This study examines literary discussions from Scandinavian lower secondary school classrooms, specifically the different ways in which teachers provide opportunities for students’ development of literary competence. Moreover, it discloses what kinds of literary competence these teachers elicit and encourage. Three extended video-recorded discussions, in which a large number of students actively shared their understanding of literary texts, were selected and analysed qualitatively with regard to the interaction between teachers and students and the content of the discussions. It was found that teachers used both open-ended and closed questions to introduce new themes, and that their frequent use of follow-up questions promoted dialogicity. The teachers generally favoured one particular aspect of literary competence, yet several aspects of students’ literary competence were visible in the discussions. For example, students were encouraged to pay attention to content, formal characteristics and contextual issues. Implications for teachers’ literature instruction and for students’ development of literary competence are discussed.  

Writing is a central yet under-researched activity in teacher education classrooms. In this study, we explore in-class writing activities used by a multidisciplinary group of teacher educators at one teacher education institution. The purpose is to gain a better understanding of the nature of the writing activities and perspectives on writing they reflect. To this end, we analyze writing prompts and fieldnotes from classroom observations of fifteen literacy events in which writing was at the center. While our analysis reveals multiple and overlapping perspectives on writing, it also shows that writing activities are understood primarily as versatile learning tools. This is reflected in a focus on cross-disciplinary uses of writing to enhance students’ content learning, rather than on explicit development of discipline-specific writing conventions. Furthermore, our analysis shows that there is limited metacommunication about the writing that takes place in the literacy events. We suggest that there is untapped potential among these teacher educators when it comes to making the pedagogical rationales behind the use of in-class writing activities explicit to the students. Such explicit rationales might support students in developing a greater understanding of how to use and work with writing as future teachers.

This protocol article describes the background, theoretical framework, and methods for two intervention studies using assistive technology to produce text. The participants will be 15 10–12-year-old students with dyslexia from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The first study aims to examine how an intervention focusing on using speech-to-text technology influences texts written by students with dyslexia, and the second study aims to investigate the writing process when students with dyslexia use speech-to-text technology. Study 1 uses a multiple baseline design, whereas Study 2 uses verbal protocols.

Previous research states that accessibility and participation are prerequisites for students, regardless of ability, to be able to develop in school. The point of accessibility and participation is that everyone should be able to feel included and have access to learning. From an inclusive education perspective, the interest of this study is how teachers work in diverse literacy practices to address a variety of student conditions and needs. By studying how some primary education teachers describe how they design and stage learning environments, we want to contribute new knowledge about inclusive literacy practices. The data collection was carried out through focus group discussions. We analysed the data with Critical Literacy (CL) as a theoretical framework, and the related concepts of domination, access, diversity, and design were used. The general impression that emerges from our study is that teachers design literacy activities based on both supportive and inclusive aspects and with a focus on variation and diversity. In the study, more similarities than differences emerged, for instance a focus on multimodal methods and the importance of didactic flexibility. The teachers also highlighted the importance of producing text, not just consuming and processing existing texts. Sometimes the analysis reveals differences. Even so, the teachers’ intentions to include all students in the classroom education remain significant.

Six Norwegian lower secondary school pupils (ages 14–15 years) with low writing achievement participated in a stimulated recall study aimed at exploring how pupils write and experience writing with speech-to-text (STT) technology in an educational context. The study employed an exploratory design, collecting data from screen recordings and stimulated recall interviews. The screen recordings were captured while the adolescents wrote a reflective text in Norwegian, using STT and keyboard. Findings showed that the pupils were able to produce a reflective text using STT technology while experiencing both benefits and challenges due to the technology. Benefits included the opportunity to use words that they did not know how to spell and verbal skills to produce arguments in writing. Challenges were mainly related to transcription errors and technological inaccuracies. Findings suggest that technological issues need to be addressed and sufficient planning and instruction is necessary before STT can be a truly beneficial tool for adolescents with low writing achievement in secondary education.

