Current Issues in English Teaching (9788245047189)

Current issues in English teaching

Copyright © 2024 by Vigmostad & Bjørke AS

All Rights Reserved

First Edition 2024 / Printing 1 2024

ISBN: 978-82-450-4718-9

Graphic production: John Grieg, Bergen

Cover design by publisher

Typeset by publisher

Front page photo: © Heather Villagran / unsplash

This book has been peer-reviewed in accordance with Universities Norway’s (UHR) guidelines for scientific publications.

Enquiries about this text can be directed to:

Fagbokforlaget

Kanalveien 51

5068 Bergen

Tel.: 55 38 88 00

email: fagbokforlaget@fagbokforlaget.no

www.fagbokforlaget.no

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Vigmostad & Bjørke AS is Eco-Lighthouse certified, and the books are produced in environmentally certified printing houses.

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Contributing authors

Aud Solbjørg Skulstad Professor, University of Bergen

Anja Synnøve Bakken

Associate Professor, University of South-Eastern Norway

Anette Hagen

Associate Professor, University of South-Eastern Norway

Terje Pedersen teacher, Kleppestø lower secondary school

Kim Nilsen Aarberg

Advisor for Askøy municipal education authority

Lenka Garshol

Associate Professor, University of Agder

Line Reichelt Føreland

Assistant Professor, University of Agder/PhD Candidate, University of Lapland

Alison Jones Rød teacher, Fusa upper secondary school

Raees Calafato

Associate Professor, University of South-Eastern Norway

Samia Touileb researcher, University of Bergen

Irina Engeness Professor, Østfold University College

Meerita Kunna Segaran researcher, Østfold University College

Ingeborg Krange Professor, Østfold University College

Sigrid Ørevik

Associate Professor, University of Bergen

Nanna Paaske

Associate Professor, Oslo Metropolitan University

Siri Mohammad-Roe Assistant Professor, Oslo Metropolitan University

Hege Emma Rimmereide Professor, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

Alicia Våga Wennberg teacher, Gimle lower secondary school

Introduction

Aud Solbjørg Skulstad

The title of the volume: “current issues” and “English teaching” The present edited volume is entitled Current issues in English teaching. Choosing the term “current issues” as part of the title is meant to signal the book’s concern with issues which are likely to be highly relevant to English teachers’ experiences in the twenty-first century classroom. Let us take assessment as an example. For the last few decades, scholars and teachers alike have been discussing central aspects of teacher-based assessment, such as the differences between summative and formative assessment – or assessment of learning as opposed to assessment for learning (Davison & Leung, 2009) and notions of effective feedback: feed up, feed back and feed forward (Hattie & Timperley, 2007, p. 101). These are still central aspects of assessment within English teaching and are treated in standard volumes, such as Fenner and Skulstad (2020). The present book, on the other hand, discusses assessment in relation to current issues, such as: How can artificial intelligence (AI) technology assist in giving feedback to learner texts? (See Chapter 8.) How can the competence aim “write different types of formal and informal texts, including multimedia texts with structure and coherence that describe, discuss, reason and reflect adapted to the purpose, receiver and situation” (Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2019, p. 12) be assessed? Or more specifically: How can multimodal learner texts produced as part of English teaching be assessed? (See Chapter 9.) (See below for a definition of the term multimodal.) Another challenging area discussed in the present volume is assessment related to the interdisciplinary topic of democracy and citizenship. Can and should intercultural competence and students’ democratic values be assessed? (See Chapter 10.)

The context of “English teaching” in this volume is primarily the teaching and learning of English in lower and upper secondary school in Norway. Scholars seem to agree that the teaching of English in the Norwegian school context no longer fits the label of “foreign language” teaching, although this term was originally used to denote a context in which the language in question was not used as an official language within the specific geographical boundaries where it was taught. In the

twenty-first century, people who live in Norway are exposed to English on a daily basis outside school through films, social media, gaming networks and so forth, and some employees use English in their workplaces, such as in the oil industry and on building sites. For most young people in Norway in particular, English does not really fit the label of second or foreign language (Rindal, 2019). So, what do we call it? In the present volume, the term English as an additional language (EAL) is used as an alternative to second or foreign language. EAL captures the fact that for many learners, particularly immigrants, English is not their second language (L2): they may already use L1 and L2 in their homes, and English will then be their L3 or a later language.

What does it mean to be a literate person in the twenty-first century?

A well-established term in educational discourse in English is literacy. Literacy has commonly referred to the ability to read and write in a decontextualised way (Mills et al., 2023), but more recently it has been defined as a social practice (Janks, 2010, p. 2). What does it mean to be a literate person in the twenty-first century? Mills et al. (2023) emphasise that literacy

has expanded to include the literacies required for specific school disciplines, trades and professions, the ability to understand and produce digital and nondigital texts that combine a range of modes of expression, and the “soft skills” needed in contemporary workplaces, such as collaboration, communication, creativity, and problem solving. (p. xiii)

In other words, this is a wide definition of literacy, including skills which are often referred to as twenty-first century skills. According to Voogt and Roblin (2012), such skills may be described as being transversal as they are not linked to specific subjects or fields but are interdisciplinary. Twenty-first century skills are also multidimensional because they include knowledge, skills/competences and attitudes. These are higher order skills and behaviours in the sense that they comprise the ability to cope with unpredictable situations – and even jobs which do not yet exist (Voogt & Roblin, 2012).

