Wrestling with globalisation and international justice in the classroom. Discursive challenges for students and teachers when bringing in arguments from the world wide web

• A common contemporary idea is that the Internet and digital sources of information can provide material previously unavailable in educational settings, making possible new kinds of relations between events and issues in the outside world and classroom discourse and activity. This kind of material, however, includes discourses with premises and types of argument that potentially differ significantly from those found in media produced for institutional school use. The aim of this study is thus to analyse how students approach discourses found in material produced outside school, and how teachers approach and respond to students’ work with such discourses. The empirical material was collected through an ethnographic fieldwork in a Swedish upper secondary school. The student group analysed in this study is engaged in project work, dealing with the basics of international economy and global financial politics. Approaching this material from a discursive and sociocultural perspective, the analysis focus details in the discursive work, such as the establishing of facticity (Edwards, 1997; Potter, 1996), and the qualification of arguments (Mäkitalo & Säljö 2002). Through the www, printed material and talk, the students take part of perspectives, norms and ways of arguing that differ from, and sometimes overtly criticise, the way of framing and discussing the same issues in international economics, which is simultaneously part of subject matter supposed to appropriated by the students. In discussions with the teachers, students bring up ideas promoted by non-governmental organisations these as suggestions of alternative arguments. The teachers engage in these discussions, generally keeping to traditions of arguing common in international economics. The tensions between institutionally sanctioned and diverging types of arguments become local discursive problems for students and teachers to deal with in this complex discursive situation.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogiskt arbete (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogical Work (hsv//eng)

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

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

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Communication Studies (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)