‘It's insanely useful!’ Students’ use of instructional concepts in group work and individual writing

Abstract

This study investigates students’ work on analyzing a literary text, a cartoon strip, with focus on their use of instructional, analytical concepts. Excerpts from a group conversation and from individually written texts are analyzed from a sociocultural, dialogical perspective. The analysis of the conversation shows how such concepts help the students to study the text more closely and maintain an analytical focus. The use of concepts thus helps the students understand the text and what text analysis is about. The students’ written texts show that they build on the understanding developed in the group discussion. The analytical focus in the discussion helps them maintain the understanding developed in group when they write individually. Thus, the use of analytical concepts contributes to mediating between group reasoning and individual writing.

Keywords:

• upper secondary school
• analytical concepts
• literary analysis
• peer interaction
• writing

Acknowledgements

This project is financed by the Department of Teacher Education and School Research at the University of Oslo. I especially want to thank my supervisors Frøydis Hertzberg and Sten Ludvigsen for guidance and comments. Thanks also to Anne Kristine Øgreid, Rita Hvistendahl, Glenn Ole Hellekjær and Ulrikke Rindal for constructive comments. I am particularly grateful to the teacher and the students who let me into their classroom and trusted me to use their material.

Notes

1. The curriculum of the subject Norwegian: http://www.udir.no/Upload/larerplaner/Fastsatte_lareplaner_for_Kunnskapsloeftet/english/5/Norwegian_subject_curriculum.doc (accessed August 30, 2011).

2. The students’ names have been anonymized.

3. The students’ oral and written utterances have been translated from Norwegian. I have translated as literally as possible.

4. These concepts are taken from Roland Barthes (1977).