New Ph.D. dissertation indicates new inclusive ways of teaching the exam genres of Danish

On October 27th 2016 Anne Smedegaard defended her dissertation on the exam genres of Danish: the debate article, the essay, and the literary article in upper secondary school.

Smedegaard investigates how the Ministry for Children, Education and Gender Equality, teachers of Danish, and pupils in upper secondary school define and invoke these three exam genres of Danish. Her research focuses on two genres, namely the debate article and the essay and she proposes new ways of instructing the pupils how to write good essays and debate articles. Smedegaard states a need to better explicate the genre defining traits when instructing and giving feed back to talented and less talented pupils alike. She argues that students in upper secondary schools receive too little efficient feedback on their essays by showing that teachers in upper secondary schools focus on grading when they give feedback on the students' written work. The teachers highlight mistakes and do not provide information on how to improve the written work.

Smedegaard has followed four upper secondary school classes in a three year period and she has collected 630 Danish student papers and the feedback that the students received from their teachers.

The discussion on guidance and feedback is one of the key issues in the new reform for upper secondary school to be implemented in 2017-2018.