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This dissertation takes an interest in learning and literacy in everyday interaction in the middle year classroom. It is based on a view of learning as emically construed in social interaction. Conversation Analysis (CA) and the concept of epistemic stance are used as a theoretical framing for describing in what way, and with what verbal and non-verbal resources, learning is achieved in desk interaction, i.e. when students work individually at their desks while the teacher moves around to support them. Almost without exceptions, these interactions involve the use of texts. Hence, they are viewed as situated literacy events that are part of the institutionally shaped literacy practices as described in the field of New Literacy Studies. The empirical data for this study comes from a video-ethnographic study in two middle year classrooms in grade four and five. Out of a total of 70 hours of video documentation, a selection of interrelated desk interactions was made. These were analyzed as learning trajectories and compared from two perspectives. Firstly, learning trajectories when a teacher repeatedly interacts with the same student about the same learning content were analyzed. Secondly, the changes in the teacher’s epistemic stance when interacting with different students about the same learning content in repeated desk interactions were studied. The analysis shows that the teacher’s trajectories through the classroom build infrastructures for learning, enabling differentiation between students within the constraints and possibilities of evolving routines. Learning in desk interaction mainly relies on the use of text references to index previously shared knowledge. Epistemic topicalizations and recurring semiotic fields are shown to be crucial resources for both maintaining and changing the epistemic stance of the participants towards the learning content constituted in interaction. A conclusion is that the shared experiences of teachers and students in collective literacy events serve as important resources for learning in individual desk interaction. / Baksidestext: Den här avhandlingen handlar om bänkinteraktioner på mellanstadiet. Med hjälp av videoanalyser utforskas lärares och elevers sociala samspel när elever arbetar enskilt med skriftliga uppgifter i sina bänkar, medan läraren rör sig runt i klassrummet för att hjälpa dem. Avhandlingen visar hur lärande i bänkinteraktioner sker till följd av lärares och elevers ömsesidiga samordning av tal, gester, blickar och texter. Längs lärarens väg genom klassrummet skapas möjligheter till skilda lärandeförlopp för olika elever, inom ramen för de rutiner som samtidigt formas. Instruktioner, lärobokstexter och bilder är viktiga resurser i dessa lärandeförlopp. De används i huvudsak för att uppmärksamma och påminna om sådant man tidigare läst och diskuterat tillsammans i klassen. En slutsats blir därför att lärares och elevers gemensamma erfarenheter från olika tillfällen har stor betydelse för lärande i bänkinteraktioner. Sammantaget framstår bänkarbetet som mera socialt än individuellt.  Avhandlingen bidrar till en nyanserad förståelse av bänkinteraktioners pedagogiska potential, vilket diskuteras i relation till senare decenniers politiska individualiseringssträvanden. Den vänder sig till forskare, lärare och andra som är intresserade av lärande och skriftspråkande i klassrummets interaktion.