Implicit in Mills et al.’s (2023) definition is also the term multiliteracies, which was coined by the New London Group in 1996 (Cazden et al., 1996). This term refers to multiple modes which “differ according to culture and context, and have specific cognitive, cultural, and social effects” (p. 64). A mode is “a socially

shaped and culturally given semiotic resource for meaning making” (Kress, 2010, p. 79). Examples include writing, still and moving images, layout, colour, music, gesture, speech and 3D objects (Skulstad, 2023, p. 139). An important feature of the twenty-first century is that “meaning makers don’t simply use what they have been given; they are fully makers and remakers of signs and transformers of meaning” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 175). Consequently, seeing students as active designers of meaning should be at the centre of literacy/multiliteracies teaching (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009).

Artifacts of technology-rich EAL classrooms

By 2021, every student in upper secondary school and 98% of the students in lower secondary school had access to their own digital unit in Norwegian schools (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2022). Considering the history of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), Bax (2003) identifies three approaches. The first one, Restricted CALL, where typical tasks were closed language drills of a behaviourist type, was replaced by Open CALL, which introduced games and simulations, and the technology made it possible to use computers for genuine communication. In these two first stages, there were typically separate CALL sessions which were not integrated into the syllabus. He labels the third stage Integrated CALL, reflecting the fact that technology is seamlessly integrated into the everyday practice of language learning (Bax, 2011). Whereas the teachers’ attitudes in the first two stages were typically that of fear, in the third stage CALL is a normal part of teaching in the same way that the use of pens and books are normalised parts of language education. Normalisation is seen as “a possible ‘end point’ for a technological innovation” (Bax, 2011, p. 8).

Technology-rich classrooms obviously provide opportunities not only for developing students’ digital skills, but also for approaching the teaching and learning of English in new ways. At the same time, policy documents, such as the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research’s (2020) action plan for digitalisation in primary and secondary education and training, have an instrumental focus and present digital resources as tools (Lund, 2021). There may be reason to warn against considering technologies as mere tools. Instead, technologies should be seen as artifacts, and the important mediation between agents, artifacts and practices should be foregrounded. What characterises artifacts in this respect?

“Artifacts can be material but also discursive (scientific concepts), symbolic (alphabets), or even social (specialized practices)” (Lund & Aagaard, 2020, p. 59). Already here we see how the notion of “tool” falls short. In addition, artifacts

have the potential to transform learning cultures “not by their inherent qualities or features but as a result of the interplay between artifacts and humans’ capacity for transformative agency” (Lund & Aagaard, 2020, p. 59). In other words, the introduction of digital resources into specific learning environments does not produce specific results due to their technical or material qualities. These resources do not possess a set of constraints and potentials, but these affordances are the result of the interplay and interaction between agents (e.g. EAL students) and artifacts (Lund & Aagaard, 2020).

Students of English will use a variety of learning resources (digital and analogue) (see Gilje, 2023), and they may also have access to a number of software applications, such as narrative apps designed for children or teenagers. An important characteristic of narrative apps is their affordances in relation to interactivity –particularly when a touch screen is used. The interactivity manifests itself by the user’s ability to strategically manipulate objects and characters, to give life to characters and animals in a narrative story, to trigger sound effects, and so forth (Schwebs, 2014).

The present age, using and developing AI, is sometimes labelled the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Philbeck & Davis, 2019). The term industrial revolution denotes the fact that these are “revolutions in the systems that surround us, step changes in the complex interplay between humans and technology, and transformations that result in new ways of perceiving, acting, and being” (Philbeck & Davis, 2019, p. 17). An important phase of the network revolution was the introduction of the “killer applications” (Friedman, 2005, p. 56) e-mail and internet browsing in the 1990s. The term artificial intelligence was coined as early as 1956 (Wang, 2023). But in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, new technologies are taken for granted. “These technologies, robotics, advanced materials, genetic modifications, the Internet of Things, drones, neurotechnologies, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, and machine vision, are becoming more integrated into our physical, social, and political spaces, altering behaviors, relationships, and meaning” (Philbeck & Davis, 2019, pp. 18–19).

The revolution of our time brings new opportunities and challenges to education, including ethical issues and bias as discussed in the chapter on generative AI models in the present volume. In Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s travels, one of the professors in the academy of Lagado describes an engine which can be used even by “the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge” (Swift, 2006, pp. 296–297) to “write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study” (p. 297). Is this

where we have arrived today through the use of generative AI models? The “most ignorant person”, however, may have problems assessing the information value, bias and cultural connotation of texts generated by means of AI. Importantly, computers lack self-awareness, and this fact limits computer intelligence (Wang, 2023). However, unlike computers also the “most ignorant person” will possess self-conscious emotions, such as self-respect, sense of dignity, curiosity, pride, faith, empathy, and so forth (Tracy & Robins, 2004).

According to Vygotsky, artifacts do not simply facilitate students’ mental processes. More importantly, they “fundamentally transform and shape them” (Cole & Wertsch, 1996, p. 252). Lund et al. (2019) point to the fact that digital resources take on cognitive functions, such as calculating, ordering, searching, assembling, systematising and making decisions. The effect is that cognition becomes distributed (p. 47). With the use of generative AI models, an even wider spectrum of cognitive functions may become distributed, involving processes of content selection, text design, rhetorical organisation and creativity required for image production. Several of the chapters in the present volume describe learning processes which involve the use of artifacts, such as textbooks, virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) and personal computers. The latter type of artifact in particular allows for a plethora of uses, depending on whether one simply uses computers as search engines or for typing purposes, or whether they enable the students to engage in video games and narrative apps or to utilise generative AI models. Importantly, artifacts and modern technologies may shape and transform students’ cognition (Lund et al., 2019).

