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“You Know, the World is Pretty Unfair” – Meaning
Perspectives in Teaching Social Studies to Migrant
Language Learners
Robert Walldén
To cite this article: Robert Walldén (2021): “You Know, the World is Pretty Unfair” – Meaning Perspectives in Teaching Social Studies to Migrant Language Learners, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2020.1869073
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
Published online: 11 Jan 2021.
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“You Know, the World is Pretty Unfair” – Meaning Perspectives in
Teaching Social Studies to Migrant Language Learners
Robert Walldén
Faculty of Education and Society, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
ABSTRACT
This contribution explores how subject positions and perspectives are negotiated in the discursive practices of teaching social studies. The study involved a teacher and a group of second-language learners in Grade 6, the data being gathered by observations, voice recordings, and collection of teaching materials throughout seven weeks. The analysis, drawing upon discourse theory and sociological theories of education, is conducted from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis. The result, highlighting a curriculum area about living conditions, shows how Western-centric beliefs about a divided world were perpetuated both during introductory activities and in the searching for information about different countries. This mainstream meaning perspective was also sustained when the teacher modelled ways of using language for expressing content knowledge. Throughout, the migrant language learners were positioned as privileged Swedish citizens. Implications for shaping discursive practices of teaching in ways which builds on students’ diverse knowledges and experiences are discussed.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 2 January 2020 Accepted 10 November 2020
KEYWORDS
Critical discourse analysis; critical pedagogy; classroom discourse; colonialism; second-language learners; social studies education; sociology of education; writing instruction
Introduction
The primary focus of this qualitative classroom study is the critical analysis of classroom discourse in the teaching of content knowledge to linguistically diverse student groups, specifically highlight-ing the role of the teacher in the teachhighlight-ing of social studies. Learnhighlight-ing and ushighlight-ing language in different school subjects does not solely involve understanding and expressing various kinds offield knowl-edge. It also includes the negotiation of socially and culturally shaped identities, perspectives, and values. In the teaching of diverse groups of migrant language learners, it is particularly important to ask whether the teaching capitalises on students’ various experiences and knowledges, or if it uncri-tically transmits a dominant perspective. In this article, I focus on instruction in which social studies teaching (geography) is integrated with the pedagogy of writing in Grade 6. The participant tea-cher’s aim to scaffold the students’ use of written language, according to the genre-based teaching principles widespread in Sweden for supporting second language learners (cf. Walldén,2019a), pro-vides an interesting context for the study, since it entails explicit expectations of students’ active language use to negotiate social studies content knowledge. Written genres can be a powerful tool for challenging inequalities (e.g., Martin & Rose,2008; Rose & Martin, 2012), but, as Luke (1996) points out, they can also be transmitted uncritically.
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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CONTACT Robert Walldén robert.wallden@mau.se Faculty of Education and Society, Malmö University, 205 06, Malmö, Sweden
The purpose of this article is to explore the negotiation of subject positions and meaning per-spectives in the teaching of social studies to second-language learners. The research question is: How are subject positions and meaning perspectives negotiated when the teacher leads learning activities and teaches the second-language learners to express social studies content knowledge in writing?
In previous research on how writing and language is used in social studies, the focus has to a large extent been on the use of technical and abstract language (e.g., Christie & Derewianka, 2010; Edling, 2006; Halliday,1989/1993; Martin, 2013; Sellgren, 2011; Walldén, 2019a; Wignell et al.,1989/1993). In Scandinavia, studies have critically examined literacy expectations and writing practices shaped around the reproduction of facts and issues of assessment in social studies (e.g., Lindh,2019; Molin & Grubbström,2013; Ohrem Bakke,2019; Spanget Christensen et al., 2014; Staf,2019). However, there has been little critical research into the meaning perspectives conveyed and the subject positions set up for students when content knowledge is negotiated in classroom discourse, something which is highlighted in the present study.
