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Exploring how the information flow of social studies textbook spreads is negotiated in teacher-led interaction, the concern of this study is the conscious and critical use of teaching material in diverse student groups. The study involved a teacher and her Grade 6 students in a school with many migrant language learners. The data was gathered by observations, field notes, voice recordings, and the collection of teaching materials. Using social semiotic theory of visual design, the analysis of the textbook used in instruction shows that the layout perpetuated a Western-centric view of a divided world, along with an individualistic and anthropocentric view of environmental sustainability. The oral interaction, highlighting different text elements, largely reinforced the meaning perspectives promoted in the textbook. However, on occasion, the students were positioned to take a more analytical stance. Implications for using knowledge about information flow in textbooks to promote critical literacy practices in teaching are discussed.

This contribution explores how subject positions and perspectives are negotiated in the discursive practices of teaching social studies. The study involved a teacher and a group of second-language learners in Grade 6, the data being gathered by observations, voice recordings, and collection of teaching materials throughout seven weeks. The analysis, drawing upon discourse theory and sociological theories of education, is conducted from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis. The result, highlighting a curriculum area about living conditions, shows how Western-centric beliefs about a divided world were perpetuated both during introductory activities and in the searching for information about different countries. This mainstream meaning perspective was also sustained when the teacher modelled ways of using language for expressing content knowledge. Throughout, the migrant language learners were positioned as privileged Swedish citizens. Implications for shaping discursive practices of teaching in ways which builds on students’ diverse knowledges and experiences are discussed.

Exploring spoken interaction in the teaching of texts and content knowledge to linguistically diverse Grade 6 students, this article responds to the need of a more nuanced understanding of how different patterns of interaction function in knowledge-building classroom practices. The study is based on observations and transcriptions of recorded classroom interaction in different school subjects. The analysis is based on theoretical frameworks of communicative approaches, knowledge domains and discursive mobility. The result shows how patterns of classroom interaction are connected to important functions, such as building up prior knowledge, reminding students of key disciplinary concepts, reinforcing meanings in disciplinary texts, problematizing different aspects of how subject content is represented and enabling the diverse students to connect the subject content to personal experiences and process it with innovative use of the target language. The result also shows that movements towards a disciplinary discourse can be promoted by grounding the interaction in written texts and hindered by less functional use of everyday language.

This article aims to contribute knowledge of how literacy practices are actively shaped in the teaching of history. One teacher and her two groups of Grade 6 students were followed during a content area spanning 12 weeks that focused on the Vasa era in Swedish history. The collected material consists of field notes, transcripts of peer group and whole-class interaction, samples of students’ writing, and documented teaching material. Based on theoretical frameworks of literacy and classroom interaction, the analysis of the findings shows how the teacher, using resources such as texts, images, and one epi-sode of a documentary series, facilitated the students’ initial immersion in the historical period and supported their developed understanding. The teacher is shown to employ a dialogic communicative approach while also introducing more abstract and content-relevant perspectives. Although the teacher positioned the students to consider representations of key historical figures, opportunities to critically analyze texts as historical sources were limited. The implications for shaping literacy practices in ways which promote Grade 6 students’ development of disciplinary literacy in history are discussed.

In this article, I highlight how two teachers seek to scaffold second language learners’ use of language and engagement with texts in Grade 1 and 6. The aim is to explore the communication of metaknowledge in classroom discourse, more specifically, the communication of knowledge about language and metacogni-tive reading strategies. Two teachers participated in the study, and data were gathered through observa-tions, voice recordings, and the collection of teaching materials. Bernstein’s sociology of education is operationalized to reveal different aspects of framing during teaching activities in second language teaching and geography. Drawing upon systemic-functional linguistics, I show how metaknowledge was fore-grounded by the teacher in ways that sometimes de-emphasized the subject-related texts and concepts expected to be at the center of the teaching. An important empirical finding is that the foregrounding of metaknowledge such as features of the language and cognitive reading strategies in teaching can result in a pseudo-visible modality of pedagogy that provides insufficient scaffolding for dealing with subject-related texts and participating substantially in classroom discourse. Implications for teaching are discussed.

A crucial issue for literacy research is how teaching practices are shaped to promote diverse learners’ engagement with content knowledge and use of disciplinary language. In this article, based on a classroom study in Sweden, I explore the teaching of two historical events where the participant Grade 6 teacher created opportunities for writing and peer interaction in the content area. Using discourse analysis informed by systemic-functional linguistics, the study contributes to existing research by highlighting the role of teachers’ text choices in the shaping of disciplinary literacy practices in the teaching of history. The texts chosen and rejected by the participant teacher are analyzed and put in relation to transcripts of peer interaction and samples of students’ writing. The results show that the texts chosen – unlike those rejected – largely relied on everyday linguistic resources. As the students’ peer interaction and writing closely mirrored the texts presented to them, their opportunities to use the resources of abstract language commonly associated with school history seemed restricted. Implications for teaching are discussed.