Public defense: Sissil Lea Heggernes

"Interaction through texts in the English Language classroom. Intercultural learning through picturebook dialogues".

This thesis explores how interaction with texts can foster English language (EL) students’ intercultural learning. 
To address the overarching research question, the first article explores:

1. What types of texts and activities may foster EL students’ intercultural learning and why?
   The second and third articles explores the following subquestion:
2. In what ways can engagement with literature in general, and picturebooks in particular, enhance EL students’ intercultural learning? What are the possibilities and challenges?

The thesis is grounded in an ecological semiotic approach, which builds on and extends sociocultural theory (van Lier, 2004). It consists of three articles, based on a literature review and a case study, and an extended abstract. 

The extended abstract serves to illuminate the cohesion between the articles, in addition to presenting the theoretical framework, contextualizing the study within the relevant research literature, expanding on the methodology and results, offering a critical discussion, contributions and suggestions for further research. The scarcity of empirical research on intercultural learning in the secondary EL classroom has motivated the PhD study.

The first article is a review of 33 empirical articles from ELT located through systematic and manual searches. The review critically analyses what texts are used to foster students’ intercultural learning, what rationales are provided for the selection of texts and what classroom activities are connected to the texts. 

The results show a prevalence of fiction texts, due to their potential for cultural learning through the readers’ engagement with the reading materials. One main finding is that theoretically founded rationales are more frequently provided for fiction than non-fiction texts. The review further reveals that most activities are student-centred and arguably dialogic, but experiential activities are underrepresented. 

The studies that provided theoretically grounded rationales for their selection of texts, drew on reader-response and critical theory, and fronted challenging fictional readings. Studies on multimodal texts provided theoretically grounded rationales linking multimodality and intercultural learning. 

Hence, the review set the scene for a case study in an 8th grade lower secondary English language classroom in Norway, where 22 students in the age range of 13-14 read a challenging picturebook. The results from this study were written up in the second and third article.

The second article explores what possibilities and challenges are inherent in working with a challenging picturebook to foster EL students’ intercultural communicative competence (ICC). What aspects of ICC became manifest, and what seemed to trigger the students’ learning? Data from focus group interviews and student texts, triangulated by my field notes from classroom observations, were analysed through content analysis. 

Knowledge of another culture was the most salient category, in addition to curiosity and different forms of empathy. Small group dialogues around the pictures, stimulated by open questions, helped the students’ language and intercultural learning. The main challenges identified were perceptions of what and how to learn English.

The third article analyses focus group dialogues and classroom talk about a picturebook through the lens of dialogic theory (Vrikki, Wheatley, Howe, Hennessy, & Mercer, 2019; Wegerif, 2008, 2011). I analyse what features of dialogue seem to stimulate intercultural learning and how teachers might facilitate students’ intercultural dialogues. 

Through engaging with the pictures, a dialogic space emerged which allowed the students to display curiosity about another culture and contribute ideas. Their willingness to actively listen, explore conflicting ideas and change their mind led to joint meaning-making and the co-construction of knowledge of their own and other’s cultural perspectives. 

I argue that knowledge about dialogic features and aims can advance our understanding of how students’ intercultural learning is mediated through interaction with text and with other readers. Hence, knowledge of dialogic features can serve as a tool for teachers to foster EL students’ intercultural learning.

In this thesis, I argue that raised awareness of the affordances of different types of texts and the features of educational dialogues can help mediate intercultural learning. The thesis contributes theoretically through exploring the parallels between appreciation of art and intercultural learning in relation to picturebooks. 

Moreover, it contributes empirical knowledge to an understudied area of secondary ELT. Methodologically, the thesis illustrates how EL students’ intercultural learning can be studied through the lens of dialogic theory. It focuses on the role of small group dialogues about a challenging picturebook. 

Central features for intercultural learning are sparking the students’ curiosity, granting agency to contribute and explore ideas in a safe atmosphere. These aspects pave the way for the most important feature: Identification with the dialogue, which involves a willingness to seek the best solution, irrespective of who is right and wrong. (Wegerif, 2011, p. 184). Ultimately, bridging differences involves the willingness to change one’s mind in dialogue with others. 

The thesis provides didactic guidance for teachers in choice of texts and mediation of educational dialogues for intercultural learning.

Challenges are represented by communication of curricular aims, perceptions of what are suitable learning materials and approaches for ELT and the risk of stereotyping. It is an overarching aim to show that “picturebooks are not just for kids”, as remarked by one of the students. Rather, picturebooks have much to offer for the EL classroom in terms of including all students and fostering intercultural learning.