The need for teachers to be conscious of the perspectives made available in their teaching has been stressed by scholars in thefield of Global Education (Gaudelli,2003; Hanvey,1982; Harrison, 1995; Mangram & Watson,2011; Merryfield,1993; Pashby & Andreotti,2015). From a postcolonial perspective, Hickling-Hudson (2006) argues that students should be supported to“explore edu-cation in a way that recognises and escapes colonised frames of thinking”. Similarly, teachers are warned against the imperialist, paternalist and Western-centric perspectives of a divided world where people in certain countries are portrayed as uniformly poor, lacking and uneducated (e.g., Pashby & Andreotti, 2015). Matias and Mackey’s (2015) study discussed teaching strategies for deconstructing hegemonic whiteness perspectives among teacher candidates, while a study by Han-nah (2017) has shown that US pre-service teachers’ knowledge about Africa is largely dominated by stereotypical images of violence and misery—a view which was later challenged by the researcher, for example by showing contrasting images of wealth and destituteness. In Sweden, postcolonial studies of textbooks used in geography teaching have noted that they tend to perpetuate antiquated notions of living conditions in Africa along with beliefs about Western superiority (Ajagán-Lester, 2000; Kamali,2006; see also TNR Sifo,2013). In a study of how ideas of Western superiority are perpetuated in Finnish history textbooks, Mikander (2015) discusses Nordic exceptionalism, the idea that Nordic countries must be understood from a different viewpoint than others. Something which has not been researched to the same extent is Western-centric representations and beliefs in the teaching of diverse groups of migrant language learners. Countries such as Sweden, which have seen a large influx of migrants over the course of recent decades, provides an interesting context for exploring this issue.
There is certainly a potential for promoting different perspectives in diverse groups of bilingual students, by opening up classroom discourse to the various experiences and knowledges present (Cummins,1996,2000; García & Wei,2014; Janks,2010; Walldén,2020a). In Sweden, there has been increasing awareness of how second language learners can be restricted by monocultural and monolinguist norms (Cummins, 2017; García & Seltzer, 2016; Torpsten, 2018; Zachrison, 2014). What seems to be lacking is research on the negotiation of identities and perspectives in relation to specific disciplinary content in the dynamics of on-going teaching practices, something which I report on in the present study.
Theory of Discourse and the Sociology of Education
In this section, I describe the theoretical underpinnings of the discourse analysis conducted in this study. This includes social theories useful for describing the values and perspectives attached to the content taught, alongside theories of classroom discourse and discourse semantics to analyse the spoken interaction on a textual level.
While much research on the negotiation of disciplinary content through resources of language focuses on the skills and knowledges necessary for qualification in different disciplines, I will mostly be concerned with what Biesta (2009) has described as the socialisation function of education, meaning how the students are inserted in an existing social order, through the transmission of norms and values. In diverse groups of second-language learners, it is also possible to allow for a multitude of insights which may go against the grain of majority, or mainstream, perspectives in education. In this case, the teaching carries a greater potential for subjectification, that is, possibi-lities within education to develop ways of beings and doings independent from existing orders (Biesta, 2009). The diverse work done within thefields of critical literacy and critical pedagogy has largely been concerned with how education restricts or promotes the advancement of such capabilities for critical reflection (Freebody & Luke,1990; Freire & Macedo,1987; Giroux,2001; Janks,2010; Mezirow,1990a; Walldén,2020a).
Questions of socialisation and subjectification are closely connected to socially significant iden-tities negotiated through language, described by Gee as the big“D” in Discourse (Gee,2014, p. 25). Similarly, Fairclough has noted how classroom discourse sets up subject positions for students which are reproduced once occupied (Fairclough,2015, pp. 68–69). For the purpose of this study, the sub-ject position, or Discourse, involves the ways of being and seeing associated with the role as a Grade 6 student. However, I am not interested in the role or subject position of the student in general. Rather, I will explore how the students are positioned in relation to the instructional content nego-tiated, which, in the teaching studied, involves learning about living conditions and ways of using language (see the section Method and material). As Bernstein (2000) has pointed out, instructional discourse, that is, the knowledges and skills to be learnt, is always embedded in a regulative dis-course carrying certain values and beliefs. In this study, I will highlight how the classroom disdis-course reflects certain aspects of regulative discourse. Importantly, it involves the negotiation of meaning perspectives, which Mezirow (1990b) has described as frameworks for value judgements and belief systems that can either be assimilated uncritically or learned explicitly. A similar concept is that which Gee calls discourse models or, later,figured worlds (Gee,2014), which means ways of looking at aspects of the world.
