Språket är nyckeln : En undersökning av lärares uppfattningar om språkutveckling i samhällskunskap

• Main Author: Öhman, Elin
• Format: Others
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Södertörns högskola, Lärarutbildningen 2017
• Subjects: language development; teaching; social studies; school language; scaffolding and interaction.; språk- och kunskapsutvecklande undervisning; samhällskunskap; skolspråk; stöttning och interaktion.; Educational Sciences; Utbildningsvetenskap
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-32738

The purpose of this study is to examine teachers’ perceptions of language development in social studies. Questions that will try to be answered are: How do teachers in social studies regarding grades 4-6 account for pupils’ language development in planning, teaching and grading? What difficulties do teachers experience while working with language development? What kind of support do teachers feel that they need in order to work effectively with language development? Research has showed that language is our primary tool for learning in all subjects. A language developing education is contextual, contains scaffolding and a lot of opportunities for interaction. Teachers have an important role to play in creating context that benefits pupils’ knowledge, linguistic and personal development. Earlier studies have showed that many teachers lack competence in how to work with language and knowledge development. This study concludes that teachers take into account pupils’ prior knowledge and that they understand the importance of working with different methods based on interaction and scaffolding to develop their pupils’ subject and linguistic capability. The main difficulty that teachers reported was the difficulty in adapting the education to the pupils’ different abilities. They also acknowledged the development of the specialized school language with its abstract words as a difficulty. Teachers reported that the best support in this process was collegial learning, internal education and language development models/tools.