group, the students could be characterized as sympathetic readers with a high level of trust in the texts. When commenting on the trustworthiness and reliability of the texts, they emphasize personal experiences and perspectives, personal opinions and former knowledge. However, a smaller group of students take a critical and analytical approach. This approach empowers them to question both the content of the texts and the way the content is presented. These students read the texts as part of discourses grounded in specific ideologies and expressing specific attitudes. The second article examines how student teachers in the L1-subject conceptualize literacy and how their understanding is expressed in reflections on teaching activities. The findings reveal that literacy is conceptualized in a span between basic skills in reading and writing and a broad communicative competence that includes understanding, interpretation, production, and text handling. However, a broad understanding of literacy is rarely expressed in the students’ reflections on teaching. Mainly, the students describe activities centered around basic reading and writing skills, along with efforts to inspire individual reading. A small number of the interviewed students noted involvement in explicit textual exercises aimed at enhancing comprehension, interpretation, and construction of meaning. The third article investigates how student teachers in the L1-subject legitimate teaching activities as they retrospectively reflect on internship experiences. The findings indicate a legitimation discourse that emphasizes the pupils’ motivations, interests, and individual goals. Within this discourse, the L1-subject is mainly conceptualized in a horizontal discourse, highlighting personal interests. The subject is classified as weak, with blurred boundaries to other subjects and to everyday knowledge. However, a group of students stands out. In this group, the subject emerges as strongly classified and with a strong framing. These students construe the L1-subject within a vertical discourse where textual awareness is emphasized as the central objective and as a unifying element. Overall, the three articles describe different aspects of the students' literacy, values and attitudes towards text and teaching that may have an impact on how they facilitate for activities in the classroom. The study points to a diversity among the students regarding how well prepared they are for teaching literacy at this point of their education. However, it indicates a need to further develop the students' literacy and clarify an epistemological base for the students to be prepared to develop pupils’ literacy in the L1-subject. The findings also indicate a need for a stronger classification of the L1-subject in teacher education and a clearer vertical discourse that might work to unify different parts of the subject. In the discussion section, I consider consequences of the key findings and their implications for teacher education.