Att bedöma elevers läsförståelse : En jämförelse mellan svenska och kanadensiska bedömningsdiskurser i grundskolans mellanår

Sammanfattning: The aim of the study is to describe and analyze what assessment discourses of reading comprehension are more prominent by comparing five Swedish and five Canadian teachers in the province of BC in Canada. Based on a teacher perspective on how to develop and assess reading comprehension, the investigation concentrates on teacher discourses and their alignment with other discourses of reading comprehension within the two school systems. The method used is mainly based on classroom observations and transcriptions of tape-recorded interviews. The ten teachers in grade 4 were interviewed for 30 minutes almost every day in the afternoon during a school week. The analysis of the teachers answers were made in three steps: within each singe interview, within the Swedish and the Canadian teacher group respectively, and between the two compared teacher groups. The theoretical perspectives used to analyze the data were Critical Discourse Analysis, theories of feedback, and socio-cognitive theory. The answers within each teacher group showed a homogeneous pattern, but the comparison between the two groups showed considerable differences. The results demonstrated that the Swedish teachers seemed to be more of “instruction givers” and “assessment controllers”, while the Canadian teachers seemed to be more of “comprehension instructors” and “ongoing assessment controllers”. The teacher discourses in both groups were aligned with other assessment discourses in their respective school systems. The Canadian teacher group used a much more elaborated meta-language when talking about reading comprehension assessment. In their way of referring to feedback they also focused on their own teaching in a way that was not found within the Swedish teacher group.