Although visual aids are widely considered a valuable source of scaffolding, the nature and active utilization of these aids in current science classrooms are not well understood. This qualitative study explores interaction in the teaching of concepts related to evolution, with a specific focus on a teacher's use of different visual support material. Based on a classroom study in a linguistically diverse Grade 4 classroom, we employed the perspective of discourse-bridging interaction to develop three broad categories of interactional examples, which we related to three kinds of visual support material used in the instruction: generic visual support images, naturalistic images, and disciplinary images showing examples of natural selection. The findings show that the interaction moved in and out of science discourse in a way that reflected the images' properties. A generic visual support image illustrated the concept of “adaption” as puzzle pieces fitting together, which promoted everyday and anthropomorphic examples of animals and people striving to fit in. When the teacher used naturalistic images, the discourse shifted between a range of perspectives, while visual aids and whiteboard drawings showing the classic examples of giraffes evolving (a disciplinary image) were employed to clarify the notion of natural selection. We discuss the study's implications for using visual support material in a planned way that supports disciplinary understanding.

This article focuses on how Grade 6 students interactionally make meaning out of subject-related language encountered in civics textbook material by searching for synonyms and engaging in discussions. Employing ethnographically-inspired methods, data was collected through observations and audio recordings of civics teaching in two linguistically diverse classrooms in which the students were taught in the majority language, Swedish. In the article, oral classroom interaction is perceived as a crucial part of the meaning-making social practice in which students' disciplinary literacy is developed. Key analytical concepts are discursive shifts and discursive mobility - the ability to move between and within different discourses. The results show that the use of online dictionaries promoted decontextualizing processes in which the students unsuccessfully tried to negotiate multiple abstract meanings that, in many cases, were unrelated to the disciplinary content. In other exchanges, the adults gave interactional support by contextualizing the words and expressions in content-relevant ways and pointing out recognizable parts of words. In some cases, the teacher instead drew attention to words that have different meanings, which complicated the content-relevant understanding of the words. Implications for working with subject-related vocabulary in ways which support rather than hinder disciplinary understanding are discussed.

This study illuminates a teacher's discursive strategies for promoting understanding of literary language in a linguistically diverse Swedish classroom. By means of field notes and audio recordings, a Grade 4 teacher's read-aloud of the award-winning picture book The Legend of Sally Jones was documented and analyzed employing concepts from Systemic-Functional Linguistics and Legitimation Code Theory. Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, the findings show that the teacher used a rich variety of discursive strategies to make specialized terms and literary descriptions available to the students. Apart from using question–answer strategies and commenting on the text in clarifying ways, the teacher made linguistic alterations to either expand or simplify the literary language. The expansive strategies were particularly salient, entailing clarifying paraphrases or subtly infused additions to expand literary meaning. The significance of the strategies to support students’ understanding of literary language and immersion in stories is discussed.

This article contributes knowledge about disciplinary literacy practices in school history, with a particular focus on how key subject-related concepts are visually and orally represented and negotiated in teacher- student interaction. Based on a classroom study of history teaching in a linguistically diverse classroom in Grade 6, we use social-semiotic theories to analyze properties of the images themselves and how they are employed as resources in oral interaction, with particular focus on students’ potential involvement in discursive shifts between everyday and disciplinary wordings. The results show that decontextualized, generic images, particularly those of abstract concepts, can obstruct students’ participation in subject- related discourse. Students’ discursive mobility can also be limited by interaction-driven guessing games about key subject-related concepts and misleading use of everyday language. The results also show how L2 students’ creative use of linguistic resources, connections to learners’ prior knowledge, and reiteration of subject-related concepts can constitute valuable parts of discursive shifts. Implications for using images and oral interaction in ways that support disciplinary learning in history are discussed.

The aim of this article is to contribute knowledge about how figurative language from literary texts is negotiated through oral interaction in second-language instruction. The material consists of transcriptions of recordings from a classroom study of basic adult second-language instruction involving two teachers and their two student groups. Theories of semantic waves and discursive mobility are used to explore and visualize discursive shifts between concrete and condensed abstract meanings. The results show a varied use of linguistic resources, where students’ contributions often serve as a bridge between the teachers’ concrete examples and abstract paraphrases in which lexical metaphors interplayed with grammatical metaphors. In some exchanges, characters and events in the literary texts were significantly expanded upon in the interaction as they were used as contextual resources. The study sheds light on second-language instruction as a dual disciplinary literacy practice, involving both language learning and the study of literary texts.

Vi som har skrivit denna artikel är alla verksamma inom forskningsmiljön Svenska med didaktisk inriktning (SMDI) vid Malmö högskola. Frågor om språkutveckling i bred bemärkelse står här i centrum. För närvarande är vi engagerade i projektet ”SMDI och lärande i medielandskapet 2.0”. Vår teoretiska plattform kan beskrivas som medieekologisk, vilket kortfattat uttryckt innebär att vi är intresserade av de mångfaldiga och komplexa relationerna mellan medier och kommunikativa kompetenser (Elmfeldt & Erixon 2007; Erixon 2012; Hayles 2002). Dessa relationer förstås därför inte, som så ofta annars i skolsammanhang, i termer av enkelriktad påverkan eller effekter (exempelvis datorns och internets negativa inverkan på skriftspråket). Vår huvudpoäng i denna artikel är att medie- och informationskunnighet, MIK, handlar om, borde handla om, framför allt två saker: språkutveckling och demokrati.