Writing practices in Swedish teacher education and the inclusion/exclusion of subjectivities

Abstract

Against the background of an increasing drop‐out rate of students with ethnic minority and working‐class backgrounds, the aim of this paper is to discuss the ways in which writing practices in Swedish teacher education produce power and include/exclude subjectivities. A conventional academic writing practice will be compared to a hybrid writing practice that has been experimented with for several years at the Stockholm Institute of Education. This hybrid writing practice is characterized by two intertwined features: a divergent complicity that combines diverse subjectivities and multiple theories in a multigenre text; and a convergent and reductive shift that makes academic writing accessible. As the paper will show, a hybrid writing practice can strengthen the inclusion of students with ethnic minority and working‐class backgrounds and, in turn, help them finish their programs. It is, however, not bereft of all exclusionary tendencies.

Keywords:

• academic writing
• discourse analysis
• feminist poststructuralism
• inclusion/exclusion

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Gabriel Kuhn for editorial advice, as well as Klara Dolk, Silvia Edling, Karin Hultman, Anna Palmer, and Catherine Ryther for their valuable help with earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. The course the students participated in had the highest evaluation scores among all courses at the institute. Compared to other courses, the number of students was low, however. The students who had decided to take this course had made a conscious decision to do so and were perhaps more motivated to engage in investigational pedagogy. In terms of the students' backgrounds, there was no significant difference to other courses.

2. We ought not to forget that these statements were part of an evaluation and responses to a question about shifts in perspective caused by participating in a certain practice. I am tempted to say ‘naturally’ the students responded with comparisons – especially since this is how they have been taught to evaluate.