TEACHER STUDENTS’ LEGITIMATION OF TEACHING ACTIVITIES IN THE L1 CLASSROOM

Abstract

This study investigates Norwegian L1 teacher students’ legitimation of teaching activities as they retrospectively reflect on internship experiences during their first two years of teacher education. We analyse the legitimation language in qualitative interviews with 20 teacher students using the specialization dimension from Legitimation Code Theory. The findings indicate a diversity in the teacher student’s legitimation codes. The dominant pattern of codes indicate that L1 is legitimized within a horizontal knowledge structure with few opportunities for construing a subject with a unifying goal. A minority of the teacher students legitimized L1 by a strong classification motivated in young pupils’ cultural needs in order to partake in a textualized and mediated world. Drawing particularly on Basil Bernstein’s ideas on different knowledge structures and on teaching and acquisition of humanistic subjects, we critically discuss how the interviewees’ legitimation works to classify L1 as a distinct school subject. Using the examples of strong classification of L1, we discuss possible measures to assist teacher students’ development toward professional subject didactic reasoning and legitimation.