The semiotic flow of the twenty-first century

It has been claimed that modernity has “replaced the search for Truth with an examination of language and meaning” (Chang, 1987, p. 311). What is meaning?

It can “manifest itself in a variety of forms: text, image, space, object, body, sound, and speech – the means by which meaning is made” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2020, p. 11). Drawing on the works of Foucault, Chang (1987) says that “we should actively enter the semiotic flow of current social forces, trace its distinctive pattern of dissemination, and map its topological configuration as a historically concrete and effective regime of semiosis” (p. 311). He makes the point that we cannot stand above or outside the “semiotic flow of current social forces”, and I may add that his point has become more urgent post-1987 – in a society where it is more difficult than ever before to identify misinformation and falsehood and where there is growing political polarisation. This “semiotic flow” has obviously

become more complex with the introduction of a series of new Web technologies and more advanced AI developments. Computers are sometimes called “semiotic machines”. The term semiotic machine “means that a sequence of interpretations is generated in each and every computation” (Nadin, 2007, p. 68).

Open AI models are notably multimodal models, including models which are capable of generating images and art (e.g. DALL-E1). This fact has made transduction (Bezemer & Kress, 2008) from written text to image more immediate than if students were making drawings or artwork themselves, and it gives students easy access to relevant visual texts which they may analyse and discuss in comparison to written texts. An example of the use of DALL-E in education would be to ask the students to perform a close reading of the author’s description of the protagonist or some other character in a literary text or a poem and then feed this description into DALL-E (Valand, 2023). The resultant image could be used as part of a multimodal learner text or form the basis of a group discussion comparing the written and visual texts, taking into account the group members’ internal images of the protagonist. Students have for quite some time acted as media producers, and the introduction of AI technologies in schools which generate images from text introduces new questions: Will students be less willing to create their own drawings made by hand? If so, how will this affect students’ development of creativity? A more overarching question is: How will the use of generative AI in education affect human learning and cognition?

Several chapters in the present volume deal with the aim of developing English students’ critical literacy. In arguing for the importance of critical literacy in education, Janks (2012) makes the point that on the one hand, Web 2.0 technologies have made communication situations more democratic because more people have access to knowledge production. On the other hand, these same technologies have made it easier to disseminate fake news stories, for instance, and may be used as a way of “questioning and destabilising power” (Janks, 2012, p. 150). Thus, people frequently find the need to ask questions, such as “What is ‘truth’?” and “How can we distinguish ‘truth’ from fake news and other forms of misrepresentation?” The development of students’ critical literacy is grounded in an examination of power relations, ideologies, economic and political systems, institutions and cultural contexts.

In the twenty-first century, EAL teachers face a number of obligations, challenges and potentials related to the task of developing students’ intercultural 1 https://www.dall-efree.com/

communicative competence, including their criticality/critical cultural awareness and teaching for citizenship and human rights (Porto et al., 2018). Similarly, EAL teachers are faced with the challenges of helping students to unpack information and disinformation when it comes to health and life skills and environmental issues, and to develop students’ critical awareness, which may enable them to handle the semiotic flow of the twenty-first century.

What do the chapters in this volume focus on?

Current issues in English teaching contains 11 chapters which are authored or coauthored by twelve teacher educators, two researchers and four English teachers. Each chapter explores one or more current issues of English language pedagogies (English didactics). All the chapters contain practical examples or empirical data, and all except one of the chapters are multimodal ensembles, combining written text and images, such as photographs, visual representations of multimodal learner texts or models.

Chapter 1 introduces the concept of critical literacy in this volume – an issue which is relevant in several chapters of this book. A fundamental realisation behind the need for focusing on critical literacy in school contexts is the fact that texts are never neutral. They are partial in two senses of the word: they offer only part of the picture or story, and they reflect the text creator’s point of view (Janks, 2014, p. 2). There are obviously vast numbers of different authentic types of text to choose from when selecting objects of study for English classrooms focusing on critical literacy. In Chapter 1, textbook texts have been chosen as objects of study because this is an authoritative genre readily available for classroom use. These are also multimodal texts, which allow the author to comment on both verbal and visual strategies applied in the textbooks.

The filmic narrative is a popular type of text to explore in English lessons as well as in extramural activities. Chapter 2 discusses the potential for cultivating multimodal and critical literacy in EAL teaching by using fictional films. The film Barbie (Gerwig, 2023) is used to showcase how features of the filmic narrative can be exploited for critical literacy enactment in the EAL classroom.

Continuing the discussion of narratives, Chapter 3 examines the use of narrative apps in EAL teaching, emphasising potentials of aesthetic encounters and interactive and immersive experiences. The chapter discusses how such apps may be used to develop EAL students’ digital literacy skills, but also as a way of approaching literature. Narrative apps may enable students to engage in new literary

experiences by imagic (e.g. virtual reality 3D, 2D illustrations, moving images), bodily (touch, manoeuvre) and verbal (oral, print) interactivity (Mills et al., 2023).

Chapter 4 explores the rationale for venturing into virtual reality (VR) experiences in the EAL classroom, exemplified by a school project using VR HMDs. VR is not a new type of technology; it appeared in 1966 in the form of a flight simulator to be used by the US Air Force (Kavanagh et al., 2017). Still, VR technology is not widely used in schools today. Chapter 4 argues that introducing VR experiences in EAL classrooms has the potential to make learning more engaging, immersive and personalised.

