Information and experience: audio-visual observations of reading activities in Swedish comprehensive school classrooms 1967–1969

Abstract

Information and experience: Audiovisual observations of reading activities in Swedish comprehensive school classrooms 1967-1969 This study investigates reading activities in Swedish primary school classrooms during the late 1960s. Sound and video recordings of 223 Swedish lessons held between 1967 and 1969 are used to analyse the activity of reading as taught and performed. The results indicate that the practice of informational reading, often based on finding predetermined, explicit 'facts' in textbooks through individual, silent reading, was common. The practice of experiential reading, based on fiction, imagination and the joy of reading, was not only less common, but also often compromised by instrumental concerns. In the national curriculum of the time, the practice of informational reading was related to study skills and was intended to prepare all pupils for higher level education. While often appearing overproportioned, superficial and fragmented, these reading practices were still intentional objects of learning and teaching, and were grounded in the democratic and egalitarian ideals of Swedish postwar educational policy.

From informational reading to information literacy

“…The classroom situations which will be described originate from 223 lessons varying from 40-45 minutes each in length in the subject of Swedish in year six (where most students were 12 years old), captured through audio-recordings and partly through video recordings during the academic years of 1967/1968 and 1968/1969 by a team of researchers at the University of Gothenburg (Bredänge et al , 1971). The original recordings have been digitised, analysed, and coded with a focus on document types and reading styles; the latter including informational reading (for detailed coding scheme see Dolatkhah and Lundh, 2016). Of the 115 lessons where reading as an object of teaching and learning occurred, 71 included informational reading.…”

“…Even though the classroom activities described in this paper were described as informational reading in the curriculum, we contend that this does not warrant that they are regarded as information activities in any theoretical sense. Instead – as described in further detail below – we see the term informational reading as an expression of a particular era, namely the post-war period when Sweden was starting to transform into a post-industrial, services society, and when it was thought that Swedish students in the newly introduced compulsory school needed to be taught how to read with a focus on information (see Dolatkhah and Lundh, 2016). In a similar vein, today’s students are described as being in need of Media and Information Literacy.…”

Sharing stories: An exploration of genres in storytimes

“… 5. The secondary analysis was similar to that done by Dolatkhah and Lundh (2016), where they performed a secondary analysis of audio and video recordings of school lessons in a Swedish comprehensive school to gain insight into classroom reading practices. …”

Aesthetic reading as a problem in mid-20 th centurySwedish educational policy

“…In this concept the experience is arguably more central than any objectively identifiable quality in the literary text. However, as mentioned above, previous research suggests that informational reading, focusing on non-fiction, study skills, and finding facts was favoured in actual classroom practices (Dolatkhah & Lundh 2016;Lundh et al, 2018), meaning that the practice of experiential reading may have been limited.…”

“…There are, for obvious reasons, fewer studies of actual classroom practices. A few examples (Dolatkhah and Lundh 2016;Lundh et al 2018) show that actual reading activities in Swedish primary school classrooms in the late 1960s were mostly focussed on informational factfinding reading rather than experiential, imaginative reading.…”