Literacies and Visual Texts : Studies on Teachers and Low Educated Learners in the Basic Swedish Language Programme for Adult Immigrants

This thesis aims to contribute to the growing body of knowledge concerning the adult basic literacy education in the Nordic countries and broaden research on literacy from its traditional focus on verbal texts to include images and visual texts. The thesis comprises a research survey concerning adult literacy and two empirical, exploratory studies focusing on the use of visual texts in the basic Swedish language programme for adult immigrants, Svenskundervisning för invandrare (sfi). The first study presents international and Nordic research on literacy with a focus on current sociocultural, and critical perspectives. Together with the three concepts of mutual respect, meaningfulness and participation, an ‘expansive’ model for adult literacy instruction is also presented. The second study deals with the teachers´ views on appropriate visual materials for second language and literacy teaching. The results show an extensive but diversified usage of visual material but also that literacy teachers pay very close attention to participants´ sociocultural background in their image selection but tend to underestimate their cognitive ability. From a critical perspective the teachers´ statements can be regarded as part of a discursive practice in which they unintentionally contribute to a discourse construction of an identity of deficiency of the learners. The third study examines and compares, how adult second language learners interact with and understand a number of Swedish election posters. The analyses identify processes and variations in the learners´ interaction. The results show that the reconstructions of the visual texts are influenced by the participants´ linguistic, educational and cultural ‘repertoires’, as well as the posters´ graphic, visual and textual design. A certain level of linguistic proficiency as well as formal schooling and knowledge of the current discourse seem to be indispensable for making the intended interpretations