Literacy Practices in Upper Secondary School. The Writing of Construction and Health CarePupilsThe aim of the dissertation is to demonstrate and explain the place and function writing has in allsubjects in two vocational classes in a Swedish upper secondary school. The material has beencollected through ethnographic field studies in construction and health care classes over one schoolyear. The material consists of literacy events, where pupils write, and the context of situation andtext are noted.In theoretical terms the study takes a discourse analysis perspective, where writing is seen fromwithin different frames. Writing is analysed based on an ideological view of literacy inspired byNew Literacy Studies using the context of situation and text with the aim of describing differentliteracy practices in both classes.The material was classified into three different situation types, two school-initiated and one nonschool-initiated. The first school-initiated situation type is orally-governed, the second writinggoverned,while it is less clear how the non-school-initiated type is inspired.In the writing situations we investigate the writing activities that are used, while texts areanalysed based on text acitivites. Writing and text activities are used together to explain the writingcompetences that are used in the writing situations.The conclusions are that writing gets little space and attention in both classes. The healthcare class writes in more situations and also writes longer texts than the construction class.Literacy practices differ between the classes. The health care class demonstrates one schoolgovernedwriting practice, while the construction class moves between two different schoolgovernedpractices. The literacy practices in the construction class are similar to the writing usagethat can be found at a building site. Writing is used in both classes mainly to structure and storeknowledge.The non-school-governed material also shows differences between the classes. Here too morewriting takes place in the health care class. The function of the non-school-governed writing is tocommunicate and inform through writing.

Denna studie syftar till att undersöka hur skriftanvändningen ser ut inom äldreomsorgen år 2017, med fokus på i vilka situationer, i vilka funktioner och hur skrift används. Undersökningen har bestått av två observationer med kompletterande intervjuer. En anställd inom hemtjänsten och en anställd på ett permanent äldreboende har följts under två separata dagar. Resultatet visade att skriftbruket huvudsakligen fyller dokumenterande och orienterande/planerande funktioner, vilket stämmer överens med tidigare forskning, men att man idag använder sig av tekniska hjälpmedel i en större utsträckning. Slutsatserna man kan dra från denna undersökning är att det är de huvudsakliga arbetsuppgifterna, omvårdnaden av brukare, samt organisationen av arbetet som styr hur och till vad man använder skrift. Samtidigt begränsas och kontrolleras skriftens utformning av regler och riktlinjer från högre instanser inom verksamheten.

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.

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 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.