Å lære å kommunisere i det moderne klasserommet : en kvalitativ studie av interaksjonsformer på ungdomstrinnet

Abstract

The study seeks to analyse teaching and learning as communicative institutional practices, and what conditions of learning and socialization that are study also argue that when students are participating in social practices where cultural tools are made available, what is held as more traditional settings appear as inclusive settings in the classroom. offered students in the modern classroom through different communicative practices. In Norway the Education Act of 1998, §1-3 states that the Norwegian school system shall offer an adapted education for all students in accordance to students’ abilities and qualifications. The same act, § 8-2 declares that it is illegal to permanently organize students in different groups based upon academic levels, gender or ethnicity. Equal, inclusive and adapted education are overriding principles for the Norwegian school (Culture for Learning, White paper nr.30, 2003-2004). That means that education should be accessible to everyone, and that every student should be given optimal opportunities for learning, mastering and personal development. The study draws on sociocultural perspectives on development and learning. Humans act within the framework of cultural and practical practices or stated in another way, human thinking and acting is situated within social contexts (Säljö, 2001; Wertsch, 1998). Preliminary research questions were concerned with what processes of knowledge transformation we find in a lowersecondary classroom and how these knowledge transformations are organized in time and space. The project has focused upon cultural conceptions about learning, teaching and knowledge that are communicated through structures and interactions in the classroom, how students are engaged in different processes of knowledge appropriation, what cultural tools are at hand and how these have been used. In the modern classroom interactions are “caught in the middle” between two different educational settings in the classroom. These two settings can be described as a teacher dominant setting or a student dominant setting. These two settings can also be described in terms of a collective setting and an individualized setting. The study explores these two settings and what conditions these settings offer as contexts for students learning and socialization in the classroom. The study questions conditions for learning and socialization that are offered students in an individualized setting in the modern classroom, and argues that this setting excludes students from participation. Findings in this