Undervisning och bedömning i svenska på högstadiet : Elever i årskurs 7 skriver saga och recension

Sammanfattning: The present study aims to investigate instruction and assessment in Swedish during two writing units, a fairytale and a book review, in lower secondary school, year seven. The research questions that guide the study deal with aspects such as what subject content appears to be important in the classroom instruction, how this content is highlighted, and what appears to be the purpose of the assessment. The answers to the research questions contribute in giving a description of the predominant writing discourse and they provide a basis for an overall comparison of what is emphasized in instruction and in assessment respectively, thus shedding light on the alignment between classroom instruction and assessment.Data were collected from multiple sources: video and audio recordings of twenty lessons, material based “observiews” (observations of the teacher while assessing students’ final texts aloud), assessment rubrics, and the teacher’s lesson materials.The classroom practice is explored as a literacy practice, based on the idea that reading and writing are always situated within specific social practices, and as an assessment practice, based on the idea that classroom assessment is an important part of the classroom atmosphere and helps students to form concepts of themselves as learners as well as of what is important to learn. In the data, literacy events and assessment events are analyzed through a framework of writing discourses. With the analytical focus on literacy events and assessment events, the study also contributes to the research field as to if and how these concepts are related.The main findings suggest that there is an overall agreement between instruction, formative assessment and summative assessment in the studied practice. However, a contradiction between tradition and change can be seen in assessment of texts. During the fairytale unit, a contradiction can be seen between a genre discourse and a creativity discourse. During the book review unit, a contradiction can be seen between a genre discourse and a skills discourse. Assessment events tend to occur in literacy events when important content comes up. Eleven assessment events have been identified according to the purpose they seem to have in relation to the subject contents and requested ways of knowing.