Att skriva prov : om normer och textstruktur i gymnasieskolans skriftliga nationella prov.

The focus of this article is the national writing tests administered in Swedish upper secondaryschools. One important role of these tests is to serve as an interpretation and concretization of thecurriculum. The aim of this article is therefore to examine the textual consequences of the testsituation. The article takes a critical stance towards the test construction. The instructions say thatwhen assessing the pupils’ writing abilities, the teacher is to judge to what extent the pupils’ textscould function in the fictitious situation and genre specified in the writing task. I argue that thepupils’ texts should be understood as actions situated in a test context. Through an analysis of linearand hierarchical global text structure in pupils’ texts, I show how the writing task regularizes whatis historically institutionalized as a good text in the test situation: namely the expository essay

Skriv en artikel : - Om elevers genreuppfattningar i gymnasieskolans nationella prov i svenska

Denna uppsats syftar till att utreda vad som karaktäriserar den i de nationella proven för gymnasieskolan, frekvent förekommande artikelgenren. Kursen Svenska B är ett kärnämne i gymnasieskolan och avslutas med ett obligatoriskt nationellt kursprov. Det innebär att alla elever i den svenska gymnasieskolan ska genomföra dessa kursprov. I proven ingår en större skriftlig uppgift där ska eleverna skriva en text utifrån en fiktiv situation och en given genre. Vid varje prov finns 10 uppgifter att välja mellan. För att bli godkänd krävs att elevtexten ”efter viss bearbetning” kan fungera i sitt tänkta sammanhang. För artikelgenren gäller således att texten efter viss bearbetning bör kunna publiceras i det fiktiva sammanhanget. I det reella sammanhanget innebär skrivandet naturligtvis att eleven ska avlägga en textprodukt som av den verkliga läsaren, lärare ska bedömas. Som bakgrund ges i uppsatsen en kort presentation av genrebegreppet i forskningen, samt debatten om huruvida genreundervisning ska bedrivas explicit eller ej. Studien förankras främst i forskning om skolskrivandets normer och kommunikativa villkor samt i tidigare studier på elevtexter producerade inom de nationella provens ramar. Materialet består i fyra elevtexter som är skrivna inom samma uppgift vid provtillfället vårterminen 2007. Temat för proven vid detta tillfälle var ”Moderna tider”. Uppgiften som valts ut för undersökningen bestod i att eleverna skulle skriva en artikel riktad till läsare på bibliotekstjänsts webbplats under rubriken ”Böcker på minuten”. I instruktionen ges grundförutsättningen att tidsbrist i det moderna samhället även drabbar litteraturläsningen och att förlagen mött detta genom olika versioner av snabbkonsumtionslitteratur. I artikeln ska eleven behandla sin syn på läsning och vilken roll det spelar, diskutera för- och nackdelar med förkortad litteratur och andra försök att spara tid till läsaren, samt avslutningsvis ge några råd till den som vill läsa, men inte hinner. Analysen består i att texternas linjära och hierarkiska strukturer mejslas ut. Utifrån dessa analyser modelleras i slutdiskussionen en grundläggande karaktäristika för genren. Det som visar sig vara kännetecknande för genren är bland annat textens tredelning. I inledningen preciseras idealt det artikeln som helhet ska handla om. I detta fall att läsningen drabbas av tidsbrist. I mittdelen värderas så snabbkonsumtionslitteraturen som eventuell lösning på problemet. Därefter ges i avslutning en konklusion där samtliga elever i undersökningen hävdar åsikten att de tidsbesparande versionerna inte duger, vilket leder dem över till deras egna lösningar, råd om hur man får tiden att räcka till. Eleverna i undersökningen ställer alla i sina artiklar upp på uppgiftens moral, att fullängdsromaner bör anses bättre än förkortningar. Strukturen känns i stora drag igen från tidigare forskningsresultat om den skolinterna genren utredande uppsats

Skrivbedömning : om uppgifter, texter och bedömningsanvisningar i svenskämnets nationella prov