The next chapter points to the fact that there is still a certain dose of scepticism among teachers and school administrators when it comes to the use of digital gameplay as a legitimate tool in schools. Consequently, Chapter 5 aims to exemplify how digital games can be purposefully employed in EAL teaching. The authors make the important point that no games are inherently good or bad, and that successful game-based learning depends on how the game is utilised and contextualised in the EAL classroom.

Games also play a part in Chapter 6, which discusses extramural English. Research indicates that Scandinavian learners’ exposure to English outside the classroom may amount to several hours daily. Among the issues examined in this chapter are the relationship between extramural English and learning outcomes, potentials for integrating extramural English into the English curriculum, and practical suggestions for utilising extramural English as a valuable learning resource.

The intense growth of AI in the twenty-first century has several potential effects on society and education, one of them being the notable claim that “artificial intelligence and chatbots are anticipated to transform communication” (Mills et al., 2023, p. 2). Chapter 7 aims to provide insight into what large language models (LLMs) are and examines some of their potentials and challenges when used in EAL teaching.

Different types of automated feedback systems have been developed for use in education, and systems which are capable of giving useful and relevant written feedback to open-ended writing tasks require sophisticated technologies (Dai et al., 2023). Based on insights gained from assessment for learning theories (formative feedback), Chapter 8 discusses a project which used AI technology for essay feedback in three lower secondary school classes in Norway. A central part of the exploration was to find out how the EAL students engaged with the feedback offered by AI. Another aim was to find out how this engagement with feedback from AI (target class) and from peers (comparison class) contributed to the students’ conceptual understanding.

Multimodality rests “on the assumption that representation and communication always draw on a multiplicity of modes, all of which have the potential to contribute equally to meaning” (Jewitt, 2017, p. 15). Multimodal text creation is an activity mentioned in the English subject curriculum of 2020. Assessment of multimodal learner texts, however, is not discussed in this curriculum document, and there is a need for more research within this area. Chapter 9 discusses this issue from both a theoretical and a practical point of view. As for the latter, the chapter demonstrates how EAL teachers may approach assessment of students’ multimodal texts.

Assessment is also the topic of Chapter 10. Democracy and citizenship is one of the interdisciplinary topics introduced in the English subject curriculum of 2020 (Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2019), and EAL teaching should foster students’ democratic values and intercultural competence. An even more complex issue, however, is how democratic values and intercultural competence may be assessed. Chapter 10 points to several problematic areas of assessment and some practical solutions.

According to the Core Curriculum of 2017, “the pupils shall develop competence which enables them to make responsible choices and to act ethically and with environmental awareness” (p. 16). The final chapter discusses how students working in small learner-centred groups negotiate meaning in literary texts, highlighting ecological issues where the aim is to develop environmental awareness and understanding through dialogues about literary texts.

The English subject curriculum of 2020 (Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2019) forms a highly relevant part of each individual chapter of the present book. The Knowledge Promotion of 2020 (LK20) is a learner-centred curriculum in the sense that it foregrounds students’ learning (competence aims), whereas curricula before the 1990s focused on teaching content and what the teachers were required to do (Andreassen & Tiller, 2021).

The twenty-first century is characterised by rapid changes in new technologies, climate, genres, communication processes, and teaching and learning practices. Bearing in mind all these rapid changes and the challenges ahead, and being faced with EAL classrooms characterised by cultural and linguistic diversity, I hope that the chapters in this volume will provide tools and perspectives which will be relevant and useful for student teachers, teachers and teacher educators working in changing social and pedagogical environments in the years to come.

References

Andreassen, S.-E., & Tiller, T. (2021). Rom for magisk læring? En analyse av læreplanen LK20. Universitetsforlaget.

Bax, S. (2003). CALL: Past, present and future. System, 31(1), 13–28. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.system.2019.01.007

Bax, S. (2011). Normalisation revisited: The effective use of technology in language education. International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching, 1(2), 1–15. DOI: 10.4018/ijcallt.2011040101

Bezemer, J., & Kress, G. (2008). Writing in multimodal texts: A social semiotic account of designs for learning. Written Communication, 25(2), 166–195.

Cazden, C., Cope, B., Fairclough, N., Gee, J., Kalantzis, M., Kress, G., Luke, A., Luke, C., Michaels, S., & Nakata, M. (The New London Group). (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92.

Chang, B.G. (1987). Word and/or sign: Toward a semiotic phenomenology of the modern life-world. Human Studies, 10, 311–331.

Cole, M., & Wertsch, J.W. (1996). Beyond the individual-social antinomy in discussions of Piaget and Vygotsky. Human Development, 39, 250–256.

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2009). “Multiliteracies”: New literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4 (3), 164–195. DOI: 10.1080/15544800903076044

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2020). Making sense: Reference, agency, and structure in a grammar of multimodal meaning. Cambridge University Press.

Dai, W., Lin, J., Jin, H., Li, T., Tsai, Y.-S., Gaševic, D., & Chen, G. (2023). Can large language models provide feedback to students? A case study on ChatGPT. 2023 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT). DOI 10.1109/ICALT58122.2023.00100

Davison, C., & Leung, C. (2009). Current issues in English language teacher-based assessment. TESOL Quarterly, 43(3), 393–415.

Fenner, A.-B., & Skulstad, A.S. (Eds.). (2020). Teaching English in the 21st century: Central issues in English didactics (2nd ed.). Fagbokforlaget.

