Classroom interaction and its potential for literacy learning

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This contribution discusses interactional conditions and possibilities in classrooms related to literacy education during the middle school years. The article draws on a case study where interactional processes of learning have been followed closely in two multilingual classrooms with twelve-year-old students in grade six in Sweden. The question of how to efficiently scaffold students in their learning of literacy across the curriculum is crucial. Advanced literacy levels are part of the conditions necessary for citizenship. Research on classroom interaction, and more specifically how education through processes of interaction and communication can scaffold students to develop high and sustainable levels of literacy, therefore can be said to be of uttermost importance. Our aim with this article is to draw out key insights for how processes of interaction are – and can be - organized to support literacy learning across the curriculum. The analysis focuses on how interaction is organized in educational situations. More specifically, we look for ways of organizing interaction in different situations and aspects of everyday classroom practices, and in relation to necessary approaches for scaffolding literacy learning (Cummins, 2001). Drawing on the two subject areas, Law and Right and World Religions, the result elucidate the important role which different approaches of interaction play for student’s learning of literacy across the curriculum.