Building subject knowledge in texts. Subject-specific knowledge practices in humanities subjects in upper secondary school writing

The purpose of the project is to explore what distinguishes written knowledge practices within disciplinary student texts in humanities subjects in upper secondary school, if and how differences exist between the subjects, as well as how differences can be captured.

Objective 1: to explore what is valued as functional disciplinary student texts in History, Philosophy, Religious Education, and Swedish.

Objective 2: to develop an analytical model for written knowledge practices that, unlike others, can capture content dimensions.

The project is carried out stepwise in collaboration with teachers and academic scholars, through 1) conducting a meta study, 2) collecting student texts as part of teachers´ authentic examination, and 3) designing an analytical model. The text material is processed with a software where the texts are qualitatively ranked and then graded statistically.

Next, qualitative analyses are made to identify characteristics of successful texts. An analytical model is developed with tools from Legitimation Code Theory and Systemic-functional linguistics.

By examining how subject knowledge is built in text, the study provides important new knowledge relevant for both research and education about prerequisites for students´ disciplinary writing and knowledge development.

The study also develops a model that to a greater extent than previous models can capture aspects of how knowledge is built in disciplinary texts. The model can be used in research and education.