Writing to learn, learning to write -
Literacy and disciplinarity in Danish upper secondary education
1 Relevance and aims
Writing is a key skill in today’s society. An important backdrop for this is the technological development in communication that has fundamentally altered the nature and practice of writing and has brought with it a dramatic increase in the spread and significance of writing. There is a call to know what this means for the individual in the context of a learner biography and how the challenge is met at subject and educational levels. The purpose of the present project is to shed light on these questions by means of a qualitative study of writing in upper secondary education, where studies that take a longitudinal student perspective are linked to studies in central subjects. The aim is to create new knowledge about students’ ways of learning subjects through writing and of learning writing through subjects and to examine the ways in which they develop writing skills through their upper secondary education. The project is the first major Danish research initiative in writing, and the organisational aim is to establish a centre for writing research at an international level.
According to Karlsson (2006), in ‘the new textual society’ working life, education and everyday life have become dependent on the written word to an unprecedented extent. Writing skills have become as much a prerequisite for learning and education as for inclusion in civic and working life, and written communication increasingly underpins everyday social activities (Matre 2006, Smidt 2008). The technology of writing has, furthermore, a decisive cultural and social significance as a medium for the production of knowledge (Olson 1994).
From the standpoint of educational policy ‘the new textual society’ is reflected in the growing attention paid to literacy as an integral part of academic learning. The significance of language for learning, for the creation of identity and for participation in culture and society is an underlying consideration both of the European Council’s investment in Language in Education, Languages for Education (Council of Europe 2010) and in the Norwegian educational reform, Kunnskapsløftet (Knowledge Promotion), in which writing skills were introduced in all subjects in 2006. In the same way the Danish reform of the gymnasium (upper secondary) school in 2005 describes written work as a common task for the entire subject range and a central element of the students’ study competence. This new focus on writing is not, however, linked to an overall literacy strategy, and studies suggest that there is a serious gap between reform intentions and practice in schools (Krogh et al. 2009, Christensen 2009). Seen alongside increasing diversity in student cohorts and an increase in the drop-out rate (UNIC 2009), there are strong indications that written work constitutes a particular problem in upper secondary courses and that there is an urgent need both for theoretical development and for empirical studies in the area of upper secondary writing practice.
At the research level a paradigmatic ‘discursive turn’ has taken place in disciplinary didactics (Ongstad 2006). Recent research has developed a theoretical basis for the conceptualization of teaching and learning in ‘the new textual society’, seeing subjects and teaching as discursive, semiotically mediated phenomena (Ongstad 2006, Cope & Kalantzis 1993, Lemke 1990). The discursive paradigm has proved to be fruitful in research (Lorentzen et al. 2008, Elf 2008, Vollmer 2007, Kress et al 2005, Knain 1999), but the implications for students’ forms of learning, for disciplinary didactics and for teaching practice have been far from fully explored.
In the current project the discursive perspective finds expression in the research field and in the research questions. The research field is seen as a triadic construction of student, subject and use of writing. The construction refers both to the classic didactic triangle (student, subject, teacher) and to the communicative triad (form, content, function), which is regarded in the discursive paradigm as a fundamental form of disciplinary didactics (Ongstad 2004, Krogh 2003). The research field is understood as utterances (Bakhtin 1986) that simultaneously activate student, subject and use of writing. These aspects are mutually linked, and the overall research questions are to be understood as three interlinking angles on the same object of study, namely, writing in the light of ‘the new textual society’ and of ‘the discursive turn in disciplinary didactics’. The research questions are as follows:
- What do the new conditions mean for the position, function and nature of writing in teaching practice?
- What do these new conditions mean for students’ writing, and how does this harmonize with the school’s interpretation of the students’ need for experience, resources and skills in writing?
- What do these new conditions mean for the didactics and the disciplinarity of subjects?