The main purpose of this dissertation, and the four studies it includes, is to investigate some ways in which the concept of writing ability is rendered concrete in different national writing tests. The dissertation combines two theoretical approaches. Assessment theory serves as a framework for the approach to national tests. Tests are understood as a practice aiming at providing evidence for the inferences teachers need to draw about students’ writing ability, in order to make decisions that are part of school practice, such as giving grades. I examine the tests from the perspective of an anthropological theory of text that takes dialogism as its point of departure and views texts as culturally valued utterances. The analyses focus on the relations between writing task, students’ texts and assessment criteria, and how these can be both in alignment and in conflict with the claims on score meaning made by different test constructions. In the first study, four students’ texts from the national writing test in upper secondary school are closely analyzed to show how a writing task regulates students’ scope for action in their texts as regards global inner structure and perspective on content. The second study investigates how a national writing test was carried out in two classrooms in primary school, and highlights the relations between the task, students’ texts and assessment criteria. In the third study, I argue that a pursuit of reliability in writing tests becomes misguided unless it takes as its starting point the definition of writing ability the tests are made to measure. In the fourth study I examine the writing tasks of the tests in upper secondary school from 2007–2012. The analysis brings four distinct and recurrent task types to the fore, from which a reconstruction of the target domain of writing within the school subject of Swedish is made. Overall, the dissertation contributes to critical reflection on the understandings of writing expressed by test constructions, and points at possible further development of writing tests, given the theoretical perspective on writing that the dissertation employs

Att skriva prov : om normer och textstruktur i gymnasieskolans skriftliga nationella prov.

The focus of this article is the national writing tests administered in Swedish upper secondaryschools. One important role of these tests is to serve as an interpretation and concretization of thecurriculum. The aim of this article is therefore to examine the textual consequences of the testsituation. The article takes a critical stance towards the test construction. The instructions say thatwhen assessing the pupils’ writing abilities, the teacher is to judge to what extent the pupils’ textscould function in the fictitious situation and genre specified in the writing task. I argue that thepupils’ texts should be understood as actions situated in a test context. Through an analysis of linearand hierarchical global text structure in pupils’ texts, I show how the writing task regularizes whatis historically institutionalized as a good text in the test situation: namely the expository essay

Vad räknas som belägg för skrivförmåga? : ett textkulturellt perspektiv på skrivuppgifter i den svenska gymnasieskolans nationella prov.

This article examines writing tasks in Swedish national tests from 2007-2012. My aim is to examine some ways in which writing ability are conveyed by the test. For this purpose I combine concepts such as construct and target domain from test theory, with a text theoretical/sociocultural approach to writing. Within this framework I examine which written mediations count as evidence of writing proficiency (i.e. that are given text value) in the test context. The writing tasks are analyzed through the dimensions of themes, text structures, and acts of writing. I also analyze the writer roles implied by these tasks. The analysis shows that the test construction brings four distinct and recurrent task types to the fore. Based on those results I reconstruct the target domains of the tests, and discuss the prerequisites of their validity, from the perspective of writing theories on the one hand, and of the established course objectives on the other

EN HANDLEDNING I DESIGN- OCH STRUKTURUTVECKLINGSFASEN AV EN WEBBPLATS : Med fokusering på användbarhet

There are a huge number of books and articles written in the field of usability and about the art of giving the user the opportunity to find the information he is trying to reach while browsing the website. The writers of these books are handling guidelines that are recommended to be followed, as well as describing their own views, ideas and theories of the subject. We found an interest to research the different possibilities, if any, to develop a website optimal for the user from a usability point of view. Another thing we noticed was that a need of a substantial guidance existed in website development aimed for recently started companies. New theories and rules regarding usability, which are seen as superior to the old ones and therefore replaces them, is not created that often. This is different from other IT related subjects. For example, when looking at components inside of a computer, performance and disk space is doubled in a matter of a two year time period. Graphical design is also a thing that is ageing relatively fast and becomes obsolete when a new and fresh design comes along. With usability theories on the other hand it is possible to read books written ten years ago and even though all of it might not be pertinent, you can still see the big picture and find things that still counts as Reliable and correct. What we have seen is that the general opinion thinks less of usability compared to graphical design. Looking at how many pages the usability section gets in an HTML-guide or the number of books at the library’s shelves, the graphical sections outnumber the usability ones. This report and the attached manual, which is created based on the results and questions answered throughout this report, bring the most essential usability theories to light. Subsequently they are analyzed and tied together in the latter parts of the report. The author Jacob Nielsen, which is one of the greatest usability experts in the world today, stands for a major part of what is written about the subject. we will look at different theories from Nielsen and also look at a master’s degree thesis by Fredrik Hansson (2006) which deals with a survey concerning the color of links. The report consists of two parts; the first part is mainly about the usability theories explained above while the other part contains a basic HTML-guide as well as a style sheet-guide (CSS). These two guides prepare the users who choose to use the attached manual to create their own sites. We mainly aim our work towards the entrepreneur who is about to or has just started his own business. The parts we focus on in this report are site design where write about site dimensions, site length and describe page headers and page footers. We also deal with implementation and typography suited for the web. Another thing we bring to light is usability on a deeper level. Not everybody knows exactly what the expression means and we try to bring clarity to it. The manual gives the user a description of building a website from start to finish. The basic idea is to give substantial information to the point where the users can go and create a site by themselves without any extensive prior knowledge. However, we recommend some computer knowledge. The result of this report and the part that is described in the result section is a presentation on how a site is created based on the rest of the report. It will give answers to how a site is built in order to be as useful as possible

Vad räknas som belägg för skrivförmåga? Ett textkulturellt perspektiv på skrivuppgifter i den svenska gymnasieskolans nationella prov.