If this aspect of regulative discourse is strongly framed, then the teacher will select and transmit dominant meaning perspectives established in the majority culture, according to what Freire (1970) would call a banking approach. If this aspect of the regulative discourse is weakly framed, the mean-ing perspectives could be less apparent, perhaps implicit, in a teachmean-ing mostly focused on learnmean-ing sets of facts. However, there is also the possibility of weak framing in the sense that different per-spectives are being actively encouraged and discussed, including those which students in diverse groups bring to the classroom. In that case, the teacher would take a dialogic stance rather than an authoritative one (Mortimer & Scott,2003), in line with advocates of dialogic, critical and trans-formative pedagogies (Cummins,2000; Freire & Macedo,1987; Janks,2010; Mezirow,1991).
In describing teacher roles for teaching adult migrants, García (2017) outlines qualities in instruction which align with a dialogic stance, such as inviting the students’ prior knowledge, being prepared to learn from the students, creating learning spaces which can accommodate di ffer-ences and promoting the recontextualisation and critical awareness of colonial narratives constrict-ing what is seen as legitimate knowledge and ways of usconstrict-ing language. Such teacher roles, or orientations, are conducive to the negotiation of multiple meaning perspectives.
The concepts of meaning perspectives and subject positions will be used to highlight how class-room interactions relate to the social order: an educational context in which educators must navi-gate between mainstream perspectives, such as Nordic particularism and other Western-centric beliefs, and the need to create learning opportunities for diverse student groups in socially respon-sible ways (see Introduction section). In line with critical and transformative pedagogy, my position is that this involves opening up the classroom discourse to different meaning perspectives, includ-ing those which students with different backgrounds and experiences bring to the classroom. This
could create a greater potential for subjectification, and the critical understanding of the content taught for both majority and minority students.
To answer how meaning perspectives and subject positions are negotiated, I will direct attention to interpersonal aspects of the spoken interaction. These involve how the teacher uses evaluative resources of language, which can often reveal the values and moral positions negotiated in discourse (Christie & Derewianka,2010; Martin & Rose,2007; Martin & White,2005; Walldén,2020b). Such resources can be instrumental in setting up subject positions for students (cf. Fairclough,2015). Another important interpersonal aspect is the use of different activity structures (Lemke, 1990; Walldén,2020b). Teachers can use strongly framed activities, such as the iconic triadic structure of initiation, response and evaluation or follow up (Sinclair & Coulthard,1975), or, alternatively, the teacher can ask more open-ended questions allowing the students to make more substantial contributions to the discourse (Mercer & Littleton, 2007; Nystrand & Gamoran, 1991), which could include contributing different meaning perspectives.
Method and Material
This study takes place in a school where most of the students have migrant backgrounds. It was chosen because of my general research interest in how opportunities are shaped for second language learners to develop content knowledge and linguistic skills. The school is known for using scaffolding strategies, such as genre-based instruction (cf. Rose & Martin, 2012; Rothery, 1996), to support the students’ learning and language development. Having prior knowledge of the school through my academic network, I established contact with the head, who referred me to a participant teacher, a driving force in the school’s development of a supporting pedagogy for second language learners. She is certified to teach social studies and Swedish as a second language. During the time of the study, these subjects were integrated in a curriculum area about maps and population. My doctoral dissertation (Walldén,2019b) and two previous articles
(Walldén, 2019a, 2020b) draw upon the same material, but focus on the negotiation of field
knowledge and metalinguistic knowledge. The present study instead gives priority to the values, meaning perspectives and subject positions negotiated in the same curriculum area. My position in this and related research is a wish to improve teaching practices involving multilingual student groups by highlighting how opportunities for learning are shaped by the interaction based on instructional texts and content.
The teacher had taught the group of 24 Grade 6 students (though frequently divided into two groups) since Grade 4. Public records, also confirmed by the head of the school, state that 94 percent
of the school’s students had “foreign backgrounds”, meaning students either born in another
country than Sweden or whose parents were both born outside Sweden. Both the head and the par-ticipant teacher emphasised how the teaching was conducted from a second-language perspective. The material consists of approximately 17 h of observations and voice recordings throughout seven weeks of instruction in late 2015. While conducting the study, I was generally seated at the back of the classroom without active participation in the activities (cf. Fangen,2005). Alongside using a voice recorder, I also tookfield notes to better remember what occurred during the lessons and facilitate access to relevant parts of the recordings, which were later transcribed (around 100 A4 papers).
