This thesis is situated within the field of research on writing and writing pedagogy as it concerns argumentative writing in Social Science and Religious and Ethical Education (REE) at the lower secondary level. The aim of the thesis is to answer the following question: In which way does the teacher's explicit focus on form throughout the writing process influence the students' way of organizing subject-specific content in a written text?
This question is examined through three sub-studies; each of them concerning a specific writing situation. All three studies are based on analyses of students' texts, as well as observation of the writing situation in the two last studies.
The first sub-study discusses the challenges of writing in the context of Social Science, as related to the teacher's explicit instruction regarding argumentative text structures. By means of an intervention, the second sub-study examines whether writing frames give the students relevant support in structuring an argumentative text within the subject of History. The third sub-study investigates model texts as a tool in the area of argumentative writing within the subject of REE. This last sub-study is also designed as a qualitative intervention, though it incorporates a control class to compare the results of the analyses.
In total, the three studies suggest that the teacher's support regarding tex-structural aspects primarily matters when writing frames and model texts are preceived as subject-specific tools for the teacher in the organization of the writing, rather than as a template for the students' texts. I argue that tools like these should be Incorporated in a step-by-step process, thus enabling the students to develop their knowledge of the subject area and their knowledge of the text form simultaneously.
This Research war performed by the Department of Teacher Education and School Researc, Faculty of Ecucational Sciences at the University of Oslo, and at the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Science.