Svanes and Skagen discuss benefits that Didaktik, feedback research, and classroom research could garner if used in tandem with each other. Didaktik is a Swedish tradition that underlines the importance of a teacher’s professional autonomy alongside the importance of creating feedback that matches with the subject matter and the pupils involved. Svanes and Skagen go on to argue that a focus on language-based intentionality is too narrow of a lens to fully understand what is happening in the classroom. Didaktik instead focuses on what qualities the teacher uses when giving feedback. To further this idea, its mentioned that a student’s learning is subject to the presentation of the teacher, thus the outcome of such cannot be fixed in advance. This means that students may not understand what the teacher attempts to convey, which can sometimes boil down to classroom context. The authors provide an extended example, focused on guided reading.

Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar