Små ting på 7. trinn

Resumé

This study discusses experiences from a partnership between researchers and teachers, in which problem-oriented instruction is viewed as a way of creating space for student participation and academic development. The ambition was to provide both students and teachers with first-hand experience of the text as a problem and, for the students, to create connections between individual experience and disciplinary discourse. The primary data in this study are drawn from the final phase of the partnership collaboration, in which teachers and researchers discussed Raymond Carver’s short story “Little Things” (1986) prior to its use in teaching. In the classroom, students first engaged in group discussions and subsequently in whole-class discussions. In the article, we comment on the text’s potential as an academic problem and on the teachers’ responses to the text as a backdrop for examining group and whole-class discussions of the text in one of the classes (7A). We present a case in which the teacher’s academic expectations are challenged by students’ participation on their own terms in open literary discussions. Based on this example, we highlight what may be at stake in literary discussions in terms of students’ experience-based engagement and understanding.