The analysis is based on the teacher’s use of spoken language, including the way in which differ-ent texts and other instructional resources (such as material found online) were talked about. As I was primarily interested in how meaning perspectives and subject positions were negotiated in on-going teaching practice, I chose to focus on the interaction itself, rather than, for example, instruc-tional texts.
The analysis was conducted through critical discourse analysis (CDA), in which the texts used in
the classroom—including spoken exchanges—are perceived as reflecting and construing certain
2015). As discussed in the previous section, in classroom discourse, dominant values and beliefs can be perpetuated but also challenged (e.g., Freire & Macedo, 1987; Janks,2010; Macken-Horarik, 1996).
The spoken interactions were analysed through the interpersonal linguistic categories pre-sented in the previous section and checked for convergence, that is, whether interactions during different teaching and learning activities positioned the students—or related to their diverse back-grounds and experiences—in similar ways (e.g., Gee,2014, pp. 141–143). As there was a consider-able convergence, this analysis formed a basis for understanding the teaching in terms of discursive practices, patterns of using language which are shaped by power relations (cf. Fair-clough, 1993). Finally, the discursive practices were viewed in relation to the larger social order. Theoretical underpinnings for the analysis of the social order are discussed in the previous section.
The analysis was abductive, characterised by movements between theory and empirical data (e.g., Alvesson & Sköldberg,2008, pp. 55–56). For instance, I made connections to Biesta’s and Mezirow’s theories quite late in the analytical process, while the interpersonal linguistic categories, building on systemic-functional linguistic theory, functioned as a starting point (cf. Walldén, 2020b). The following questions emerged in this abductive process and guided my repeated read-ings of the transcribed interaction at a later stage of the analysis:
. What kind of perspective on the instructional content is made available to the students? . What role or identity is set up for them?
. How does the instruction relate to the students’ diverse backgrounds and experiences of life in other countries?
These questions are condensed and phrased more theoretically in the research questions (see Introduction section).
The shown transcripts are representative for the interactions during the teaching activities which focused on living conditions; diverging interactions which positioned the students differently— albeit during an earlier teaching activity—are briefly discussed in the first part of the result section. The study follows the ethical guidelines stated by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrå-det,2017). No ethically sensitive background data of individual students was collected. The ana-lysed interaction has been transcribed and translated from Swedish to English by the author of this article. In the excepts,“T” indicates the participant teacher while “S” denotes student replies. The symbol“/ … /” indicates omitted discourse.
Meaning Perspectives in Teaching about Living Conditions
The analysis of the teaching observed will largely follow the chronology of the teaching itself. First, I will focus on introductory activities in which the teacher draws the students’ attention to aspects of living conditions in a playful manner. Then, I will discuss activities in which the students are asked to search for information about different countries. Finally, I will highlight teaching modelling how the students are supposed to write about the curriculum area.
Before exploring the interaction during these phases of instruction, I will briefly discuss some examples of interaction from a preceding part of the teaching showing how the teacher, in some ways, invites knowledge and experiences from within the group of second-language learners.
T: In Sweden, which part do we live in? Which one do we belong to? S: Europe.
T: Europe, exactly. /… / Which part is here, on the side? S: Asia.
S: Oceania.
T: And you are from Oceania, aren’t you? Then, we have the part below Europe. S: Africa.
T: Africa. Does anyone come from Africa?
The teacher uses triadic questions to name the different continents—currently the focus of instruc-tion—and also affirms that there are students from different continents in this diverse class. Further into the curriculum area—but still preceding the instruction studied below—the teacher leads an exchange about climate zones. When showing a projected world map with climate zones, one stu-dent asks a question.
S: Where is Kosovo?
L: Kosovo is in the temper—ahh! Actually, it is also—now watch when I am looking here. POINTING If you look here, Europe actually isn’t completely green, it is not temperate. Down here, it is actually sub-tropical and is Kosovo located in the temperate or subsub-tropical zone?
S: Subtropical.
T: Yes, I would have put it there also. So, Kosovo, located down here, is really also a part of the subtropical one. It never crossed my mind so it’s a good thing you mentioned it. So, you [plural] who come from Kosovo, your parents are also from the subtropical zone.
