ABSTRACT

This article focuses on how Grade 6 students interactionally make meaning out of subject-related language encountered in civics textbook material by searching for synonyms and engaging in discussions. Employing ethnographically-inspired methods, data was collected through observations and audio recordings of civics teaching in two linguistically diverse classrooms in which the students were taught in the majority language, Swedish. In the article, oral classroom interaction is perceived as a crucial part of the meaning-making social practice in which students’ disciplinary literacy is developed. Key analytical concepts are discursive shifts and discursive mobility – the ability to move between and within different discourses. The results show that the use of online dictionaries promoted decontextualizing processes in which the students unsuccessfully tried to negotiate multiple abstract meanings that, in many cases, were unrelated to the disciplinary content. In other exchanges, the adults gave interactional support by contextualizing the words and expressions in content-relevant ways and pointing out recognizable parts of words. In some cases, the teacher instead drew attention to words that have different meanings, which complicated the content-relevant understanding of the words. Implications for working with subject-related vocabulary in ways which support rather than hinder disciplinary understanding are discussed.

摘要

本文重点介绍 6 年级学生如何通过搜索同义词和参与讨论，以交互方式从公民教科书材料中遇到的与学科相关的语言中理解意义。采用受民族志启发的方法，通过在两个语言不同的教室中对公民教学的观察和录音收集数据，学生们在其中以主要语言瑞典语进行教学。在本文中，口头课堂互动被认为是培养学生学科素养的意义建构社会实践的重要组成部分。关键分析概念是话语转变和话语流动性– 在不同话语之间和内部移动的能力。结果表明，在线词典的使用促进了去语境化过程，在这种过程中，学生未能成功地尝试协商多种抽象含义，在许多情况下，这些含义与学科内容无关。在其他交流中，成年人通过以与内容相关的方式将单词和表达语境化并指出单词的可识别部分来提供互动支持。在某些情况下，老师反而会提请注意具有不同含义的单词，这会使对单词的内容相关理解变得复杂。讨论了以支持而不是阻碍学科理解的方式使用与学科相关的词汇的含义。