Student writers interplaying with the local community

The presentation is largely based on parts of a PhD project that focuses on authentic writing processes in elementary school. As an attempt to represent writing as a social and potentially change-creating act, the project explored events that emerged from an educational intervention, where students in 5th grade were invited to write non-fiction texts based on concrete rhetorical situations (Miller, Bitzer).
One of these situations encompassed a collaborate working relationship between a teacher and an external player, a pedagogue from a local Youth Center. The collaboration included that the students in two 5th grade classrooms were invited to produce project descriptions in order to contribute to the development of the Youth Center. In this presentation I will approach the course of events as an example of a so called Open School Course (where external players contribute to support educational purposes), which since 2014 has been a mandatory part of running public schools in Denmark(Knudsen).
In my analysis of events I will draw on interview data, audio recordings and observation notes from the project. These data are approached from a positioning theoretical perspective by asking: How does the collaboration with an external player, including the actualized student writer positionings in the classroom provide possibilities of participation in writing processes?
On the basis of this, I will show how the interrelationship between the teacher inviting students to interact with a Bachtin- inspired scaffolding writing map and the pedagogue’s positionings of herself as text user and of students as contributors results in qualified and meaningful forms of reflexive participation and a representation of writing as a social action.
The presentation thus contributes to shed light on the disciplinary-specific possibilities of The Open School format by focusing on writing and pointing out how the teacher and an external player by virtue of their diverse roles represent different qualities that complement each other in a qualifying way.