This thesis explores the literacy practices in literacy history, in everyday life and in Swedish tuition for immigrants (sfi) of five Kurdish adults. The study analyses connections and dividing lines between literacy practices of the sociotextual domains of everyday life and literacy practices of the sociotextual domain of sfi. It also explores the interaction between literacy history and present literacy practices. Further, there is a focus on the connections between identification, learning and literacy practices. The methodological approach is inspired by ethnography, employing individual semi-structured interviews and classroom observation. Video documentation, audio recordings and field notes are used for documentation. Theoretically the study is influenced by the research field New Literacy Studies where literacies are conceived of assets of socially and culturally grounded practices. The interviews are analysed from two perspectives: focusing on content and on linguistic discursive practices. In the analysis of interviews and observations, a number of interacting aspects of literacy events and literacy practices are also researched, such as purpose, time, place, participants, verbal language and artefacts. A lack of connection between the participants’ notions of who they are and the identities offered to them in sfi impairs the conditions of their active participation in the literacy practices, and consequently also impairs their learning. Identities connected to literacy history are of importance in this process. To exemplify this, the professional career they had in Kurdistan is still of central importance for two of the participants of the study. This complicates their identification as sfi-students and their engaging in the literacy practices of the sfi-education. If sfi teachers know which identities from everyday life are important to their sfi students and try to find connections between the sfi teaching and these identities, the chances improve of the students accepting the identities which they are offered in the literacy events. Then it will also be more probable that the students’ participation in the literacy events in sfi will lead to deep learning. In the sfi classrooms, the participants take part in literacy events of everyday life. There are three types of overlap between the literacy practices of sfi and of everyday life. (1) Literacy events from other sociotextual domains take place in the sfi-classrooms, but without recontextualization into sfi. (2) Literacy events based in sociotextual domains of everyday life are recontextualized into sfi. (3) Literacy events belong to more than one sociotextual domain. In spite of these three types of overlap there are complications when it comes to students starting out from literacy practices of everyday life when they take part in the literacy practices of sfi. It is not possible to transmit literacy practices in their totality, from one sociotextual domain to another. The literacy practices are situated in a specific sociotextual domain and will undergo a transformation as they are based in a different sociotextual domain. On the other hand, it is possible for sfi students to make use of everyday micro practices (e.g. cooperation and non-linear reading) when they take part in the literacy practices of sfi.

The aim of this dissertation is to describe and critically discuss the literacies apprentice-students in the Health and Social Care Programme in the upper secondary school in Sweden are given access to during the workplace-based learning part of the education. The study draws on sociocultural understandings of learning and knowing, and on perspectives developed in the field of new literacy studies of literacies as situated social practices. Ethnographically inspired methods consisting of participant observation, interviews and study of textual artefacts in both the work and school domain are used to generate data. Literacy events and literacy practices students are given the opportunity to participate in are explored as a part of tasks in the work or school domain. Additionally, the literacies students do not gain access in these workplaces but are crucial in health care and social work are explored.  The results indicate that literacies in the work domain are to a large degree embedded in other work tasks. This contributes to making a large part of the reading and writing invisible for the students and their supervisors. Access to literacies at the workplace is not discussed between teachers and supervisors. A major finding is that students’ access to digital literacies in the work domain depends on the local culture of each workplace and on individual supervisor’s decisions, bringing questions of equality in the apprentice-education to the forefront. The digital literacies support central activities in the workplaces; not getting access to these practices raises questions about what kind of working life the apprentice-students are being prepared for. Thus the meaning given to the term employability, which is central in policy-documents for the apprentice education, seems to be enacted as preparing the students for a job in one position, rather than offering broad competences for advancement or changes in working life. School tasks can function in a compensatory way by introducing central texts in Health and Social care work for students, but writing these kinds of texts in the school domain are part of different literacy practices than when writing them in the work domain. Furthermore the schools have no possibilities to offer students access to the kinds of digital systems that are used in the work domain.