This exchange, initiated by the student, makes the teacher retrack on previously stated information about climate zones in Europe. Thus, student contributions are, to some extent, allowed to shape the interaction. Also, the teacher once again acknowledges the diverse backgrounds in the student group. While this can be seen as a sign of dialogic stance, such references to students’ backgrounds to make instructional points about geography can also work in stereotyping or racializing ways.
The teacher’s orientation towards the diverse student group will be of considerable interest in the subsequent analysis, which focuses on instruction related to living conditions in different countries.
A Privileged“We”
When this part of the curriculum area is introduced, focusing on living conditions rather than phys-ical geography (see also Walldén, 2019a), the teacher defines the concept of resources. Different examples are negotiated with the students, such as the forests of Sweden and crude oil. Below, the teacher recapitulates on the meaning of resources.
T: So, a resource is something which you have which often is pretty good to have. And something which maybe others would like to have as well. And, you know, the world is pretty unfair.
The comment on unfairness sets the table for an upcoming playful activity where a chocolate bar is distributed unevenly among the students.
T: Please have a seat on the sofa. It’s like this that in the whole world, all of the resources of the world, all that we have and which is good to have: food, things from nature, oil for example. 80 percent of the people don’t have access to this. 80 percent don’t have this food. 20 percent have quite a lot of food. Do we belong to the haves or have-nots in Sweden?
S (several): Haves.
T: Yes, we do. We belong to those 20 per cents which are pretty well off. We have food, we have clothing, we don’t starve. But 20 percent of the world’s population aren’t that well off. That is, out of one hundred. 80 are not well off and 20 who are doing just great. If we are ten in the classroom, it would be two down there, you are doing great. But over here, we are not doing well which is too bad. Because, let’s say that this is all the food in the world now GIVES A SMALL PART OF THE BAR Congratulations, please dig in. This is yours, these tables over here. /… /
S: It’s unfair. LAUGHING
T: But hey, it’s not just you. It is for all of the others as well.
The teacher uses evaluative linguistic resources to differentiate between“haves” and “have-nots”. She initially uses some hedges (“pretty well off”, “not that well off”), but scales up the evaluative
language in a way which serves to polarise the issue:“80 aren’t well off and 20 who are doing just great”. She also uses a triadic exchange structure (initiation, response, evaluation, cf. Lemke,1990) to establish the people in Sweden (represented by an inclusive“we”) belong to the “haves”. She also lets two of the students (12 are present during the lesson) seat themselves comfortably on a sofa. They are given the lion’s share of the chocolate bar, while the other students, seated at two large tables, are handed the rest. Therefore, the teacher’s “Congratulations, please dig in” should be understood as ironic. After distributing the chocolate bar, the teacher makes the following clarification.
T: You wouldn’t say, like, that people are starving because there isn’t enough food in the world. But there isn’t enough food where they are. Here, we have a lot of food. Far too much. We throw away amazing quantities of food. So, it is very unfair. Unevenly distributed. You know, this was supposed to symbolise that.
Here, the teacher takes a clear moral position on how resources are distributed unfairly. The waste-ful use of food“here” compared to scarcity “where they are”. Once again, the teacher scales up the use of evaluative resources to achieve this:“a lot … far too much … amazing quantities”. Overall, the students are positioned to consider living conditions in other countries from the point of view of a privileged life in Sweden. This is clearly a mainstream meaning perspective, which also effectively conveys beliefs about at divided world. I will show how this subject position and meaning perspective is maintained and amplified during subsequent activities.
In one such activity, the students were asked to engage in a browser game provided by Swedish Save the Children, called Livets lotteri (The Lottery of Life).1It is a virtual“wheel of fortune” through which the players willfind out where they would be “reborn”. An introductory text, represented both in writing and as audio, frames the game.
Every day 360 000 children are brought to the world. Fewer than 300 of them are born in Sweden. The chance of starting your life here is just 0,08%. Where would you end up if you were reborn and what kind of life would you have? Please, pull a new ticket in the lottery of life.
The text clearly positions the students to consider being born in another country. The metaphor “the lottery of life”, along with the suggested low chance of being born in Sweden, carries the impli-cation that one is lucky to be born in Sweden. The game reinforces the mainstream meaning per-spective, as it assumes the player is born in Sweden.
