”Oftast är vi ganska fria”. Eleverna, skrivandet och skrivundervisningen

Abstract

What notions about writing do students have? In my study I have followed 91 students in upper secondary school and their two teachers during a one year course of Swedish. I am interested in the students’ conceptions of writing and how they position themselves in relation to the writing education they meet in the classroom. The empirical data consists of interviews and reflective logs where the students express their views on writing and the action they take as learners when handling writing assignments. Their teachers have also been interviewed about these assignments, and the pedagogic practice in the classroom has been observed. The analyses are informed by a theoretical framework developed by Roz Ivanič (2004), who has identified six different discourses of writing. The study shows a great variety of writing conceptions among the students. The two teachers mainly position themselves in two of the different discourses, the skills discourse, and the social practices discourse respectively. In the reflective logs I have found signs that the teachers’ perspective is taken up in the students’ comments. However, the study also shows that along with adapting to the teachers’ view, many students maintain other discourses about writing, in particular a creative discourse. There is even some evidence that students with a strong view about writing are the most successful in terms of obtaining higher grades, even if their positions clearly differ from the position of their teacher.