Trial Lecture
The trial lecture starts at 10.00.
Title: In many contemporary societies English as an additional language is used as an international language, and as part of a local vernacular. Do you think that English is a monolith with many guises, or do you think that it is a patchwork of loosely connected varieties? Discuss your views with reference to pedagogy and educational policy.
Public defence
The candidate will defend her thesis at 12.00.
Title of the thesis: "Teachers’ pedagogical vision for 21st century English education - Expanding landscapes for English as a multilingua franca of global citizenship in Norwegian schools".
Ordinary opponents
- Professor Constant Leung, King’s College London
- Professor Andreas Lund, University of Oslo
- Professor Margareth Sandvik, OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University
Leader of the public defence
Professor Hanne Skaaden, OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University
Supervisors
- Main supervisor: Professor Lia Plakans, University of Iowa
- Co-supervisor: Professor Dina Tsagari, OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University
Abstract
This doctoral dissertation investigates teachers’ understanding of, and goals for, ELT in basic education in the Norwegian context. This article-based dissertation consists of three articles and an extended abstract. The individual articles address teachers’ understanding of: 1) central curricular intentions (Chvala, 2018), 2) conceptions of English proficiency development, and 3) ideologies of English in society and in school (Chvala, 2020).
The extended abstract synthesizes the findings of the articles to generate a theory of teacher understanding and to consider shifts since Eikrem’s (2009) research on teachers and 21st century Norwegian ELT. The work builds upon the Douglas Fir Group’s model for the teaching and learning of English in a globalized, technological and mobile multilingual world (Douglas Fir Group, 2016).
Pedagogical discourse (Bernstein, 1972, 2000) is a central concept used to theoretically frame the notion of “pedagogical vision” and the interplay of macro-level ideologies, meso-level sociocultural institutions and communities and micro-level social activity represented in the Fir model.
The research takes a qualitative approach, primarily utilizing methods from Grounded Theory (Bryant & Charmaz, 2007). Data consists of in-depth, semi-structured teacher interviews collected across a variety of six lower secondary schools and twelve teachers in a large urban school district.
Each teacher was interviewed three times, resulting in a total of 36 interviews at ca. 50 minutes per interview. Coding and analysis was systematic and moved the data from descriptive to conceptual categories and the relationships between them (Holton, 2007). This resulted in a holistic model presented in the extended abstract and garnered from the findings of the individual articles.
Findings suggest a centrality of knowing about English-speaking countries (primarily the United Kingdom and the United States) but suggest an expanding view to contexts other than these nations. Tensions exist in the role of the English language in school and contra its presence and use in Norwegian society and in a multilingual world.
Findings suggest the need for a more comprehensive metalanguage that includes critical perspectives and can address the pervasive nature of English in Norwegian society and in developing adolescent learners’ identity as speakers of English.
