Perspektiver på barnets stemme

I artiklen beskrives, hvordan et generelt samfundsmæssigt og forskningsmæssigt fokus på barnets rettigheder kan være med til at forstærke opfattelsen af barnet som et afgrænset individ og sløre perspektiver på børn og deres afhængighed af omgivelserne. Et fokus på barnet som et afgrænset individ sætter desuden bestemte forventninger til barnets stemme som entydig og informerende, hvilket tilsvarende kan sløre opmærksomheden på de flertydige, mangeartede og modsætningsfyldte oplevelser og ønsker, som barnet, ligesom voksne, også kan have. Et fokus på barnets ret til at blive hørt medfører nogle etiske dilemmaer. På baggrund af forfatterens erfaringer fra interviewsituationer vises, hvordan en generel etik i forhold til at høre barnets stemme ikke kan gennemføres i praksis. Tværtimod kræver det en metodisk fleksibilitet i de enkelte interviewsituationer at sikre, at forventningen til barnets stemme som entydig og afgrænset fra deres voksne om- sorgspersoner ikke bliver et krav og dermed endnu en overskridelse af barnets grænser. Artiklen indeholder metodologiske refleksioner på basis af kvalitative interview og dagbogsdiktafon med ti plejebørn og deres plejeforældre i forbindelse med et ph.d.-projekt om opfattelser af slægtskab og tilhørsforhold.Søgeord: plejebørn, udsatte børn, FN’s Børnekonvention, metodologi, etik, tilhørsforhold.The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, The Danish Children’s Act (Barnets Reform) and the media’s current focus on children at risk are all examples of a general tendency in Denmark to focus on children’s participatory rights and the child’s own voice. The solution to the problems of the lives of children at risk is now sought with the children themselves; they need to be heard. This article discusses how a general focus in society and research on children’s voice and participatory rights is ambiguous, because it is grounded in a perspective of the child as a well-defined individual, which veils other aspects, such as children’s connectedness. The focus on the child as a well-defined individual also supports research perspectives that seek a synonymous and informative voice from the child, which at the same time veils the fact that children – as well as adults – also have multiple and often contrasting experiences and wishes. The focus on Children’s Universal Citizenship Rights support a child’s right to be heard, but can bring ethical problems when worked out in practice. This article shows how, through empirical examples from interview settings with children, universal ethical principles cannot be directly transferred into practice. Instead, some methodological flexibility is necessary to secure that wanting to hear the child’s own voice does not in itself become a transgression of this child. This article offers methodological reflections on the basis of the two methods interview and dictaphone diary that were used in a Ph.D. study about foster children and notions of kinship and belonging. Keywords: Foster children, children at risk, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children’s voices, ethics, methodology

The Hunger Games’ grammatik: Integreret grammatikundervisning i praksis

This article examines the potential for integrated grammar teaching (IGT) based on stylistic analysis of the novel, The Hunger Games, in the Danish upper secondary educational system (HF). Since the 1990s, the importance of combining communication and grammar teaching has been emphasized; however, the Danish upper secondary schools have not embraced the scientific findings. This article exemplifies how to close the gap between research and reality with IGT through the following two perspectives: with an eye to developing teaching materials and through a stylistic analysis of chapter 11 of The Hunger Games, we firstly analyze how modality characterizes the narrator of The Hunger Games, Katniss. The stylistic analysis reveals that the homodiegetic narrator’s assessments of the hypothetical risks relating to the people and the world around her are expressed through epistemic modality in the form of modal verbs. Secondly, based on the stylistic analysis, we develop, test and discuss teaching materials for IGT for the English b-level[1] at HF. Our results demonstrate that IGT is challenging, motivating and educational: the pupils acquire the basic characteristics of modality to some degree and manage to use their linguistic findings to characterize the narrator. The evaluation shows that the learners could benefit from less concentrated IGT and more variation; this could possibly be achieved by mixing IGT with other aspects of the curriculum. The study also shows that, while it is possible to develop teaching material for IGT based on stylistic analysis, an in-depth stylistic analysis (like the one reported here) is not necessary for teaching at this level, an important factor which could reduce the teacher’s preparation time.   [1] English b unofficially corresponds to B2 (Undervisningsministeriet 2018a) at the CEFR, The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, put together by the Council of Europe (Exam English 2014)

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