The Didactic Challenge of New Literacies in School and Teacher Education

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The starting point is sociological studies showing how traditional democratic ideals are threatened in the Norwegian educational system (Nordli Hansen 1999, Bakken 2004). With their background from primary school and lower secondary school an increasing n umber of students do not complete upper secondary school. International research relate such tendencies to a new focus on language - a natural consequence of the age of information. The concept literacy conveys that learning is a language act - what is le arned has to be mediated by cultural and linguistic signs, and that language and metalanguage as mediational means is decisive for who will learn what in the classroom (Wertsch 1998, Gee 2003). The project studies the role of language/communication at dif ferent levels in the education system and investigates how three different subjects are taught in different classrooms. Two of the subjects, RLE and Norwegian, are traditionally based on a syntagmatic mode of thought, while the third is based on a paradig matic mode. The dialectics between both modes is from a didactical point of view an essential part of a literacy-competence. The five researchers focus literacy on different levels of education from different perspectives: Ongstad: Discursivity and Disciplinarity: Literacies and/as semiotics across curricula. Braathe:Teacher Education and the Construction of a Math Teacher. Students' communicative positionings in mathematical literacies. Penne:Learning and Learning how to learn in grade 10 Soci ocultural differences displayed through language in a multimodal world. Breidlid:The Potential of RLE in promoting Cultural Literacy in the Multicultural Classroom. Kleve:Mathematical knowledge for teaching - mathematical literacy in school.