SammanfattningI den här artikeln undersöks skrivuppgifter ur svenskämnets nationella prov 2007-2012. Syftet är att rekonstruera några drag i den konkretisering av begreppet skrivförmåga som proven ger uttryck för. För detta parar jag testteorins begrepp konstrukt och måldomän med en textteoretisk/sociokulturell ansats på skrivande. Det innebär att jag undersöker vilka idealtypiska medieringar som räknas som belägg för skrivförmåga (dvs  ges textvärde) i provkonstruktionen. Skrivuppgifterna analyseras utifrån dimensionerna tema, inre struktur, och grundläggande skrivhandling, vilka kombinerat med övrig information (tänkt publikationsforum, frivillighet etc.) renderar i synteser i form av skribentroller. Analysen visar att provkonstruktionen aktualiserar fyra distinkta och återkommande uppgiftstyper. Utifrån dessa resultat rekonstruerar jag provets måldomän(-er), och diskuterar provens förutsättningar för validitet utifrån å ena sidan skrivteoretiska ståndpunkter, och å andra sidan de fastlagda kursmålen.AbstractThis article examines writing tasks in Swedish national tests from 2007-2012. My aim is to examine some ways in which writing ability are conveyed by the test. For this purpose I combine concepts such as construct and target domain from test theory, with a text theoretical/socio-cultural approach to writing. Within this framework I examine which written mediations count as evidence of writing proficiency (i.e. that are given text value) in the test context. The writing tasks are analyzed through the dimensions of themes, text structures, and acts of writing. I also analyze the writer roles implied by these tasks. The analysis shows that the test construction brings four distinct and recurrent task types to the fore. Based on those results I reconstruct the target domains of the tests, and discuss the prerequisites of their validity, from the perspective of writing theories on the one hand, and of the established course objectives on the other

Bedömarvariation : Balansen mellan teknisk och hermeneutisk rationalitet vid bedömning av skrivprov

It is well known from studies of inter-rater reliability that assessments of writing tests vary. In order to discuss this rater variation, we depart from two research questions: 1. How can rater variation be conceived of from a professional, i.e. teacher, perspective? 2. What characterises Swedish (mother-tongue) teachers’ assessments of writing tests? The first question is addressedi n a meta-study of previous research, and the second question is answered in a study of 14 Swedish teachers’ rating of texts from a national written composition test in upper secondary school. The results show that teachers in the same subject assess better, i.e. have less rater variation, than other groups. It is also clear that writing tests are notoriously difficult to rate. It is very rare that the correlation coefficients reach the desirable 0.7, a number that means that 50 % of the variance could be explained by shared norms. Another main result concerns criteria and tools for assessment. Such tools should be grounded in teachers’ professional expertise, in their expectations for different levels of performance. Our study reveals several situations where teachers’ professional expertise clashes with assessment criteria. The article concludes that valid assessments of tests that are high-stakes must handle both a technical rationality, i.e. the grading should be predictable from rater to rater, and a hermeneutic rationality, i.e. the grading must be based on teachers’ professional judgmen

Bedömarvariation : Balansen mellan teknisk och hermeneutisk rationalitet vid bedömning av skrivprov

It is well known from studies of inter-rater reliability that assessments of writing tests vary. In order to discuss this rater variation, we depart from two research questions: 1. How can rater variation be conceived of from a professional, i.e. teacher, perspective? 2. What characterises Swedish (mother-tongue) teachers’ assessments of writing tests? The first question is addressed in a meta-study of previous research, and the second question is answered in a study of 14 Swedish teachers’ rating of texts from a national written composition test in upper secondary school. The results show that teachers in the same subject assess better, i.e. have less rater variation, than other groups. It is also clear that writing tests are notoriously difficult to rate. It is very rare that the correlation coefficients reach the desirable 0.7, a number that means that 50 % of the variance could be explained by shared norms. Another main result concerns criteria and tools for assessment. Such tools should be grounded in teachers’ professional expertise, in their expectations for different levels of performance. Our study reveals several situations where teachers’ professional expertise clashes with assessment criteria. The article concludes that valid assessments of tests that are high-stakes must handle both a technical rationality, i.e. the grading should be predictable from rater to rater, and a hermeneutic rationality, i.e. the grading must be based on teachers’ professional judgment