2 Background and existing knowledge
The project derives from the socio-cultural tradition in writing research. An important source of inspiration is Vygotsky and the tradition of activity theory (Vygotsky 1986, Wertsch 1998), which understands language and other sign systems as mediational means between the individual’s cognition and the social and cultural context. In Blåsjö (2004) and Hobel (2009) the mediational means are actualised in analyses of language resources in student texts that in other linguistic traditions are termed genres, speech acts, text types, etc., and which, using this concept, can be related to a cognitive and social learning context. The mediational means of specific subjects establish affordances and constraints for the students’ cognitive development and for their appropriation (Wertsch 1998) of textual skills. By using subject-specific mediational means as an overall analytical concept, the triadic focus on student, subject and use of writing is brought together.
The understanding of literacy in the project builds on the English-American research approach of Literacy Studies in which literacy is seen from an ecological perspective (Barton 1994), as a practice embedded in other mental and social activities. Writing is studied as part of literacy events formed by cultural literacy practices but always also creating new meaning that contribute to forming the culture’s literacy practices.
In a series of ethnographic studies, Literacy Studies have examined the use of writing in a variety of social environments (Heath 1983, Street 1984, Gee 1996, Ivanič 1998 among others). Recent Nordic literacy research has documented that working culture is being textualized in ‘the new textual society’ (Karlsson 2006). On the other hand studies of the use of writing at upper secondary level show that these challenges have only to a limited extent impacted upon writing practice at schools (Westman 2009, Kronholm-Cederberg 2009).
Social semiotic literacy research has developed knowledge about writing as a multi-modal and media-borne practice. In the ground-breaking Before Writing (1997) Gunther Kress showed how children create meaning through a plethora of semiotic resources and that language use has to be understood as an aspect of meaning-making practice in a more general sense. He demonstrated how we constantly ‘translate’ between modalities and how this practice is fundamental in our understanding of the world and in innovative thinking. This branch of research, therefore, develops important knowledge about form as a meaning-making aspect of communication, focusing on the new, digital writing technologies that have altered writing culture in the global knowledge society (Kress 2003, Kress & van Leeuwen 1996). We cannot isolate the linguistic dimension in the study of writing habits, just as the students’ writing at school must be perceived in the light of the digital communicative use of writing that permeates the everyday life of young people (Elf 2008, Westman 2009, Kronholm-Cederberg 2009).
The current project should be seen as a contribution to a Nordic tradition of writing research concerned with writing in educational contexts, seen in a disciplinary didactic perspective. This research has been dominated by studies in standard language subjects (e.g. Smidt 1996, Illum 2002, Krogh 2007, Brorsson 2007). A more recent feature is studies of writing in other subjects (Knain 1999, Knain & Hugo 2007), and studies across different subjects (Dysthe 1995, Wiese 2004, Hansen 2004a). In recent years we have seen several larger, collective research initiatives, in which writing in a variety of subjects is elucidated, an important example being Elevers möte med skolans textvärld (Pupils encounter with the text-world of school) at Uppsala University (Edling 2006, Folkeryd 2006, Geijerstam 2006).
The present project is most closely related to the Norwegian sister project Skriving som grunnleggende ferdighet og utfordring (Writing as a fundamental skill and challenge) in Trondheim. With Hobel’s visiting research fellowship, with Krogh’s presence in the Norwegian resource group of the Nasjonalt senter for skriveopplæring og skriveforsking (National centre for writing training and writing research), and with contributions to scientific publications by Christensen, Hobel and Krogh, close relations have been established with a central Nordic environment for writing research, which is, of course, also represented by Jon Smidt in the resource group for the Danish project. In the SKRIV (WRITE) project (2006-2010), an interdisciplinary research group under Smidt is examining writing practice in a range of subjects from the perspective of action research, focusing kindergarten through the first year of upper secondary (Lorentzen & Smidt 2008). The present project will carry on the SKRIV research on a number of significant points. These two projects share, then, an ethnographic approach, an interest in research into disciplinary didactics and a perception of writing as a social practice. The present project will, however, break new ground, partly in its empirical focus on the upper secondary level and on the situation particular to Denmark, and partly in its methodology – in its exploratory approach, its emphasis on the student perspective and its longitudinal design. No other Nordic research project has linked longitudinal student studies with studies in a subject-specific context, and the project is expected both to make an original contribution to existing knowledge about writing development and subject specific writing and to expand understanding of the complex question of how situated writing experience can generate general writing competence.
