Learning Tech 8 (English Introduction)
In this issue of Learning Tech, we present four exciting articles, all written on the basis of presentations at the IARTEM conference in Odense in 2019. Here, you can read about the oral dimension of the Danish subject, the semiotics of quality, the design of a learning material for teaching English and tensions between test data and the choice of learning materials.
Preface
By Stig Toke Gissel and Thomas R.S. Albrechtsen
This issue of Learning Tech is reserved for some of the
exciting presentations delivered at the IARTEM Conference. IARTEM is an international network of learning material researchers who work together to bring learning material research forward and out into the world. The theme of the conference was: Researching Textbooks and Educational Media from multiple perspectives: Analyzing the texts, studying their use, determining their impact. Thus, there is a great convergence between the theme of the conference and the focus of this journal.
Read full preface
Læremiddel.dk and University College Lillebælt hosted the IARTEM conference in 2019, and we have invited some of the most promising Nordic speakers at the conference to publish their research in Learning Tech. In consultation with the Board of IARTEM, it was decided that Learning Tech would focus on Nordic research, while other contributions would be published in IARTEM’s eJournal. In addition, proceedings from the conference can be found at Læremiddel.dk’s homepage.
This special issue offers four interesting articles: Lene Skov Illum and Dorthe Carlsen present analyses in the article “Orality in the Danish subject and its learning materials” of how the often overlooked oral dimension in the Danish subject is made into actual content in two didactic learning materials. In addition, the model “The Oral Triangle” is presented and used as an analytical tool to analyze oral utterances in relation to content, form and purpose, situational and cultural context and the components of the oral text.
Thomas Illum Hansen unfolds his keynote from the IARTEM conference in the article “The Quality of Quality”. The article presents quality’s semiotic, which, among other things, unfolds through reflections on the representational problems of teaching and the need for a multidimensional concept of quality. The idea of quality’s semiotic is exemplified through analyses of two learning materials.
In the article “Design of learning materials for English teaching at the intermediate level”, Benthe Fogh Jensen and Susanne Karen Jacobsen bing us along into the “engine room” in their process of designing a learning material for teaching English at the intermediate level. The article presents the theoretical basis for the design, namely a socio-cultural view of learning and systemic functional linguistics. In addition, an empirical basis for the design is presented in the form of the results of an action research project and a sociological and linguistic analysis of the primary school’s test of the final examination set for free written presentation and a range of student answers.
In the article “Tensions between test data and choice of learning materials. A business theory perspective on reading tutoring in school”, Karina Kiær describes how she has shadowed four reading tutors. The aim was to apply cultural history business theory to understand how the reading tutors navigate in the fields of tension between test data and recommendations about learning materials and the use of learning materials for teachers as well as in the framework for the execution of the tutoring function.
In memory of Rune Hansen, our friend and colleague, who was taken from us all too soon.
Stig Toke Gissel and Thomas R.S. Albrechtsen