To demonstrate the game, the teacher displays it on a digital whiteboard and inserts the name of one of the students. Initially, the wheel is placed on Sweden, represented by an image of a gravel road leading to some red wood houses. As the wheel is“spun”, the image is replaced by a cycle of blurred images which represent different parts of the world. The “winning” country is showed after a shortfilm sequence of a child inside a womb, which, after emerging, gets a tag with the stu-dent’s name on. Finally, the name of the country is shown. In this case, it is India.
T: There you are. Look, there’s your name. There you are. You would be born in India if you were born again. 39 per cent of the people living in India are illiterate. What does that mean?
S: They don’t know letters and such or read or write.
T: Can’t read or write. Child labour, twelve per cent. What does child labour mean? Yes, perhaps tying car-pets for people in rich parts of the world, sewing clothes later sold in stores perhaps. Child marriage. 47 per cent of all children are married.
S: That is getting married when you are young.
T: When you are a child, and over here you are considered a child until you are eight. In India, perhaps you are not a child for that long. I don’t know their age limit for childhood. 25 per cent are poor. And you are allowed to smack children; physical punishment of children is allowed.
As should be evident, the facts negotiated about India are mostly deterring. The teacher uses triadic exchanges as a resource for directing the students’ attention to these facts, along with specialised
1
terms such as“illiterate”. This, once again, positions the students to consider their fortunate life in Sweden in comparison to the prospect of being born in another country. A very similar exchange occurs when the teacher inputs another student’s name and ends up with Ivory Coast. The teacher concludes with the following question:
T: What do you think, India or Ivory Coast? Which one was better? Or worse? India? Ok.
Afterwards, the students are allowed to play the game on their own, something they do repeatedly and with great enthusiasm. The above question is delivered in an off-handed way but echoes sub-sequent exchanges where the students are also asked to consider if a country is better or worse to live in than another. One such exchange takes place soon after the Lottery of Life activity, when the teacher asks the students to search for facts about a set of countries.
Ranking Countries from Best to Worst
Progressing from the introductory activities, the teacher gives the students a table in which they are asked tofill in facts about four different countries: Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Poland. Facts about Sweden are pre-filled. The table effectively positions the students to compare living con-ditions in Sweden with other those of other countries. The following excerpt is from the teacher’s explanation of the task.
L: How many in Sweden have clean water? Yes, all one hundred per cent. And what about Internet? How many have access to the Internet? In Sweden, 93 out of 100 have access to the internat. Just 7 per cent don’t have access. And how many children die? 2 out of 1000. And you are going to look at Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Poland. Those countries. And you should look at all of the things I wrote andfill them in here.
The teacher carefully demonstrates how the students are going to search for the facts using an online resource. Then, the teacher explains that the students should also rank the countries from 1 to 5.
T: Whey you are done [withfilling in the facts], you are supposed to rank the countries. You should write from one tofive where five represents the country where you absolutely wouldn’t like to live. And one is the country where you feel: Yay! I would like to live there. So, one, two, three, four,five. One is best, five is worst and then rank them. And you write a number here. For example, if you would really like to live in Poland, write one for Poland. If you absolutely wouldn’t like to live in Ethiopia, then write a five for Ethiopia.
The teacher clearly describes how the students are supposed to rank the countries from best to worst. She also uses evaluative resources of language to promote the students’ engagement with
the task such as “absolutely” and “yay”. In the example given by the teacher, a country from
Europe is selected as the most desirable one while a country from Africa is at the bottom.
As this part of the curriculum area progresses, the students use the online resource to find
the relevant facts which are later confirmed in a teacher-led follow up. Lastly, the students are required to use the gathered information to write a text about one of the countries. The text and language-focused teaching preceding the students’ individual writing is explored in the next section.
Taking a Stance:“No, This Country is not for Me”
The national curriculum in Sweden puts much emphasis on students’ ability to reason about issues pertaining to the subject studied (Walldén,2019a). Therefore, it is not surprising that the teacher models how the students are expected to express knowledge through reasoning. Before moving on to deconstruct model texts according to the principles of genre pedagogy, the teacher uses Ethiopia as an example for modelling how to reason about living conditions.
