Learnables in Action The Embodied Achievement of Opportunities for Teaching and Learning in Swedish as a Second Language Classrooms

Abstract: This doctoral dissertation is an empirical qualitative research study on the emergence of learnables in classrooms of Swedish as a second language. It adopts a dialogical and praxeological approach, and analysis is based on video recorded teacher-student interactivities in classrooms. Learnables are taken to be linguistic items or constructs that are displayed as unknown by students, or problematized by students or teachers, and therefore oriented to as explainable, remediable, or improvable. Learnables are introduced in planned or less planned classroom activities, either in passing, while continuing the current main activity, or in sidesequences. In these activities, teachers and students not only talk, but also use other embodied resources (e.g. pointing) or available artifacts (e.g. worksheets) to highlight linguistic learnables. Teachers and students use these resources for achieving and maintaining intersubjectivity as well as contributing learnables to the interactivities. Through manifest embodied practices, abstract linguistic learnables become objectified, and knowledge about them gets organized in and through joint co-operative activities.