Friedman, T.L. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Gerwig, G. (Director). (2023). Barbie [Film]. Mattel & Warner Bros. Pictures.

Gilje, Ø. (2023). Læremidler og arbeidsformer i den digitale skolen (2nd ed.). Fagbokforlaget.

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. DOI: 10.3102/003465430298487

Janks, H. (2010). Literacy and power. Routledge.

Janks, H. (2012). The importance of critical literacy. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 11(1), 150–163.

Janks, H. (2014). Introduction. In H. Janks with K. Dixon, A. Ferreira, S. Granville & D. Newfield. Doing critical literacy: Texts and activities for students and teachers (pp. 1–10). Routledge.

Jewitt, C. (2017). An introduction to multimodality. In C. Jewitt (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of multimodal analysis (2nd ed., pp. 15–30). Routledge.

Kavanagh, S., Luxton-Reilly, A., Wuensche, B., & Plimmer, B. (2017). A systematic review of virtual reality in education. Themes in Science & Technology Education, 10(2), 85–119.

Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Routledge.

Lund, A. (2021). The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research’s action plan for digitalization in primary and secondary education and training: Appraisal and critique. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 16(1), 34–42. DOI: https://doi. org/10.18261/issn.1891-943x-2021-01-04

Lund, A., & Aagaard, T. (2020). Digitalization of teacher education: Are we prepared for epistemic change? Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education, 4(3), 56–71. https://doi.org/10.7577/njcie.3751

Lund, A., Furberg, A., & Gudmundsdottir, G.B. (2019). Expanding and embedding digital literacies: Transformative agency in education. Media and Communication, 7(2), 47–58.

Mills, K.A., Unsworth, L., & Scholes, L. (2023). Literacy for digital futures: Mind, body, text. Routledge.

Nadin, M. (2007). Semiotic machine. The Public Journal of Semiotics, 1(1), 57–75. DOI: https://doi.org/10.37693/pjos.2007.1.8815

Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training. (2022, December 14). Sluttrapport: Digitalisering gir bedre muligheter for læring. https:// www.udir.no/tall-og-forskning/finn-forskning/rapporter/digitalisering-igrunnopplaringen-bedre-muligheter-for-laring/

Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. (2017). Core curriculum: Values and principles for primary and secondary education. Established as a Regulation by the Ministry of Education and Research. Læreplanverket for Kunnskapsløftet 2020. https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dokumenter/verdier-og-prinsipper-forgrunnopplaringen/id2570003/

Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. (2019). Curriculum in English (ENG01-04). Established as a Regulation by the Ministry of Education and Research. Læreplanverket for Kunnskapsløftet 2020. https://www.udir.no/lk20/ eng01-04

Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. (2020). Handlingsplan for digitalisering i grunnopplæringen [Action plan for digitalisation in the primary and secondary education and training]. https://www.regjeringen. no/contentassets/ 44b8b3234a124bb28f0a5a22e2ac197a/handlingsplan-fordigitalisering-i-grunnopplaringen2020-2021.pdf

Philbeck, T., & Davis, N. (2019). The fourth industrial revolution: Shaping a new era. Journal of International Affairs, 72(1), 17–22.

Porto, M., Houghton, S.A., & Byram, M. (2018). Intercultural citizenship in the (foreign) language classroom. Language Teaching Research, 22(5), 484–498. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168817718580

Rindal, U. (2019). PhD revisited: Meaning in English. L2 attitudes, choices and pronunciation in Norway. In U. Rindal, & L.M. Brevik (Eds.), English didactics in Norway: 30 years of doctoral research (pp. 335–355). Universitetsforlaget.

Schwebs, T. (2014). Affordances of an app: A reading of The fantastic flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Nordic Journal of ChildLit Aesthetics, 5. https://doi. org/10.3402/blft.v5.24169

Skulstad, A.S. (2023). Text creation in English teaching. Universitetsforlaget.

Swift, J. (2006). Gulliver’s travels. Open Book Integrated Media.

Tracy, J.L., & Robins, R.W. (2004). Putting the self into self-conscious emotions: A theoretical model. Psychological Inquiry, 15(2), 103–125. DOI: 10.1207/ s15327965pli1502_01

Valand, S.S. (2023). Generativ KI i norskfaget. Norsklæreren, 47(3), 30–35.

Voogt, J., & Roblin, N.P. (2012). A comparative analysis of international frameworks for 21st century competences: Implications for national curriculum policies. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(3), 299–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.20

12.668938

Wang, J. (2023). Self-awareness, a singularity of AI. Philosophy Study, 13(2), 68–77. doi: 10.17265/2159-5313/2023.02.003

Chapter 1

Empowering EAL students in their encounters with texts: Using textbook texts to foster critical literacy