2.1 The applicants’ previous and current research
In an ongoing pilot study Christensen, Elf and Krogh have been carrying out fieldwork in three 9th year (15-year-olds) classes in different parts of Denmark. Here relevant methods of data collection and analysis have been developed and contacts have been made to students whom we can follow through their upper secondary schooling. The results from the pilot study will reinforce the project’s empirical weight in that they can be incorporated into the longitudinal studies and also cast light on the transition from secondary school to gymnasium (6th Form).
Previous studies have documented the need for research in written work following the 2005 Gymnasium reform (Krogh et al. 2009, Christensen 2009, Krogh 2010). Hobel (2009) sheds light on the complexity of the mandatory inter-disciplinary writing of the Gymnasium reform. His empirical data also show up significant unanswered questions about textual quality, about the cognitive challenges of these assignments and about the didactic content of the teaching context. In a design research project, Elf (2008) tested a multi-modal, semiotic approach in Danish teaching and found that the subject culture exerted a resistance towards the new way of conceiving the subject.
3 Project design
Exceptionally, application is made here for funding for a four-year research project. This is based on considerations regarding the aims and the design of the research. The core of the project is a longitudinal study of the development of students’ writing over their three-year gymnasium courses. It is crucial that the students are followed through all three years since the study will shed light upon the ways they realise and interpret the Gymnasium reform’s writing concept as a whole against the background of their experiences at secondary school. In the students’ biographical narratives (Giddens 1991, Ivanič 1998) about their writing development, both their transition from secondary school and their graduation from gymnasium must be taken to reflect crucial writing experiences.
The project design links longitudinal studies from a student perspective with thematic studies from a subject perspective. The design has, therefore, an in-built triangulation (Bryman 2004). Methodologically, ethnographical data collection methods will be combined with textual studies. The analytical approach to the ethnographical data will be discourse analysis (Gee 2005), while the textual analysis will be based on functional theories about text and communication. Using the concept of mediational means borrowed from activity theory, the student perspective will be linked to the subject perspective of the textual analyses (Blåsjö 2004, Hobel 2009). The empirical data, which will include classroom observation, interviews, writing assignment instructions and student texts, will be collected in a single electronic bank, to which all project members will have access. In meta-studies the mediational means in the subjects will be examined with a view to developing a common descriptive tool for texts, and relations between writing ability and subject-specific attainment criteria for quality will be explored.
Synergy between sub-studies is an in-built feature. Research interest in the triadic relation between student, subject and use of writing means that the longitudinal studies are reliant on the subject-related ones and vice versa. At the methodological level synergy is ensured through use of the common data bank and through common approaches to and concepts for analysis.
4 Sub-Studies
The sub-studies examine writing in Danish, foreign languages, social studies, physics, mathematics and inter-disciplinary collaboration. The range of subjects represents the three primary areas that structurally underpin the gymnasium after the reform, namely natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. In addition, the choice of subject studies is grounded in specific challenges presented by the reform. Several studies focus mathematics and Danish as powerful writing traditions in both subjects have been subjected to significant pressure to change. Two comparative subject studies (Danish/English, mathematics/physics) examine differences in the didactic management of common challenges.
In addition to examining differences between subjects, the project aims to look at differences in the realisation of the reform writing concept in the four gymnasium courses, stx (Upper secondary graduation exam), hf (Higher preparatory exam), hhx (Higher business exam) and htx (Higher technical exam). A comparative perspective is, therefore, established in studies of mathematics, Danish, English and social studies.
4.1 The development of writing identity in six students in their gymnasium study courses (Christensen, Elf, Krogh)
The most extensive sub-study develops the triadic project construction with the student as the privileged point of view. Six students are followed through their three gymnasium years with a view to collecting assignment instructions, written production and teacher feedback, and to observe teaching (8-10 days per year) and conduct interviews (1-2 per term). The aim is to examine the assignments students are given in the subjects, how they negotiate and interpret these in writing activities (Westman 2009) and products, and how they make sense of these experiences in biographical narratives about their writing experiences and writing development (Giddens 1991, Ivanič 1998).
