Who Has the Knowledge if not the Primary Knower? - Using exchange structure analysis to cast light on particular pedagogic practices in teaching Danish as a Second Language and History Anna-Vera Meidell Sigsgaard PhD Fellow, Dept. of Education (DPU), Aarhus University, Tuborgvej 164, DK-2400 Copenhagen NV, Denmark avm@dpu.dk Abstract This paper reports on findings from a project researching Danish as a Second Language (DSL). While official pedagogic discourse (Bernstein, 2000) is available in curriculum guidelines, the historically grounded relative autonomy of schools means that the actual pedagogic discourse of DSL varies in terms of teachers’ competencies. A deeply rooted progressivist approach to schooling combined with a more recent focus on national testing correlate with a Ministerial recommendation that DSL be taught embedded in the school’s other subjects (Undervisningsministeriet, 2005). This paper focuses on the pedagogic practices of one case of DSL embedded in a fifth grade History unit, taught in a Danish public school with 85% bilingual students. Exchange structure analysis (Martin, 1992; Martin & Rose, 2007) makes visible certain patterns of classroom discourse. With focus on the K1-move, which according to the theory is the only obligatory move in a knowledge exchange, analysis of the collected data shows, interestingly, that this move is often ambiguous or missing, which raises questions of a more general pedagogic nature, conceptualized here by the knower code from Legitimation Code Theory (Maton, 2000, forthcoming). 1 Introduction – What Are We Going To Learn Today? Children in a fifth grade class gather to start a new History topic; as they sit down, they are talking and joking with each other and the three teachers in the room. This school’s fifth grade is made up of 30 children divided into two teams, sharing five teachers who work in groups and individually depending on the subjects and the units being taught. As such, this class is very similar to most Danish public school classrooms. What sets it apart is that it is in a school where the majority of the children are classified as ‘bilingual’ 1 . Evidence of the so-called fourth grade slump (Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990; Gitz- Johansen, 2006) experienced by many second language students and increasing linguistic diversity of students’ backgrounds presents challenges to the Danish public school and has led to the development of the relatively new school subject, Danish as a Second Language (DSL) 2 . 1.1 DSL in the S-School – Background and Data The S-School, where this data is gathered, is a K-9 public school servicing an area outside of Copenhagen where the majority of the population has an ethnic minority background, generally with a fairly low socio-economic status and often referred to as “second generation immigrants”. Schools like the S-School have been highly politicized and discussed in the media for the past decades, as they and the areas they service are often seen as a cause for concern: they tend to 1 The Ministry of Educations terms bilingual children as those who speak a language other than Danish at home and start learning Danish when exposed to Danish society and public institutions such as day care or school. 2 DSL appeared as a recognized school subject with official ministerial guidelines for the first time in 1995.