Aud Solbjørg Skulstad

Introduction

At a time when misinformation and disinformation flourish because social media platforms and search engines are programmed to offer false information, it is more urgent than ever to aim to develop students’ critical literacy. Polls show, for instance, that “a majority of people believe in at least one conspiracy theory” (Butter & Knight, 2020, p. 1). In a survey of 3 446 US high school students, one of the findings was that two-thirds of these students were unable to identify the difference between news stories and advertisements (Breakstone et al., 2019). Nygren et al. (2020) investigated how 483 Swedish students aged 16 to 19 judged the trustworthiness of digital news. The study documented a range of problems on the students’ part related to how they justified their assessment of trustworthiness in terms of the source (who?), the content (what?), the design (how?), and the purposes (why?). A survey carried out by the Norwegian Media Authority (2021) found that 68% of the respondents had “come across information that they doubted was true” (Medietilsynet, 2021, p. 7). Among the respondents who reported having identified fake news, only 17% reported having done so on the basis of the language or words used (p. 21), which illustrates the need to focus on the development of critical literacy based on concrete choices of language and vocabulary. In their study of student teachers’ ability to think and read critically, Elvebakk and Blikstad-Balas (2022) concluded that these participants found it challenging to evaluate the credibility of the texts, and that they based their evaluation on rather vague criteria. The participants in Elvebakk and BlikstadBalas’s study were 58 students at grunnskolelærerutdanningen (GLU) 5-10 studying Norwegian, maths or English as their first subject, and the study was based on the reading of multimodal texts on social media. These findings are alarming, not

least because teachers are responsible for developing students’ critical literacy. These examples may serve to illustrate the need for focusing on the development of students’ critical literacy – an issue which is relevant not only in the present chapter but also in several other chapters of this volume.

There are an enormous number of different authentic types of texts to choose from when selecting objects of study for English classrooms focusing on critical literacy. Textbook texts are readily available for classroom use and they are considered to form part of an authoritative genre. This type of text may be used as an object of study both for English students in school and for student teachers. In the present chapter, the development of critical visual literacy is included in the umbrella term critical literacy. Verbal and visual texts (photographs) from two randomly selected English textbooks published after the introduction of the Knowledge Promotion of 2020 (LK20) in Norwegian schools are used to illustrate how these types of text may be used as part of the process of developing students’ critical literacy. One of the textbooks has been designed for the first year of lower secondary school (Year 8) and the other one for the first year of upper secondary school (Vg1). The tasks that accompany these textbook texts are also explored from the point of view of developing students’ critical literacy.

Critical literacy

The term literacy is more well known than the concept of critical literacy. UNESCO (2004) has defined literacy in the following way:

Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society. (p. 13)

As pointed out above, the present chapter draws attention also to visual literacy whereas UNESCO’s definition limits this term to “printed and written materials”. The New London Group, however, claimed that a new term was needed to reflect a broader view of literacy beyond written language and which encompassed diverse and global communities and discourses, and they introduced multiliteracies (Cazden et al., 1996). The term critical literacy seems to be more commonly used across the curriculum and has therefore been chosen in the present chapter, although critical multiliteracies would convey a corresponding idea.

While many scholars point to Freire’s work (1972a, 1972b) when identifying the roots of critical literacy (e.g. Janks, 2010), Porto (2022) states that the history of critical language education can be traced back to the French Revolution, where democracy, freedom and social change which “paved the way for progressive and radical forms of education” (p. 33) were emphasised. Above all, “critical literacy works at the interface of language, literacy and power” (Janks, 2010, p. 22). To Fairclough (2015), the overall aim of what he calls critical language study is social emancipation – a political project of contributing to “the emancipation of those who are dominated and oppressed in our society” (p. 229). He is concerned with the role of language in this respect, or put differently, “how the selection of specific grammatical structures and word choices attempts to manipulate the reader” (Luke, 2012, p. 8). The present chapter focuses not only on grammatical structures and words, but also on other modes, such as arguments made by photographs and how a combination of image and written words, for instance, produces a new code (Unsworth, 2008). In other words, a new type of meaning is produced which would be impossible to convey by means of one semiotic mode in isolation (Skulstad, 2023).

The term critical language awareness originated at Lancaster University in Britain (Clark & Ivanic, 1999; Fairclough, 1992, 1995, 2015). Fairclough (2015) claims that developing students’ critical language awareness should be a central aim in language education, and he is particularly concerned with empowering students to discover the relationship between language use and power. By power relations he is not only concerned with oppression or having “power over”, but also “hidden power” manifested in different types of media where there is inequality of power between media producers and viewers or readers, and a whole range of discourses in society in general. The introduction of Web 2.0 has enabled more groups of people, including students, to act as media producers than before. But this fact has not diminished the need for empowering students to uncover hidden power in discourses. Critical language awareness offers linguistic tools for analysis of texts from a critical point of view, and it fits under the umbrella term of critical literacy (Janks, 2010, p. 15).

The role of critical literacy in policy documents and curricula

The Education Act (1998/2022) states that “the pupils and apprentices shall learn to think critically”. The Core Curriculum (Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2017) uses the term critical thinking several times, and it defines critical and scientific thinking as “applying reason in an inquisitive and systematic

way when working with specific practical challenges, phenomena, expressions and forms of knowledge” (p. 8). The document also specifies that “reflection and critical thinking are part of developing attitudes and ethical judgment” (p. 13). At the same time, it should be clear that critical thinking is not the same as critical literacy. Critical thinking implies the capacity for analytical, evaluative and creative thinking, whereas critical literacy “examines texts in order to identify and challenge social constructs, underlying assumptions and ideologies, and power structures that intentionally or unintentionally perpetuate social inequalities and injustices” (Mulcahy, 2008, p. 16).

The word “critical” appears 15 times in the English subject curriculum of 2020 (Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, 2019). It states, for instance, that students should become able to “critically reflect on and assess different types of texts” (p. 4), and critical thinking is mentioned twice. Critical literacy may also be linked to in-depth learning which involves becoming able to use the new knowledge or insight in situations in everyday or professional life (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2019).

The Companion Volume to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2020) specifies, for instance, that in online conversation and discussion, students who have reached level C1 should be able to “critically reflect on and assess different types of texts” (p. 260), and it states that among the central concepts in the development of students’ intercultural competence is the ability to evaluate neutrally and critically (p. 124).