The background to this is the particular structure of the reform, where writing skill is seen in a dual perspective, as command of subject-specific writing and as a personal combination of writing skills, writing experience and meta knowledge about text and writing (Krogh et al. 2009). The study follows the students’ trajectories of participation through writing practices in which writing identity and writing skill are constantly under negotiation (cf. Dreier 1999). Theoretically and methodologically the study is based on Ivanič 1998, who studied adult writers to analyse writing identity as an interplay between ‘autobiographical self’, ‘discoursal self’ and ‘self as author’, as these are negotiated in prototypical socio-cultural and institutional contexts.
4.2 Literacy and disciplinarity in interdisciplinary collaboration at hf (Hobel)
The post.doc project combines the student viewpoint with the subject-specific and is based on independent data generation. Written work focusing on the interplay between partaking subjects is a particular feature of the Danish reform. A study by Hobel (2009) shows that written collaboration in stx presents a considerable challenge to students, but that it also carries the potential for innovative thinking beyond subject limitations. The sub-study continues the earlier project in a study of four students’ writing over a two-year period in the obligatory collaborative courses at hf.
The study will examine how hf students use the mediational means of the involved subjects in their written work and what significance they ascribe to them. Furthermore, the study will examine how teachers articulate the skill requirements for written collaboration in their assignments to the students.
The data will comprise students’ texts from the collaborative courses, assignment instructions, qualitative interviews.
4.3 Use of digital semiotic resources in Danish and English (Elf)
The sub-study explores how the culture studies, Danish and English, respond to ‘the new textual society’. The hypothesis is that digitalisation and globalization – qua the internet and interactive media – are the two most urgent challenges to the school’s project of Bildung and education (Drotner 2002).
A culture subject is defined as a subject that has cultural, semiotic resources as a major area of both study and activity (Elf 2009). The new digital resources are assumed to exert a particular pressure for change on these subjects. The study asks what significance digital resources have for the teachers’ development of assignment tasks and for the students’ narratives (cf. Erstad & Wertsch 2008) about writing experiences in Danish and English, and in what ways they challenge existing models for writing and didactics. The empirical basis is comprised of data collected in the longitudinal project.
4.4 Bildung perspectives in writing in Danish (Krogh)
The sub-study examines voice as a Bildung category in Danish. Empirical data are derived from the longitudinal study.
Since the reform, Danish no longer has overall responsibility for the teaching of writing, and the Danish essay has lost its aura as a general Bildung tool (Krogh 2003). It is assumed, however, that there is more space for negotiation of genres and textual norms in writing in Danish than in other subjects, and that this makes the training of ‘voices’ of writing a new Bildung responsibility for Danish.
In the study ‘voice’ as a didactic concept is operationalized analytically in a juxtaposition with concepts such as positioning (discourse theory), ethos (rhetoric), voice (pragmatics and textual linguistics) and others. Subsequently, a study is made of how ‘voice’ is manifested in written assignment tasks, student texts and teacher feedback in Danish.
4.5 Genre skills and writing. A study of the significance of the concept of genre for writing in Danish subjects at gymnasium level (ongoing Ph.D. project, Piekut)
4.6 Literacy and disciplinarity in social studies subjects across gymnasium courses (Christensen)
The sub-study examines how the particular didactic challenge of the social studies subjects – the tension between the domain of practice and that of social sciences – is realised in written work in social science subjects. The data are taken from the longitudinal study.
In social science subjects social involvement and democratic norms are combined with social scientific tools (Hilligen 1976, Gagel 2000, Christensen 2008). According to Hansen (2004b), the challenge lies in getting the students to understand that their social involvement has to be ‘disciplined’ to establish a connection between everyday experience and the discourse of social science. It is assumed that this constitutes a barrier to learning, not least in written work with strict demands on the use of subject-specific discourse.
The study will examine balances between domains and tensions between discourses in written work in social science subjects. It will further examine students’ use of mediational means and how this usage develops over time.