This study investigated teachers’ self-reported read-aloud practices in multilingual early childhood education and care (ECEC) classrooms in Finland, Norway, and Sweden. A total of 170 ECEC teachers participated in a survey about read-aloud practices. Data on literacy practices were analyzed quantitatively, and reasons for read-aloud approaches were qualitatively analyzed. The results showed that the ECEC teachers reported overall similar read-aloud practices regardless of the number of multilingual children in their classrooms; still, some degree of difference in didactic choices was found. Thirty-eight percent of the teachers chose a different book when reading to multilingual rather than monolingual children. Their reasons included a view of multilingual children as having different reading needs than monolingual children, such as simpler books with more illustrations. Choosing simpler books might be beneficial early in second-language development, especially when using a dialogic reading style for making the book accessible to more children. On the other hand, these reasons might indicate an underlying perception of all multilingual children as in more need of a teaching tone with explanations and instructions and less of an exchange tone with an active exchange of knowledge in read-aloud practice. The overall results point to read-alouds as an important early literacy activity in ECEC classrooms.

This study investigates what purposes teachers attach to reading books aloud in pre-primary education. Data were collected through a digital questionnaire filled out by 44 teachers working with 6-year-olds in Finnish pre-primary education. Qualitative and inductive content analysis showed that the teachers saw read-alouds as versatile opportunities with several different purposes. Teachers stated that they read aloud to support language development, enhance pedagogical content or current interests, promote transversal competencies and create a certain atmosphere. The teachers’ responses suggested that they believe that read-alouds can further children’s social skills in several ways, bridge and bolster other pre-primary content and prepare children for future educational contexts. Few teachers seemed to regard read-alouds as opportunities to promote aesthetic responses to literature or children’s learning about literature as such, despite books being central to read-alouds. Further study and discussion may indicate whether it would be beneficial to strengthen purposes in closer connection to literature and aesthetic responses, as read-alouds can bring their own learning potential in addition to being versatile tools for other content and activities.

Effective reading instruction requires precise assessment of the learner’s current skill level. For young learners, however, assessment often comes at a great cost: Tests take a long time and students are presented with items that are both too easy and too difficult. Recent developments in adaptive testing have the potential for solving both these challenges. In this paper, we take the path of argument-based validity (Kane, 2015) by presenting an interpretation and use argument for an upcoming adaptive test. We term this paper a study protocol, in line with the established tradition for protocols for pre-registered empirical trials. The function of the protocol is to communicate openly what often remains tacit knowledge on test development.

This article sets out to examine teacher perceptions of letter learning in literacy programmes for L2-adults with limited earlier schooling, as demonstrated in their teaching. The theoretical frame is taken from New Literacy Studies, with literacy perceived as socially shared and organised. The study draws on occasions during lesson observations where teachers addressed the issue of coding and decoding of letters. Findings suggest that these teachers follow patterns that build on assumptions and traditions with roots in the teaching of L1 children and use the material that they have at hand. The teachers’ prosodic knowledge in relation to letters and spelling was insufficient. We argue that when teachers are not aware of the phonetic and phonological challenges facing adult L2 learners, they may not give students enough support in their development of early literacy skills. Although explicit letter teaching represents only a small part of overall teaching, if teachers miss out on phonetic and phonological knowledge, they may not be able to identify difficulties for students and may even create unnecessary stumbling blocks for them. We conclude that there is a strong need for the development of basic literacy education for L2-adults to include both teacher knowledge and teaching aids.

Previous research has shown that cooperative learning interventions, in which reading comprehension strategies are embedded, have a positive effect on students’ reading comprehension. However, the question is whether these interventions give rise to genuine discussions, promoting flexible and dynamic understanding of texts. In this study, one lesson module from the intervention Cooperative Learning and Reading Comprehension (CL-RC; Klang et al., 2022) was studied using theory of stances of envisionment building (Langer, 2011). The results of the video analysis disclosed that, over the course of three lessons, the peer-led discussions and teacher-led discussions provided unique opportunities for student literary understanding. The results also revealed the limitationsof CL-RC intervention with regard to opportunities for students to focus on an author’s craft and literary elements or to use their envisionment in new unrelated situations.