Although none of the central documents referred to above use the term critical literacy, the aspect of criticality is not ignored. The mention of critically reflecting on different types of text in the subject of English is relatively vague, but concrete enough to be recognised by teachers.

Using texts from textbooks to foster critical literacy Intercultural criticality

Although more and more classrooms seem to use print-based and digital textbooks as only one among several types of learning material (Gilje, 2021), they are still considered authoritative texts, and students expect them to present “true” versions of knowledge. Precisely because textbooks are authoritative texts, they can provide powerful examples of bias and different types of subjective presentations of an issue. In the selected textbook for Year 8 we find the following text extract about India:

Example 1

What is the link between India and Britain?

India was once a part of the British Empire. Around 1700, Britain wanted to own the country as a colony because India had a lot of valuable resources. Goods like cotton, spices and tea were shipped to Britain. Cotton was used to make soft and lovely underwear and other pieces of clothing. Spices, such as curry and ginger, made European food more interesting and tasty, and the tea from India turned Britain into a tea-loving nation. India was called “the Jewel in the Crown”. In 1947 India left the Empire and became an independent country. (Diskin et al., 2020, p. 184)

The expression “Britain wanted to own the country” is particularly interesting from a critical literacy perspective. If you want another country, can you just go and get it? In Example 1, Britain is the active part and occupies the role of an owner of a country, being involved in the shipping of goods, and a clothes manufacturer. A number of positive adjectives are used: “valuable”, “soft”, “lovely”, “interesting”, “tasty”, “tea-loving”, and the text is about Britain’s interests only until the final sentence where India becomes the agent (doer). At a more basic level, Example 1 may serve as an illustration of how to contextualise grammar education. Contextualised grammar teaching means that grammar is seen primarily as a source for making meaning (Skulstad, 2023). This is also a way of focusing on pragmatic meaning referring to contextualised meaning that arises in situations in which language is being used (Ellis, 2005). Pragmatic competence

“is concerned with actual language use in the (co-) construction of text” (Council of Europe, 2020, p. 137).

Text examples such as the one above do not only allow for contextualisation of grammar and the development of students’ pragmatic competence. Porto et al. (2021) emphasise the need to focus on intercultural citizenship in language education, by which they refer to teaching which aims to develop students’ intercultural competence and citizenship responsibilities. One way to work towards this aim is to focus on power relations manifested by means of language and to integrate grammar instruction with the interdisciplinary topic of democracy and citizenship. The introduction of different voices and world views into the teaching is a good starting point for focusing on the power of word choices and syntactic decisions. Example 1 foregrounds the advantages of cotton, tea and spices for

the British people. The textbook below, produced by National Institute of Open Schooling in India, tells a completely different story about the trading of goods:

Example 2

They [the British] defeated their foreign rivals in trade so that there could be no competition. They monopolised the sale of all kinds of raw materials and bought these at low prices whereas the Indian weavers had to buy them at exorbitant prices. Heavy duties were imposed on Indian goods entering Britain so as to protect their own industry. (National Institute of Open Schooling, p.105)

Janks (2010) draws attention to the fact that reading a word “cannot be separated from reading the world” (p. 13). What words signify about the world and world views may become apparent by drawing attention to contrasts in the choice of vocabulary, such as the words with positive connotations in Example 1 (“soft”, “lovely”, “interesting”, “tasty”) as opposed to the words with negative connotations in Example 2 (“defeated”, “monopolised”, “exorbitant”, “heavy”, “imposed on”). Examining language use in text extracts which represent different voices may enable students to rediscover the fact that “language cannot be treated as neutral, because it is caught up in political, social, racial, economic, religious, and cultural formations” (Rogers et al., 2005, p. 369).

For learners in upper secondary school or student teachers, it may be relevant to add a third text extract about Britain’s colonialisation for comparison. Example 3 is an extract from an English textbook for Vg1, vocationally oriented studies:

Example 3

Multicultural UK

Going out in the world

The British Empire was at its peak in 1922. Britain ruled over one-fourth of the world’s population, and “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. This was because England had colonised a vast majority of the world. Their navy was second to none, and they ruled the world through sheer force, spreading their political, legal, linguistic and cultural values. Now around 100 years later it might be difficult to understand how this was actually possible, and the British colonisation of the world has been much debated. (Aanensen & Holck, 2020, p. 108)

Again, Britain is the doer (“Britain ruled”, “England had colonised”, “they ruled the world”). Individual countries are not mentioned as “done-tos” (Janks, 2014a), and the effect is that it is difficult to feel strongly about this from an ideological point of view when an unspecific expression is used: “a vast majority of the world”. The very last part of Example 3 brings in a “voice” saying that “the British colonisation … has been much debated” to balance this section somewhat, and we have already learnt that Britain ruled by “sheer force”. But in the same sentence which mentions “force”, British “values” – a positive word – is used.

At the top of the page in this double-page spread about multiculturalism in the UK there is a photograph of a street party to celebrate the wedding of Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton in 2011 (Figure 1). Just before this event, the Daily Mail reported that 5 500 streets would arrange street parties to celebrate the Royal Wedding, and 800 of these street parties would take place in London (Daily Mail, 2011, April 23). What ideologies of being British are communicated in this photograph? The people depicted are of different ages, from a baby to grandparents, but the majority are elderly people. The photographer is Tony Kyriacou, and the new context, becoming part of a textbook chapter on UK’s multiculturalism and the Empire, changes the meaning of the original photograph (Janks, 2012). The people depicted are all dark-skinned, and the inclusion of this photograph suggests that these people may be descendants of immigrants from the former British colonies. One of the women is wearing her national costume – a fact which adds to the impression of her origin.

