How is a living dialogue about the text created? : – A study of how two teachers organize the teaching of reading

Abstract The aim of the study is to gain an understanding of how two teachers in the lower level of compulsory school, through the way they organize the teaching of reading with a focus on reading aloud, give pupils a possibility to converse about texts in order to develop an understanding of the texts. The study builds on two observations that focus on the possibilities that teachers give the pupils for conversation and the activities that deepen their understanding of the text they have read. Supplementary material consists of interviews with the two teachers. The collected material has been analysed with two analytical tools, sequential reading elements and textual mobility. The theoretical premises for the study are the sociocultural perspective (Säljö, 2012), reception theory (Rosenblatt, 2002; Langer, 2005) and Christie’s (1998) view of the teaching process in terms of macro-genres. The teachers’ comments from the study show that both teachers have the intention to ask reflective questions which give the pupils a chance for conversation at both associative and interactive level, but the observations showed that most of the teachers’ questions gave the pupils a possibility to move within the text through text-based mobility.