Tricks of the trade or situated literacy – disciplinary reading literacy practices in vocational education

Pia Visén

doi:10.23865/njlr.v7.2387

Abstract

In upper secondary school vocational education in Sweden practices of reading is an integrated part of teaching in vocational subjects. This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of vocational reading literacy practices, and how reading literacy practices are recontextualised into upper secondary school contexts. Three subsequent research questions specify the study: What kinds of texts are used? How is reading done and talked about? What purposes for reading (why) emerge? Theoretically, the study draws from New Literacy Studies (Barton, 2007). Nine vocational teachers were interviewed regarding reading in childcare, technical, culinary, and industrial vocations. The informants were also observed when teaching in four student groups in three upper secondary schools. Analyses were made of text categories, genres (Rose & Martin, 2012), reading literacy events, text movability (Hallesson & Visén, 2018; Liberg et al., 2012), and reading types (cf. Rosenblatt, 1995). The results reveal a wide range of text categories, from general to specialised texts, specific practice-oriented reading events, reading types that differ depending on vocational context. A conclusion is that disciplinary reading practices in vocational contexts are complex and require critical readers. Therefore, further knowledge of reading in vocational education might contribute to the teaching of disciplinary reading literacy in upper secondary vocational education.

Highlights

Practices of reading and writing have increased immensely and the demand for reading literacy is increasing across professions (Janks, 2010; Karlsson, 2009, 2012)
Nine informants, teaching in four different upper secondary vocational programmes, were observed in their role as vocational teachers and interviewed in their role as vocational literacy experts in different areas: three informants from Child and Recreation (CR), two informants from Industrial Technology (InT), two informants from Vehicle and Transport (VT), and two informants from Restaurant Management and Food (RF). 62 students participated in the observations: 21 CR, 17 InT, 13 VT, 11 RF
Tricks of the trade or situated literacy results of the present study show that vocational literacy practices depend on a plethora of texts, entail collective reading, pendulum-reading, dynamic text movability, as well as specific reading types

Summary

Introduction

Practices of reading and writing have increased immensely and the demand for reading literacy is increasing across professions (Janks, 2010; Karlsson, 2009, 2012) This has called for a deeper knowledge of reading literacies and how schools can work with reading literacy across subjects and programmes In 2019, 37,2% of applications to upper secondary school were applications for vocational programmes and 62,8% applications for higher education preparatory programmes (Skolverket, 2020). In vocational programmes 600 credits come from subjects common to all secondary school programmes, like history, maths and Swedish. In all vocational programmes students can choose to take extra subject courses in e.g. Swedish and maths, so as to qualify for tertiary education as well as receiving a vocational exam. The languages and literacies of subjects such as history and science on the other hand, have been studied by for instance Schleppegrell (2004), and reading literacies in the disciplines of maths, chemistry, and history by Shanahan and Shanahan (2008, 2012)

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