Views about what writing is and how it should be taught have varied over the years as well as across contexts. Studies of curricula, teaching materials, and teaching practices have shown a strong focus on skills, genres, and processes, but few have asked teachers about their perspectives on writing. In this article we explore what views, or discourses, of writing are currently active among teachers in Swedish compulsory education, covering ages from 7 to 15. Sixty teachers answered a questionnaire with open and closed questions. Using Ivanič’s framework for discourses of writing, the answers were analyzed holistically in order to define what main discourse, or discourses, each teacher represented. Results show that most teachers represent one main discourse, but that a combination of discourses occur, in particular among teachers from the earliest school years (1–3). The most common discourse was the process discourse, followed by genre, creativity, skills, and thinking. None of the teachers represented the social practice or the sociopolitical discourse. The results concur with findings from studies of curricula, teaching materials, and teaching practices both in Sweden and globally and are discussed in relation to what literacy skills may be necessary in the 21st century in order to participate in social and political life.

Observing writing: Insights from Keystroke Logging and Handwriting is a timely volume appearing twelve years after the Studies in Writing volume Computer Keystroke Logging and Writing (Sullivan & Lindgren, 2006). The 2006 volume provided the reader with a fundamental account of keystroke logging, a methodology in which a piece of software records every keystroke, cursor and mouse movement a writer undertakes during a writing session. This new volume highlights current theoretical and applied research questions in keystroke logging and handwriting research that observes writing. In this volume, contributors from a range of disciplines, including linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, modern languages, and education, present their research that considers the cognitive and socio-cultural complexities of writing texts in academic and professional settings.

Contemporary globalization trends might be a threat to Indigenous language revitalization efforts, or might act as catalysts that stimulate interest in learning and writing in Indigenous languages. This chapter presents a snapshot case study of young multilingual writers of North Sámi and considers the interaction of supercomplexity and the super dimensions of Sápmi on North Sámi literacy. Using illustrations taken from 126 young writers' narratives texts collected from 12 schools across the North Sámi speaking area of Sápmi in Finland, Norway, and Sweden, this chapter discusses how these young writers express in written North Sámi what they do in their lives, their understandings of their identities, and how these reflect the global and the local dimensions that they engage in on a daily basis. Based on our analysis, together with earlier research, we argue that young writers have the literacy skills necessary for meaning making, but that more possibilities for exposure to North Sámi are required, coupled with structural support from policy makers, society generally, and education opportunities, to raise the linguistics competencies for more nuanced North Sámi writing.

In this article, researchers in the field of early writing identify underlying beliefs and values about writing and learning to write for the beginning years of formal schooling in four jurisdictions: the American state of Connecticut, New Zealand, the Canadian province of Ontario, and Sweden, as reflected in the respective curricula and standards documents that guide instruction. Using Ivanic’s Discourses of Writing and Learning to Write to guide our text analysis, we found that curriculum developers have primarily been influenced by views of writing as a set of skills, processes, and genres. We found few references to the sociopolitical dis- course which indicates a view among curriculum developers that sociopolitical literacy is not suitable for this age group. We argue, with support in previous research, that young children’s writing does not have to be politically neutral and that it can be devel- oped under age-appropriate circumstances. Implications for policy and curriculum development include a need for greater consider- ation of the complexities of writing shown in research conducted across five decades. We propose a change to the model for early years, recognising that young children’s socio-political under- standings lie within their home and school lives, rather than the broader community.

Sami are Indigenous languages spoken by the Sami people in the northern parts of Scandinavia and Russia. All Sami languages are endangered because of historically aggressive assimilation policies. Currently Sami communities are working actively with language revitalisation processes. This article examines pupils’ access to knowledge in and about Sami languages and functional bilingualism in Sami and Swedish within the curriculum for the Sami schools in Sweden. Through a multifaceted lens of functional linguistic analysis, Bloom’s revised taxonomy of knowledge types and processes, and Bernstein’s concepts of vertical and horizontal discourse we examine the learning outcomes in the Sami and Swedish syllabi. The findings show an unequal balance between the two languages with the Sami syllabus containing fewer knowledge types, cognitive processes, verb processes, a stronger focus on oracy, and a stronger horizontal discourse than the Swedish syllabus. We conclude that the discourses about functional bilingualism that underpin these policy documents is contradictory and does not support Sami to be a fully functional language for all domains of society.

This is the first collection of research studies to explore the potential for mixed methods to shed light on foreign or second language learning by young learners in instructed contexts. It brings together recent studies undertaken in Cameroon, China, Croatia, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Tanzania and the UK. Themes include English as an additional language, English as a second or foreign language, French as a modern foreign language, medium of instruction controversies and content and language integrated learning (CLIL). The volume reviews the choice of research methodologies for early language learning research in schools with a particular focus on mixed methods, proposing that in the multidisciplinary context of early language learning this paradigm allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the evidence than other approaches might provide. The collection will be of interest to in-service and trainee teachers of young language learners, graduate students in the field of TESOL and early language learning, teacher educators, researchers and policymakers.