Till Örebro universitet

This article has a theoretical aim and explores the semiotics of lists and tables. It takes a his­torical perspective and looks at both the invention of writing (phylogeny) and the writing deve­lopment of the child (ontogeny) in order to uncover how meaning-making evolves through the use of semiotic and material resources. Lists on clay followed the invention of writing and were used for bureaucratic purposes, to plan and take control over e.g. food, persons and words, which we recognize in today’s grocery lists, participant lists and word lists. When literacy grows and elaborated classification systems are codified, the table becomes an impor­tant semiotic tool that enables detailed and systematic comparisons by its use of materiality, where columns and rows intersect and linguistic and numerical signs can be combined. At the end of the article, I synthesize my observations in a model that shows what kind of meaning-making lists and tables are apt for.

It is well known from studies of inter-rater reliability that assessments of writing tests vary. In order to discuss this rater variation, we depart from two research questions: 1. How can rater variation be conceived of from a professional, i.e. teacher, perspective? 2. What characterises Swedish (mother-tongue) teachers’ assessments of writing tests? The first question is addressed in a meta-study of previous research, and the second question is answered in a study of 14 Swedish teachers’ rating of texts from a national written composition test in upper secondary school. The results show that teachers in the same subject assess better, i.e. have less rater variation, than other groups. It is also clear that writing tests are notoriously difficult to rate. It is very rare that the correlation coefficients reach the desirable 0.7, a number that means that 50 % of the variance could be explained by shared norms. Another main result concerns criteria and tools for assessment. Such tools should be grounded in teachers’ professional expertise, in their expectations for different levels of performance. Our study reveals several situations where teachers’ professional expertise clashes with assessment criteria. The article concludes that valid assessments of tests that are high-stakes must handle both a technical rationality, i.e. the grading should be predictable from rater to rater, and a hermeneutic rationality, i.e. the grading must be based on teachers’ professional judgment.

Den kulturella texten är utgångspunkten för denna artikel. En sådan text medierar världen på ett sätt som tillskrivs värde i en kultur. Jag argumenterar för att en kulturell text vilar på en materialitet som är beroende av teknologier och som låter sig beskrivas i termer av ett retoriskt verksamt format. Jag kommer att diskutera format i relation till genre, som tar fasta på typifierade retoriska handlingar och ser dessa som realiserade i texters inre struktur. Som en länk mellan format och genre lyfter jag fram texters yttre form, som kodar textens gränser. Dessa textegenskaper knyter jag till intentionalitet, som gör att en kulturell text i princip uppfattas som meningsfull, att den har en riktadhet som möjliggör samhandling.

In 2012, efforts to launch hen as a gender-neutral pronoun in Swedish sparked a widespread and sometimes fierce debate. This article addresses the establishment of hen in actual usage, in particular in blogs, newspapers, and student essays. In general, the use of hen is fairly uncommon, and the majority of occurrences are meta uses, which means the word is discussed more than it is used. In certain areas, however, such as gender-oriented blogs and academic essays on Swedish, hen is somewhat more common. A comparison with alternative gender-neutral expressions is presented, based on different functions of hen, both generic and referentially specific types. Two functions unique to hen are distinguished, cross-gender specific reference and gender-neutral reference to subjects in scientific studies; with respect to other functions, hen is a stylistically marked alternative.

Projektet TOKIS visar att lärare varierar fokus på vad som ska skrivas, på hur det ska skrivas och på varför det ska skrivas, vilket ger olika slags skrivprocesser för eleverna. En insikt är att lärarens mål med skrivandet bör vara tydligt men att graden av språklig formalisering bör variera mellan olika skrivprojekt, beroende på vilket slags text och skrivande som är för handen. En annan insikt är att olika slags textsamtal leder till olika slags skrivande, vilket kan kopplas till olika typer av skrivpedagogiker.

I projektet utgår forskarna från att det finns kulturellt givna sätt att skapa text, som beskrivs i termer av textaktiviteter och genrer, och att dessa sätt tas i bruk i undervisningssituationer där eleverna rör sig mot olika mål, vilket gör att olika textuella lösningar blir möjliga. Projektet har fokuserat på relationen mellan talande, skrivande och läsande i undervisningen genom en rad klassrumsobservationer.