4.7 Subjects skills and writing in foreign language teaching (German) (Jacobsen)
The aim of this sub-study is to clarify the contribution of foreign languages to the development of the study competence of gymnasium students, taking German as an example. While globalization has led to English increasingly dominating communicative functions, other foreign languages will be able to focus cognitive functions by giving students access to knowledge that is created and formed through other languages.
Writing has a central status for the cognitive functions of language. A text objectivizes knowledge in more or less complex structures that can be made objects of reflection and building blocks of knowledge development. This textual competence is built up in all subjects. The particular task of language subjects is to extend students’ textual competence in the foreign language and to give them knowledge and tools that they can make use of in other languages and in other subjects.
The sub-study consists of a) an analysis of the role of writing in German as it is formulated in syllabus requirements and in the academic debate, b) analysis of teaching units in which writing occurs in central functions. Questions for the analyses include: Which writing-based activities occur and with what aim? Which mediational means occur and which language and subject skills are involved?
The empirical data is taken from the longitudinal study, supplemented, if necessary, by further empirical material taken from a class over a short period.
4.8 Subject skills and writing in mathematics and physics (Lindenskov, Sørensen)
The sub-study is a comparative examination of the contribution of mathematics and physics to developing the study competence of gymnasium students. The international literature documents that a teaching focus on writing is crucial for students’ academic benefit (Morgan 1998, Quinn 2009, Shreyer et al. 2010), and that the greatest benefit can be seen by focusing simultaneously on reasoning and writing (Cross 2009). When Danish 15-year-olds demonstrate weak knowledge about planning and conducting experiments compared with students in other countries (PISA 2006), this can be linked with the fact that experiments in natural science teaching are not processed in writing. When the performance of Danish 15-year-olds in mathematical literacy is correspondingly relatively weakest in ‘changes and contexts’ that require high levels of representation and reflection (PISA 2003), it is a plausible assumption that it relates to the one-sided nature of mathematical assignments at primary school. In both subjects this presents the gymnasium with particular challenges.
The data of the sub-study comprise observations in the 2nd and 3rd year of gymnasium with a view to describing incidents of writing, assignment tasks, student products and teacher interviews. Analyses are aimed at localizing the subjects’ mediational means and links between these and the focused skills. A comparative analysis will be carried out of the use of writing in mathematics and physics seen as a contribution to subject-related learning and to study competence.
4.9 Discursive mathematical writing (Iversen)
The Ph.D project combines student and subject perspectives in a comparative study of mathematical subjects across courses. It is based on independent data generation.
The Gymnasium reform has introduced new types of writing in mathematics, characterized by their discursive form and often multi-disciplinary focus (such as reports, synopses, (multi)-disciplinary assignments and various forms of informal exploratory writing). At the same time the new digital media make it possible for students to communicate in discursive forms about mathematics in user-driven electronic forums.
The aim of the sub-study is to explore the new types of writing. The study will examine 1) which types of discursive mathematical assignments the students work with and under which didactic conditions, and what significance for the development of mathematical and general writing skills the students ascribe to these, 2) how the resulting student texts look, which mediational means are used when compared with traditional mathematical writing, and what interpretations of a mathematical discourse are made visible in the texts.
Empirically the study will be based on observations, interviews and collected student texts. Two students will be chosen from each of four classes under observation (stx, hf, hhx, htx), and data will be generated from all writing produced by these students in the context of their mathematics courses over a period of one year. These data will be supplemented by qualitative student interviews. The student texts will be analysed focusing on mediational means and with a view to identifying writing actions and writing aims (Berge 2005, Misfeldt 2006).
4.10 Mediational means (Togeby)
The sub-study will establish and operationalize a descriptive apparatus for mediational means (Blåsjö 2004) in written assignment tasks and in students’ written work in the subjects under study. The aim is to develop a manual of the taxonomy of concepts that is to be shared by all the sub-studies in order that their results can be reliable and comparable. The concepts that form part of the taxonomy must be interdisciplinary so that they can include concepts from the fields of didactics, sociology, cognition, linguistics and philology.