Taking a social semiotic approach to multimodal analysis, categories of Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2021) framework will be used to analyse this visual (see also Chapter 9). Here, we will concentrate on circumstances (setting), salience in terms of place in the composition, camera angle, gaze and participants depicted. The circumstances are an urban street decorated with banners and balloons. In terms of salience, the British flag is in the foreground of the picture. A table is put on the pavement, and locals are ready to share food and drink which are laid on the table, celebrating the royal wedding. The Union flag has been taped at the front of the table, and there is a sign which says “Afternoon tea from No. 88” – a literal sign of hospitality. Chairs have been moved onto the pavement; eleven people in the photograph are seated on these chairs, or are standing behind the chairs, and a baby is sitting in her pram. The visual composition is almost like a family photograph which may signify that Britons are a family of different types of people.

As for camera angle, all the people in the photograph are depicted at eye-level, from the front, except the baby who is shown more from the side. The relation created between the image producer/viewer and the people depicted is symbolic equality (Jewitt & Oyama, 2011). Being depicted frontally enables “a maximum sense of involvement with them as part of our own world” (Painter et al., 2013, p. 17). The people in the photograph gaze out at the viewer. The visual gaze has two functions: it creates a visual “you” and the photograph demands something from the viewer, such as an imaginary relation or a relation of social affinity (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2021, p. 117). The gaze of the individuals depicted signals the kind of friendliness we associate with a friendly neighbourhood. The people in the photograph are placed side by side, thus suggesting solidarity (Painter et al., 2013). The choice of camera angle adds to the argument that Britons are ethnically diverse but share the same patriotic values.

It is important to consider also what is not in the photograph. The fact that no fair-skinned people are included in the photograph suggests that there may be some kind of segregation in this neighbourhood. One reason why it is mainly

Figure 1

A Street Party Celebrating the Royal Wedding in 2011

(Aanensen & Holck, 2020, p. 109). Photo by Tony Kyriacou/REX/Shutterstock editorial/NTB

elderly people who are depicted could be that the younger generation in this street have gone to work despite this being a bank holiday. One could also imagine that they have gone to party somewhere else, or the reason could be that the number of royalists among young people has diminished. In 2021, only 31% of 18–24 year olds wanted a continuation of the British monarchy, but support of the monarchy was higher before 2019 (Nolsoe, 2021, May 21).

As Skulstad (2020) puts it, “we are more prepared to accept visual arguments, because we are more used to the fact that verbal arguments lend themselves to verbal approval or disapproval. We are not used to arguing verbally against visual arguments in the same way” (pp. 270–271). The result is that “visual strategies that have a persuasive function may be more effective than writing strategies” (Skulstad, 2023, p. 99). A consequence of this is that teachers need to provide students with analytical tools that will enable them to engage critically with visuals, and one relevant framework is critical visual literacy (Brown, 2022).

The new context of the photograph (Figure 1), becoming a visual text in a textbook chapter on the Empire, changes the meaning from a scene documenting one of the street parties in connection with the royal wedding to expressing visually the fact that many descendants of people from former colonies are not concerned with Britain’s imperial past. On the contrary, they can be just as patriotic as the rest of the British people. The viewer will accept this argument more easily when it is presented visually and not verbally (Skulstad, 2023). The reason is that people are generally more used to arguing against verbal claims as opposed to visual ones. In reality, being British is not always that straightforward for descendants of people from the British Empire, and Example 4, which is an extract from a letter to the editor, may serve to illustrate this:

Example 4

How do the descendants of those impacted by the British empire, like me, who now live in Britain but whose forebears were the subject of colonial rule and slavery, deal with the position we find ourselves in? When I talk about being British – particularly in the post-Brexit era, a debate which has been defined by the idea of “us” and “them” – in that context, am I part of “we” or “them”?

Am I reconciled to benefiting from Britain’s imperial past or should I distance myself from it? Does wanting to contribute to British society and reap the rewards of doing so on equal footing make us “colonial flunkeys”? (Janmohamed, 2019, January 17)

Current issues in English teaching explores a wide array of practical and theoretical approaches to teaching and assessing English in the twenty-first century. Several of the chapters deal with aspects of technology-rich English classrooms, such as the use of VR head-mounted displays and computer technology allowing educational use of fictional films, narrative apps, digital games and AI models. The contributors also engage with approaches to extramural activities, interdisciplinary topics and multimodal texts. English students’ critical literacies is a key theme in the book.

The book is edited by Aud Solbjørg Skulstad and the contributors are twelve teacher educators, two researchers and four English teachers. Current issues in English teaching is essential reading for student teachers, teachers and teacher educators.

Aud Solbjørg Skulstad is Professor of English didactics at the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen where she has been engaged in teacher education since 1996. She teaches and supervises student teachers of English and doctoral students. Skulstad’s main research focuses on current issues in technology-rich language classrooms, text creation, multimodality and genre analysis. Current research interests revolve around fostering aspects of criticality, such as the development of students’ critical thinking in their engagement with texts and multimodal genres in the posttruth era. Her publications include the book Text creation in English teaching (2023). She is co-editor of Teaching English in the 21st century (2020).

ISBN 978-82-450-4718-9