”Varför tycker du man ska ha dödsstraff, då?” Ett sociologisk-didaktiskt verktyg för analys av klassrumsdebatter

• Debates, as the discursive curriculum activities they are, are occasionally arranged in classrooms. Here, the aim is to offer a tool for analyses of such activities. By adopting a sociological-didactical perspective, this article takes Basil Bernstein’s conceptual pair vertical and horizontal discourse as its starting point. The ‘vertical discourse’ is roughly speaking school-oriented whereas the ‘horizontal discourse’ is more often played out in informal contexts. These two central concepts will be specified in particular relation to the classroom debate as curricular content. Two contrasting authentic classroom debates were intentionally selected in order to try out the ana-lytical tool. Both the debates deal with the same topic, i. e. death penalty. The debates, however, also differ from each other; they are put into prac-tice in remarkably different ways and in different contexts, although they are both collected from, in a sociological perspective, supposedly less ad-vantaged areas. I argue that the tool offered is a needed and fruitful way of capturing what happens in classroom debates.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Didaktik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Didactics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

death penalty

debate

didactics

horizontal discourse

vertical discourse

Teacher Education and Education Work

Lärarutbildning och pedagogisk yrkesverksamhet

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)