T: If I ask you about the availability of food in Ethiopia. How is the availability of food if we pretend that many don’t get food. Many are starving. How would we write if we write about it simply?
S: There isn’t a lot.
T: There isn’t a lot of food in Ethiopia. So, a simple way of reasoning would be that there isn’t a lot of food in Ethiopia. And if you would think about writing about it in a more developed way, what would you write?
S: There isn’t a lot of food in Ethiopia because it is poor.
The use of Ethiopia as an example is likely due to the students’ having watched an informative film clip about the country during a lesson which was not observed by the researcher. However, there is little evidence in the interaction that thefilm provided deeper insights into conditions in the country, for example how a lack of food relates to issues of exploitation and climate change. Instead, the students are positioned to use language in a way which gives stereotypical views of a“poor” African country. Once again, the students are positioned to consider the negative implication of life in other countries. The regulative discourse is strongly framed and consistent between the different activities.
The participant teacher employs genre-based instruction and selects discussion as the target genre for this curriculum area—which is often associated with critical and reflexive knowledge (cf. Christie & Derewianka,2010; Macken-Horarik,1996; Martin & Rose,2008; Rose & Martin,2012). She directs much attention to the typical generic structure, which consists of introducing an issue, discussing contrasting sides and making a position statement. The students are expected to use this structure in discussing the advantages and disadvantages of moving to one of the countries they searched for information about. Therefore, the genre structure constitutes another way in which the students are required to use language to express knowledge about the curriculum area. After introducing the genre structure, she leads a triadic exchange about the purpose of using this genre.
T: And why do you write a discussion? What’s the purpose? Why are we going write this kind of text? S: To show what you think.
T: Yes, to show what you think. Show. Take a position to something. I tell something [in] two different ways. I say that this you could think about it this way, but you could also think like this. And then I choose what I think.
As in the previous exchange about developed reasoning, there is little evidence that the use of language should be directed by informed considerations of living conditions in other countries.
Rather, the students are asked to “show” or “choose” what they think. However, in concluding
instructions, the teacher does point out that the students need to use the facts about the countries previously gathered as well as any other facts they mayfind.
T: You could investigate Poland, for example, and look at it like this: Would that be a country I would like to live in? You might not know that quite yet. You will have to investigate. The facts you have here. /… / You could also choose Iraq and write what’s good with Iraq and what’s bad and then choose at the end of the text. I don’t want all of you to choose Sweden. Because, if you choose Afghanistan and feel I wouldn’t want to live there, then your conclusion will be: No, this country is not for me.
Even if the students are asked to use facts in the text, the act of expressing or“choosing” their opinion of living in the country is heavily foregrounded. Additionally, the teacher expresses that the students would like to live in Sweden but not in a country like Afghanistan. This is echoed in the following light-hearted exchange, where the teacher picks up on a comment from one of the students which was inaudible to the researcher.
T: Yes. It’s a bit tricky and if you choose Sweden it might be difficult to come up with lots of bad things you couldfind out about.
S: And if you choose Ethiopia it might be very difficult to find anything good. LAUGHTER T: Yes, if you choose Afghanistan or Ethiopia maybe it’s difficult to come up with many good things. In discussing the difficulty in coming up with “bad things” about Sweden and “good things” about countries like Ethiopia and Afghanistan, this exchange recapitulates the meaning perspective present
throughout this curriculum area which has positioned the students to consider living conditions in other countries in light of a privileged life in Sweden. The instructional discourse, consisting of key terms (such as“resources”), searching for facts and using genre structures, has been embedded in a strongly framed regulative discourse consisting of mainstream beliefs and perspectives.
Discussion
In participating in introductory activities, searching for facts about countries and learning how to use linguistic resources, the students are set up to consider living conditions in other countries from the perspective of a privileged life in Sweden. A mainstream, Western-centric perspective of a divided world is conveyed, which, as previously stated, clearly illustrates Bernstein’s observation about instructional discourse being embedded in regulative discourse. It is interesting, but also dis-couraging, to note that the students’ knowledge of life in other countries, either through their own experiences or those of their parents or other relatives, are not used as a resource in the negotiation of different meaning perspectives. The students are clearly being socialised into an existing social order, building on assumptions of monoculturalism, with little opportunity for dialogue and sub-jectification (cf. Biesta,2009; Freire,1970).
