Dòng Nội dung
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Bakhtin and the carnival : humour in school children’s film making / : humour in school children’s film making / Jessica Zacher Pandya, Kathy A. Mills. // Language and Education Vol.33, No 6/2019
UK : Taylor & Francis Group, 2019.
p. 544-559 ; 26 cm.

While humour and laughter create conditions that are conducive for learning, different forms of children’s humour have been given little attention in research on digital media, literacy learning, and multimodal design. Applying a Bakhtinian lens, we analyse carnivalesque videos created by elementary students as part of the formal curriculum. We argue that they functioned as playful, spoofing counter narratives within the serious context of schooling. Three key findings emerge from analysis that show different forms of carnivalesque humour in their texts: (i) Clowning in children’s carnivalesque performances was used to break perceived tensions; (ii) Grotesque humour arose spontaneously, subverting the seriousness of films by drawing attention to lower, bodily functions; and (iii) Ambivalent laughter was instantiated in the video texts as a carnivalesque view of the world. We argue that the deliberate curation, editing, and selecting of these funny moments for an intended audience enabled spaces for digital play in film making within the remit of the formal curriculum.
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Emergent literacy instruction : ‘continua of biliteracy’ among newly immigrated adolescents / Anna Winlund // Language and Education Volume 34, 2020 - Issue 3
England : Routledge, 2020
p. 249-266

This article focuses on the instruction of recently immigrated adolescents with limited educational backgrounds who are developing emergent literacy. It is based on an ethnographic study conducted in a public Swedish language introductory class in 2017/2018. Its purpose is to investigate how the students engaged in literacy practices during the instruction, and how they were supported by their teachers. Empirical data, which included field notes, audio recordings, and interviews with students, were analyzed with the help of two dimensions of Hornberger’s continua of biliteracy, namely, the content and development of biliteracy. Analysis of the content of biliteracy indicated that students’ previous knowledge, as well as class field trips and tangible examples, served as important foundations for their instruction. Analysis of the development of biliteracy showed that the teachers’ engagement with the students’ diverse linguistic and other semiotic resources contributed to the students’ participation in literacy practices. While the framework applied to the data includes several dimensions of literacy, indispensable for research in this complex context, the analysis also illuminates the need for the inclusion of additional dimensions in order to account for the role of interpersonal relations.
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Inching towards literacy in Madrid’s primary schools : a survey of school-wide projects / Ana Halbach, Daniel Candel Bormann. // Language and Education Vol.33, No 5/2019
UK : Taylor & Francis Group, 2019.
p. 416-430

Over the last decades, the term ‘literacy’ has extended far beyond its original reference to learning to read and write. However, few data are available about its actual application in schools across Europe. This article, which is part of a larger project, tries to identify the common trends and difficulties teachers face when dealing with literacy in the Madrid area, one of the more successful regions in education. After focusing on the unresolved difficulty of finding a Spanish equivalent to the term ‘literacy’, the article analyses the answers to 116 questionnaires by primary school teachers. Responses suggest a relative lack of interest in literacy projects, as few schools seem to be developing one. Analysis of the five projects that allowed a follow-up indicates a minority trend away from teaching about the language towards using it in meaningful contexts and across languages, but mostly without a clear idea of what literacy means. This is especially true for three projects, two of which are loosely based on neurolinguistics. The fourth project is in its initial stages, and only the fifth shows a promising understanding of literacy, using language as a tool to learn and think, and working across languages around themes and genres.