Tricks of the trade or situated literacy – disciplinary reading literacy practices in vocational education
Abstract
In upper secondary school vocational education in Sweden practices of reading is an integrated part of teaching in vocational subjects. This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of vocational reading literacy practices, and how reading literacy practices are recontextualised into upper secondary school contexts. Three subsequent research questions specify the study: What kinds of texts are used? How is reading done and talked about? What purposes for reading (why) emerge? Theoretically, the study draws from New Literacy Studies (Barton, 2007). Nine vocational teachers were interviewed regarding reading in childcare, technical, culinary, and industrial vocations. The informants were also observed when teaching in four student groups in three upper secondary schools. Analyses were made of text categories, genres (Rose & Martin, 2012), reading literacy events, text movability (Hallesson & Visén, 2018; Liberg et al., 2012), and reading types (cf. Rosenblatt, 1995).
The results reveal a wide range of text categories, from general to specialised texts, specific practice-oriented reading events, reading types that differ depending on vocational context. A conclusion is that disciplinary reading practices in vocational contexts are complex and require critical readers. Therefore, further knowledge of reading in vocational education might contribute to the teaching of disciplinary reading literacy in upper secondary vocational education.
Copyright (c) 2021 Pia Visén

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors contributing to The Nordic Journal of Literacy Research retain the copyright of their article but agree to publish their articles under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, for any purpose, even commercially, under the condition that appropriate credit is given, that a link to the license is provided, and that you indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.