Moreover, in the playful activities and the often-light-hearted tone used in the studied discourse, there is little evidence of serious engagement with living conditions in countries other than Sweden. In addition, the way in which the use of language is modelled appears very restrictive. Rather than promoting deeper engagement with issues of living conditions, the modelling of discussion writing seemed to position the students to express a dislike of the idea of living a country other than Swe-den, indicating a dominant meaning perspective informed by ideas of Nordic particularism. In sum, the students seem to be subjected to a benignly framed version of banking education, where the reproductive discursive practices go well beyond the reproduction of facts (e.g., Lindh, 2019; Molin & Grubbström,2013).
The result further underscores the need for postcolonial and critical perspectives in teacher prep-aration and professional development, to ensure that teachers can support diverse students in ways which do not entail transmission of Western-centric beliefs and marginalisation of second-language learners’ prior knowledge and experiences. Consciousness of the meaning perspectives and subject pos-itions offered in social studies instructional content and prescribed ways of using language gives tea-chers greater opportunities to conduct their teaching in an ethical and socially responsible manner.
Conclusions and Implications
In the exploration of subject positions and meaning perspectives negotiated when a teacher arranges learning activities and teaches the second-language learners to express social studies knowledge in writing, this study has shown how discursive practices were formed around main-stream meaning perspectives, giving the diverse students little room to use previous knowledge and experiences to engage with the curriculum area and explore different subject positions. The findings highlight the importance of teachers carefully considering how dominant meaning per-spectives are perpetuated by material and resources used in instruction. While traditional textbooks were not used in the instruction (cf. Ajagán-Lester,2000; Kamali,2006; Mikander,2015), the playful activities and searching for information played an important role in perpetuating Western-centric meaning perspectives. While it is a laudable goal to create awareness of unequal living conditions, games such as Lottery of Life are clearly aimed at majority students. For it to be used more appro-priately in diverse student groups, it would have been fruitful to promote a critical stance to the game, for example by asking the students about the purpose of the game, or if such a game would have been possible in other countries they have lived in. Teachers could also ask the students how the countries they are personally familiar with would have been represented in the game, or in the statistics they negotiated while searching for information. In other words, the diversity present
in the student group could—through a more dialogic stance—have been used as a resource for developing a critical disciplinary literacy (cf. Cummins, 2000; Freire & Macedo, 1987; Janks, 2010; Walldén,2020a). In addition, contrasting images of life in Africa—and Sweden—could be shown in order to highlight alternative meaning perspectives (cf. Hannah,2017).
In light of this study, teachers should also be aware of the meaning perspectives implicit in the ways they ask the students to use linguistic resources in content instruction, such as genre struc-tures. This connects to previous research showing how discursive practices are shaped around assessment (Lindh,2019; Ohrem Bakke, 2019). While genres such as discussions—prioritised by the participant teacher—carry powerful affordances for exploring perspectives and taking critical stances, this study has shown that such a genre can also be trivialised in the service of diverse stu-dents’ socialisation into an existing order. In fact, other, less authoritative, genres may have been more conducive to the students’ opportunities for engagement and subjectification, such as the reading and production of personal recounts or other story genres (cf. Martin & Rose, 2007, 2008). Such uses of language and written genres are also compatible with a less authoritative teacher orientation to the social studies content taught, which incorporates students’ prior knowledge, accommodates differences and promotes a critical awareness of dominant narratives.
Limitations
Since this is a small qualitative study, my aim has not been to provide results which can be gener-alised to other schools or educational context. Nor is the studied classroom interaction necessarily representative for how the participant teacher generally conducted the teaching. Nevertheless, I believe the present study shows pathways to critical inquiry into the meaning perspectives and sub-ject positions offered in teaching of social studies and ways of using written language to migrant language learners. To gain further qualitative insight, it would have been possible to employ methods of triangulation, such as interviewing the teacher about the rationale for instructional choices, or the students about how they perceive the instruction in relation to their backgrounds and prior knowledge. I believe this to be a fruitful direction for further research.
Acknowledgements
I wish to extend my thanks to Matthew White for professional aid in copy-editing the manuscript and translating certain concepts from Swedish to English.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
ORCID
Robert Walldén http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2565-8875
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