This study examines how teachers view the use of peer assessment of pupils’ texts in grade 3. Six teachers were interviewed about how they work with peer assessment and the possibilities and challenges they see in using peer assessment in grade 3. The result showed that five of the teachers in the study worked with peer assessment by giving the pupils clear criteria for things they were supposed to respond to. The potential that the teachers saw in peer assessment was that pupils become aware of their own development and their learning. They also saw that the pupils’ social skills were positively affected by peer assessment. The greatest challenge the teachers saw lay in pairing the pupils together best as regards their zone of proximal development and ensuring that pupils developed through peer assessment. The conclusions of this study are that teachers need training in peer assessment so that they will feel comfortable using the method and be able to meet pupils’ development needs.

The aim of this study is to investigate how teachers say they give and perceive forward-looking feedback (feedforward) on pupils’ texts in grades three and four. To collect material for this purpose, semi-structured interviews were conducted with six teachers in the early years of compulsory school. The material from the interviews was analysed with the help of the mid-range coding method. The analysis was based on the two theoretical premises for the study, the sociocultural perspective and the formative attitude. The result shows that the teachers use several methods and devices for forward-looking feedback on the pupils’ process and on their first draft. These included questioning, assignment, checklist and digital tools. The study also revealed three central aspects of the teachers’ perceptions of their forward-looking feedback: shortage of time, organizational conditions and the pupils’ maturity. In view of the current lacuna in research on forward-looking feedback in the early years of compulsory school, the results of the study can contribute to inspiring, in-depth and effective knowledge and tools for practising forward-looking feedback.

The main purpose of this study is to analyze texts written by pupils during the national test in the subject Swedish for grade 9 in order to identify and illustrate how they have met the instructions for the writing task including genre. The texts have been analyzed using Palmér & Östlund-Stjärnegårdh’s (2005) model for student text analysis. This model has been supplemented by studying word and sentence length, as well as indexes for level of readability (LIX) and word variation (OVIX) in order to illustrate possible differences in a gender perspective. The results of this study are in line with previous research, as the girls’ texts are longer and more descriptive, while the boys’ texts are shorter and show a wider range of word variation. The pupils have succeeded in fulfilling the genre and have to a large extent met the task instructions, producing communicative and engaging writing. However, the results of the analysis would have further improved and developed the texts.

The aim of the study was to investigate how four pupils in sixth grade use language when writing narrative texts, examined in relation to the typical structure and linguistic features of a narrative text. Another aim was to explore the similarities and differences between texts which received an A or B grade and texts with a D or E grade. The pupils’ texts are analysed from a systemic-functional perspective on language and on the basis of the typical structure and language of a narrative text, with the focus on expressions of time, processes, descriptions and nominal groups (cf. Johansson & Sandell Ring 2012). The main finding is that the four pupils in their texts master the normal structure of a narrative text and that their texts have expressions of time, processes, descriptions and nominal groups, but they differ in extent and scope. The greatest differences between the narratives in the different grading categories are found in the introductions to the texts, the way of marking dialogue in the structure, and how the pupils use processes, circumstances and nominal groups to achieve descriptions. The text that received an E grade differs from the other texts that were graded as A, B and D, in that the writer has the shortest introduction to the text; the introductions to the other texts are relatively long. The E-graded text also differs from the other texts in the way it marks dialogue. That pupil uses quotation marks to indicate where dialogues occur, whereas the texts with A, B and D grades use a quotation dash to mark speech. All the pupils’ texts contain expressions of time. The texts also include several kinds of processes, except for the text that received a B grade, where there were no mental processes. The texts graded as A, B and D use expanded nominal groups and also various processes and circumstances to create descriptions. The text that received an E grade is the one that uses most expanded nominal groups for descriptive purposes.

Förmågan att kunna uttrycka sig i skrift har blivit allt viktigare eftersom skriften numera används dagligen i flera sammanhang. I skolan ges eleverna möjlighet att utveckla denna förmåga genom undervisningen. Detta ställer därmed krav på att läraren kan göra en bedömning av elevernas skrivförmåga för att ge dem möjlighet att utvecklas. Syftet med den empiriska studien är att undersöka hur lärare i årskurs 4-6 upplever att formativ bedömning fungerar i skrivundervisningen. Studien undersöker även vilka möjligheter och utmaningar lärarna ser i bedömningsarbetet. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten för studien är Vygotskijs sociokulturella teori med den formativa bedömningen som ett underperspektiv. Detta perspektiv utgår från fem olika strategier för att uppnå en framgångsrik bedömning i undervisningen. Studiens resultat visar att lärarna använder sig av bedömningsstrategierna och de upplever att den strategi som ger störst effekt på elevernas skrivutveckling är när eleverna får återkoppling från läraren. De upplever dock att det är svårt att få tiden att räcka till. I studien framkommer också en problematik med begreppet formativ bedömning, men om lärarna har en fördjupad kunskap om begreppet samt vet hur de ska arbeta med det i undervisningen på ett effektivt sätt, kan det bidra till att eleverna ges större möjligheter att utvecklas i skrivandet.

This is about how pupils in years 4 to 6 of compulsory school and their teachers make meaning in teaching activities and texts. The aim of the study is to investigate the teaching and learning of writing and the pupils’ discursive texts. Another aim is to use linguistic theories and develop methods and analytical concepts for studying teaching practices. Sources for the material are the teaching practices in two classes, the teachers and the pupils. The field studies lasted for two years, consisting of observations and interviews. Twelve pupils’ texts and four writing projects are studied in depth. The theoretical framework is linked to systemic functional linguis­tics, critical discourse analysis, dialogical conception of language and new literacy studies. Analytical tools are also derived from rhetorical structure theory, relief theory and theory of text sequences. These tools have been adap­ted and are also applied in the analysis of the teaching practice. To analyse pupils’ meaning making in their texts, a theory of mobility in texts is used. The analyses show two different categories of texts and teaching practices. The hierarchically composed texts are characterized by hierarchies concerning the entire text. The sequentially coupled texts are charac­terized by many vague relations between text entities. One conclusion is that the students in the hierarchically composed texts develop knowledge during writing. They make meaning recursively when writing and they seem to grasp the text as a whole in a way they do not in the sequentially coupled ones. In the sequentially coupled texts, pupils seem to develop knowledge mostly before they write the text, rather than during the writing. In the hierarchically composed practice the pupils deepen their knowledge about text. The result can be interpreted as showing that pupils primarily need education about global text levels in order to develop text knowledge and subject knowledge. Teaching practice seems to promote all pupils’ meaning making if the practice is characterized by many interpersonal relations in the chains of spoken and written texts and if pupils learn to write texts that can structure their meaning making in a functional way.

The aim of this study is to investigate how five boys in grade 3 of compulsory school structure and use language when they write narrative texts retelling and assessing personally experienced events. This is studied by interpreting how the boys use genre steps that are typical of the structure of personal narrative texts and by detecting and naming different linguistic features in the texts. The material in the study consists of five boys’personal reports and the method, which is based on the theories of genre pedagogy (see Johansson & Sandell Ring 2012:28ff, 223f), comes from systemic functional linguistics. A central finding of the study is that the boys structure their texts in varying combinations of genre steps which commonly occur in texts of a narrative kind. Another central finding is that the language in the boys’ texts consists of many verbs and verb groups which explain that someone is acting or doing something, different discourse connectives to indicate time, along with expressions for emotions and descriptions of experiences or objects.