4.11 Relations between writing ability and subject-specific attainment (Togeby)
The study will examine whether assessment of students’ assignments in the various subjects is dependent primarily on 1) their abilities in the respective subjects with no focus on how they write, 2) whether they write as the teacher says they should, 3) whether they write well regardless of whether or not they abide by requirements as to presentational forms, and 4) whether their assessed attainment correlates more with 2) or with 3). The foundation of data is made up of the collection of assignment tasks and assessed student texts in the longitudinal study. Other collected material may be incorporated.
5 Organization and presentation
5.1 Project group and management
The project group is inter-institutional and inter-disciplinary. The group assembles research competence in the didactics of writing, language and text alongside subject-specific competence in central gymnasium subjects. The distribution of gender is even.
The project has a strong element of research training. Funding is applied for for a two-year post.doc (Hobel, part-funded as lecturer by the Faculty of Humanities, University of Southern Denmark (SDU)), and a two-year Ph.D. grant (Iversen, part-funded by the Faculty of Natural Sciences, SDU, but attached to the Ph.D. school at the Faculty of Humanities). In addition, an ongoing Ph.D. project is attached (Piekut).
The project is managed by Krogh who is responsible for the day-to-day management. An internal steering-group is set up (Christensen, Jakobsen) with a view to taking major decisions and to undertaking long-term planning.
The following researchers from research environments central and relevant to the project have agreed to take part in an academic resource group:
- Prof. Jon Smidt, Sør Trøndelag University College, Norway.
- Prof. Vibeke Hetmar, Danish School of Education/Århus University, Denmark.
- Dr. Mona Blåsjö, lecturer, Stockholm University, Sweden.
- Prof. Gunther Kress, School of Education, University of London, England.
- Prof. Helmut Vollmer, Osnabrück University, Germany.
At the national level the project forms part of the network Selskab for faglig læsning og skrivning i og på tværs af fag (Society for academic reading and writing in and across disciplines), which assembles researchers in academic reading and writing from the University of Southern Denmark and the Danish School of Education.
5.2 Project organization and plan for presentation
The first two years of the project period will focus on data collection, data processing and preliminary analyses. Data collection in the longitudinal project will continue for the third year, but otherwise the emphasis over the final two years of the project will be on analysis and presentation of results. From an organizational point of view, the project will be based around 1-2 internal all-day seminars per term and an intranet that will make up a forum for internal communication and a common data bank. The plan for presentation given below lays down milestones both for presentation aimed at the research community and for popular presentation aimed at the gymnasium sector.
Year One: 2010-2011
Seminar with external resource group, spring 2011
Sub-study ‘Mediational means’ completed with report aimed at the sector in the journal Gymnasiepædagogik (Gymnasium pedagogy)
Article in Journal of Writing Research
Participation in conferences: SIG Writing/EARLI, Sept, 2010; Nasjonalt senter for skriveopplæring og skriveforsking (National centre for writing training and writing research) Sept. 2010; 4th International Conference on Writing Research Feb, 2011; Den tredje Nordiske Fagdidaktikkonference (The third Nordic conference for subject-specific didactics) May, 2011.
Year Two: 2011-2012
Seminar with external resource group, spring 2012
Sub-study ‘Genre skills and writing’ is completed with thesis and defence.
Organization of Nordic research training course
Participation in relevant conferences
1 English language article, 1 German language article, 3 articles in Nordic publications and periodicals
Year Three: 2012-2013
Seminar with external resource group, spring 2013
Post. doc. project completed with two international articles (Nordic and English language) alongside popular presentation in subject-related periodicals
Sub-study ‘Discursive mathematical writing’ is completed with thesis and defence
Participation in conferences: SIG/Writing/EARLI; Nasjonalt skrivesenter i Trondheim; den fjerde Nordiske Fagdidaktikkonference in Oslo.
All sub-projects publish internationally (Nordic, English, German)
Popular presentation of project findings and analyses aimed at the sector and published in Gymnasiepædagogik
Year Four: 2013-2014
Organization of concluding international conference under the theme of Literacy and Disciplinarity
Participation in relevant conferences, including 5th International Conference on Writing Research
Danish language book publication from a recognised publisher, aimed at the Nordic research community
The research group offers to edit a special edition of the electronic periodical Journal of Writing Research, alternatively Written Communication.
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