Este trabalho apresenta uma investigação sobre as concepções e práticas referentes à avaliação da aprendizagem de língua inglesa em comunidades do Ensino Fundamental. Os registros dessa investigação são aqui analisados e servem como ponto de partida para uma discussão sobre o tema segundo a perspectiva das teorias de letramentos predominantes nas últimas décadas. Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa-interpretativa de caráter etnográfico (André, 2003), cujas perguntas direcionadoras são: I. Como se caracteriza hoje a avaliação da aprendizagem nas aulas de inglês em algumas comunidades do Ensino Fundamental? II. Como pensar a concepção de avaliação da aprendizagem de línguas sob a perspectiva dos novos estudos de letramento? Diante das observações de aulas, das entrevistas com as professoras e da análise dos documentos, pudemos identificar a recorrência de uma concepção de avaliação pautada no paradigma da modernidade, cujos problemas mais evidenciados foram seu entendimento como sinônimo de mensuração, a ênfase ao ensino de conteúdos objetivos e estáveis e ainda a prioridade do uso de provas escritas. Tais evidências, porém, não se fizeram de modo linear e homogêneo, uma vez que as narrativas e práticas pedagógicas dos sujeitos de pesquisa mostraram-se descontínuas e contraditórias. Assim é que pudemos curiosamente identificar concepções estruturalistas de língua acompanhadas de uma prática avaliativa formativa e concepções progressistas de ensino ao lado de uma concepção convencional de avaliação. No que diz respeito à discussão da avaliação de línguas diante das transformações epistemológicas assinaladas pelos novos estudos de letramento, concluímos que sua reconceituação deverá abarcar elementos até então negligenciados pela concepção convencional de educação. Trata-se, pois, de uma re-conceituação em curso e que requererá maior expansão de conhecimento por meio de pesquisas acadêmicas. / The aim of this study is to investigate both conceptions and practices regarding English language assessment in some Elementary School communities. The reports of this investigation are then analyzed and serve as a starting point for a discussion about the theme from the perspective of the prevailing new literacy studies in the last decades. It is an interpretative-qualitative research, with ethnographic aspects (André, 2003), whose guiding questions are: I. How does language assessment evolve in English classes in some Elementary School communities? II. What would the conception of language assessment be like from the perspective of the new literacy studies? Through research field, interviews with teachers and documentation analysis, we could identify a recurring conception of evaluation based on the paradigm of Modernity, whose most evident problems were its interpretation as measurement, the emphasis on objective and stable contents, and also the predominant use of written assessments. These findings, however, did not occur in a linear and homogeneous way, since both narratives and teaching practices appeared to be discontinuous and contradictory. Thus, we could curiously notice language structuralist conceptions together with formative evaluation and progressist views of language beside a more conventional evaluation concept. Regarding the discussion of language assessment towards the epistemological transformations signaled by the new literacy studies, we come to the conclusion that its re-conceptualization should enclose certain elements hitherto neglected by a conventional education conception. This, therefore, refers to a current reconceptualization, which will demand more academic research outcomes.

"'(T)hey ought to mind what a woman says" : early Cherokee women's rhetorical traditions and rhetorical education," illustrates how Cherokee women reinvented a sovereign Cherokee presence in the face of colonial hostility toward their political authority. Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Cherokee women used oratory, and later writing, to insist that they possessed a mandate to participate in and help shape public debate. In chapter one, I discuss the defining features of an eighteenth-century Cherokee women's rhetorical tradition. Chapter two uses Deborah Brandt's theories of literacy accumulation to examine Cherokee mission schools and to demonstrate how Cherokee women refashioned writing skills they learned to affirm belonging in Cherokee communities. Chapter three employs Kenneth Burke's and Gerald Vizenor's theories of identification and consubstantiation to explore how Cherokee women deployed the language of American civility in print, thereby countering the image of the Vanishing Indian. The conclusion examines the implications of this study for current research in rhetoric and composition studies: Cherokee women's English-language literacy accumulation is analogous to contemporary literacy pedagogy debates. / text

