Individual seatwork is a common activity in school, but the knowledge about what the teacher does during this activity is limited. This is the case especially at primary level and in language arts. This thesis investigates teachers’ instructional practices during seatwork in primary Norwegian Language arts classrooms, and it seeks to answer the following research question: What characterizes the teachers’ instructional practices during pupils’ individual seatwork? Six teachers in third grade are observed during the pupils’ seatwork.
The thesis consists of three articles and an extended abstract, and it builds on knowledge about classroom conversations and teachers’ oral feedback. The first article is a literature study that compile feedback research with Didaktik-theory and classroom research. It is argued that feedback research could be more useful for practice if it includes the role of the academic content, the pupil and the teacher to a larger degree. The second article is empiric and map how the teachers spend the time and characteristics of the instruction in the observed Norwegian language arts lessons. The article includes an analytical framework for analyses of teachers’ instructional practices during pupils seatwork, and it shows excerpts from writing instruction. In the third article silent reading as classroom activity is chosen for analyses, and the teachers’ work during this activity is studied. It turns out that two of the teachers spend most of the time listening to the pupils when they are reading, and guiding them in their reading. The other two teachers, however, spend less time with the pupils. The teachers’ active role in silent reading is discussed and highlighted.
The differences between the teachers according to their instructional practices during seatwork are the main findings in this thesis. At an overall level, the teachers differ in how they spend the time. As a whole, they spend most of the time on instruction and organizing and less on emotional support, but the variations between the teachers are considerable. When the instructional support is extracted for closer analyses, it turns out that the teachers are different here as well. Some of the teachers prefer to tell the pupil the answer when the he asks for help, while others challenge the pupil to think for himself. The teachers also differ according the breath of teaching strategies they possess.