Learning the Disciplines Through Linguistic Feedback: Contribution to the Development of a Discipline-Specific, Formative Evaluation of Students’ Assignments

Students write to learn. Besides, enculturation to the disciplinary discourse happens during writing. Feedback on the assignments from the students scaffolds students’ writing development and learning paths. However, knowledge about the relationship between language, including argumentation in the discipline, on one hand, and the content of the discipline, on the other, is needed. This article is based on a socio-cultural approach to writing in the disciplines, and theory on feedback, and focuses on the relationship between the meso-level of texts (sentences, clauses, word choice) and the content of the discipline.  We discuss how insight into the meso-level of texts may be used to improve and to develop feedback and formative evaluation. Cases from an intervention project in a Danish upper secondary school are included, and indicate that teachers and students assign a lower priority to feedback on the meso-level. This article claims that providing feedback on the meso-level strengthens writing development and students’ learning processes. To illustrate how this may be accomplished two texts are analyzed: one from a history class and one from a biology class

Disciplinary Writing Tutors at Work: A study of the Character of the Feedback Provided on Academic Writing at the BA Programmes at the Humanities Department

New students struggle to develop academic writing skills during transition to university. To meet this challenge, the Humanities department at the University of Southern Denmark implemented a research and development project to increase feedback to student writers. In the project, graduate students were trained as disciplinary writing tutors, and subsequently provided feedback on undergraduates’ assignments. The study presented in this article examines the feedback offered by the disciplinary writing tutors. As researchers, we ask, “What characterises the feedback offered by the disciplinary writing tutors?” The study is positioned in a sociocultural framework that draws on theories of disciplinary and academic literacy. Data was collected in four bachelor’s degree programmes and consists of the feedback given by the tutors and interviews with the tutors conducted at the end of the tutoring. Principal results indicate that the feedback on the students’ texts is distributed at the text layer of content and structure and the text layer of formalities. Feedback at the text layer of sentences is almost absent. Feedback on the writing and learning processes is limited. The discipline-specific feedback occurs as indications in the feedback to the BA students and is made clearer when comparing feedback in different programmes. The feedback the writing tutors provide demonstrates an understanding of academic writing as academic socialisation

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Skriv i samfundsfa

Refleksioner og reformuleringer i didaktisk udviklingsarbejde – to skrivedidaktiske cases om forsker-praktiker-samarbejdet i gymnasiet

The article examines the cooperation between professional practitioners and researchers. It focuses on school development projects and didactics. Two projects on writing in upper secondary school – in which the authors participated as researchers – are analyzedTemaet for denne artikel er samarbejde mellem professionelle praktikere og forskere om produktion af viden om problemstillinger, der knytter sig til skoleudviklingsprojekter om didaktisk udvikling. Samarbejdet tager form af en intervention, hvor praktikere og forskere samarbejder om at ændre noget i en etableret praksi

Indledning

Indledningen præsenterer og diskuterer dels begrebet 'sammenlignende fagdidaktik' og række en symposier, der har været holdt siden 2010, dels de artikler, der indgår i dette nr. af Sammenlignende Fagdidaktik.The introduction discusses the concept 'comparative disciplinary didactics' and the symposiums about comparative disciplinary didactics since 2011. The articles in this number of the journal are presented

Indledning

Indledningen præsenterer dette nummer af Sammenlignende Fagdidaktik, herunder de indgående artikler

The effectiveness of antenatal care programmes to reduce infant mortality and preterm birth in socially disadvantaged and vulnerable women in high-income countries: a systematic review

Background: Infant mortality has shown a steady decline in recent years but a marked socioeconomic gradient persists. Antenatal care is generally thought to be an effective method of improving pregnancy outcomes, but the effectiveness of specific antenatal care programmes as a means of reducing infant mortality in socioeconomically disadvantaged and vulnerable groups of women has not been rigorously evaluated.Methods: We conducted a systematic review, focusing on evidence from high income countries, to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative models of organising or delivering antenatal care to disadvantaged and vulnerable groups of women vs. standard antenatal care. We searched Medline, Embase, Cinahl, PsychINFO, HMIC, CENTRAL, DARE, MIDIRS and a number of online resources to identify relevant randomised and observational studies. We assessed effects on infant mortality and its major medical causes (preterm birth, congenital anomalies and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)).Results: We identified 36 distinct eligible studies covering a wide range of interventions, including group antenatal care, clinic-based augmented care, teenage clinics, prenatal substance abuse programmes, home visiting programmes, maternal care coordination and nutritional programmes. Fifteen studies had adequate internal validity: of these, only one was considered to demonstrate a beneficial effect on an outcome of interest. Six interventions were considered 'promising'.Conclusions: There was insufficient evidence of adequate quality to recommend routine implementation of any of the programmes as a means of reducing infant mortality in disadvantaged/vulnerable women. Several interventions merit further more rigorous evaluation

When the Entire World is pushed into the Classroom : Reflections on Communication, Interculturalism and Education and on Intercultural Education in the Danish Upper Secondary School

In this article intercultural education is discussed, cases from the Danish upper secondary school are analyzed, and some requirements for further development are proposed. First definitions of the concepts communication, communicative action, intercultural communication and intercultural education are given. Starting from these definitions it is argued that intercultural communication as well as intercultural education is possible. Then two cases are analyzed. Finally – in the Discussion – it is underlined that the students’ metareflection on the context dependence of the knowledge construction process is a pivotal precondition for successful intercultural education

Når innovation og fagligt samspil saetter fag under pres - fagdidaktisk kommunikation i det danske gymnasium efter reformen 2005

After the 2005 reform of the Danish gymnasium, it has become a requirement that students are trained in interdisciplinarity and that their innovative skills are developed. In the public discussion “innovation” has been embedded in two different discourses: a market oriented discourse and a citizenship oriented discourse. This study examines whether the school subjects under this pressure develop and converge into one unified school subject: a market orientated social science. This is examined through a case study of an interdisciplinarian course in the first year of the Danish gymnasium on Corporate Social Responsibility. The students first work with this topic in the context of English, Social Science and Innovation, and then have to advise a Danish concern about how to improve and develop the CSR-strategy of one of its subsidiary companies in India.The data of the study are central documents from political level, from the level of the Ministry of Education, and from the course. These documents are triangulated with interviews with teachers and students. The results of the study are based on a discourse analysis of these documents.The central finding of the study is that the different school subjects do not converge into one market oriented school subject. The students do not limit themselves to give instrumental and means-oriented advices to the concern about how they can use the CSR-strategy as a mean of increasing its profits. The teachers act in a paradigm of challenge oriented didactics. The teachers establish a subject oriented and interdiscipline oriented didactical discussion about how the school subjects in different ways can contribute to a professional debate about epochal core problems (in this course: the enviroment and social inequality), and the students discuss how the subsidiary company can contribute to the solution of these problems. They add that these initiatives will benefit the company. Thus, through didactical reflection and the planning and execution of a course the teachers re-contextualize the requirement about interdisciplinarity and innovation in a way that has Bildungs-Potenzial