This study focuses on the work of Marcel Jousse, the 20th century French anthropologist, linguist, educationist and theologian who discovered and developed the Anthropology of Language, the study of human memory and expression, and their mutual transation. As central underpinning theory of the Anthropology of Language, Jousse identified the anthropology of Geste and Rhythm manifest in the Oral Style as gestual-visual/oral-aural mnemonic. In Memory, Memorisation and Memorisers in Ancient Galilee, the account of the transmission of the Besorah-Gospels in the intra-ethnic and extra-ethnic Galilean-Hellenic diaspora. Jousse demonstrates (I) the fidelity and accommodating fluidity of mnemonic Oral Style expression as support of human memory; (2) the role of the Metourgeman-Sunergos as interpreter-translator and scripter of the Besorah-Gospels; (3) the role of the Counting-necklaces constructed by Kepha-Peter and Shaoul-Paul as ordering and mnemonic support in the recounting the Deeds and Sayings of the Rabbi Ieshou"a of Galilee. In this thesis three kinds of translation are addressed. (I) It is about the translation of invisible and visceral memory into the visible and audible expression thereof in speech and movement for the purposes of learning, understanding and recording of the oral socio-cultural archive: Stylology manifest in rhythmo-stylistics, rhythmo-pedagogy and rhythmo-catechism; (2) it is about the translation of speech and movement into writing of two kinds: the recording of dictated texts in writing, (Memory, Memorisation and Memorisers in Ancient Galilee) and the putting-into- writing of memorised formulaic recitation, viz. rhythmo-stylistics, rhythmo-pedagogy and rhythmo-catechism; (3) it is about the translation of a specific and specialised technical texts from one (kind of) language to another: Memory, Memorisation and Memorisers in Ancient Galilee and Glossary of Joussea Concepts, Terms and Usage. The products of this study are: (I) a critical investigation and contextualised account of the perspective of Marcel Jousse on the operation of the invisible visceral metaphor called memory into the visible and audible expression thereof in speech and movement for the purposes of learning, understanding and recording of the oral socio-cultural archive in rhythmo-mnemonic expression (2) a proposed work-in-progress model for the presentation and analysis mnemonic Oral-style texts, viz. rhythmo-stylistics, rhythmo-pedagogy and rhythmo-catechism; (3) an annotated translation of Dernieres Dictees Memory, Memorisation and Memorisers in Ancient Galilee; (4) a glossary of specialised technical terms to be used in the interpretation of the works of Marcel Jousse compiled from Jousse's texts already translated into English: Jousse developed a specialised and complex terminology to explain his view of the origin and operation of mnemonic human expression. The Glossary documents this terminology, and demonstrates the translation of the concepts, and their usage by Jousse. This study is presented in three parts: Part One: Translations on and at the oral-literate interface; Part Two: Memory, Memorisation and Memorisers in Ancient Galilee - an annotated translation; Part Three: Glossary of Joussean Concepts Terms and Usage . / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.

India has complex and sophisticated oral tradition which ha s developed over millennia. The Sanskrit language has had an enormous influence over the whole of India, especially its oral tradition. The advent of the literate tradition in India which began approximately five thousand years ago preserved (in writing) much of the oral style elements. In chapter I of this dissertation the influence of the Sanskrit language and its oral transmission to various parts of the globe are briefly traced. Marcel Jousse, in the early part of this century, developed theories involving the anthropological basis governing human expression. These are rooted in mimism, bilateralism and formulism. Chapter 2 of this dissertation briefly outlines the principles of Jousse's theories and provides a brief overview of orality - literacy studies. The views of other experts in the field like Parry, Lord, Finnegan and Ong are also discussed. The Bhagavadgita (the chosen text) is a popular religious text among Indians. Its style encapsulates the oral style elements of Sanskrit literature. A brief summary of the first six discourses which cover the philosophy of Karma Yoga are provided in Chapter 3. Selected slokas (couplets) of these discourses are used as a basis to discuss certain formulaic techniques like a dialogue within a dialogue, application of the Parry-Lord theory, use of imagery (including simile, comparison and metaphor), use of honorific names and the significance of numbers as mnemotechnical devices. All these are elements of oral style. The discussion of the philosophy of Bhakti Yoga (Yoga of Devotion) takes up the next six discourses (discourses 7-12) of the Bhagavadg1ta. Chapter 4 provides a brief summary of these discourses. The elements of oral style which are i dentified and discussed among slokas (couplets) in these discourses are the propositional geste, parallelism, key words in a recitation and contextual meaning. The final chapter (chapter 5) deals with the philosophy of Jnana Yoga (Yoga of Knowledge). The slokas (couplets) of the next six discourses (13 - 18) which cover this philosophy are used as a basis to identify and discuss the nine characteristics of oral style as described by Ong, borrowing from other sources, alliteration and assonance which are further elements of the oral style. This dissertation concludes that the oral formulaic style has played a significant role in preserving the uniqueness, freshness and originality of the Bhagavadgita. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1995.

Abstract not available. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Natal, Durban, 2000.