Project information
Project leader
Robert Walldén
Other project members
Kim Ridell, Eva Wennås Brante and Madeleine Sjöman, Malmö University
Participating institutions
Linnaeus University; Malmö University
Funder
The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), project grant 2026
Project duration
1 January 2026 – 31 December 2029
Subject
Swedish language education (didactic orientation), Department of Swedish Language Studies
Research groups
Centre for Educational Linguistics; Literacy and Teaching
Knowledge environment
Linnaeus Knowledge Environment: Education in change
More about the project
How do young children learn to connect speech sounds with written letters, and how do teachers actually teach this in real classrooms? Despite intense public debate and concerns about declining reading achievement, we still know little about how phonics instruction is enacted in everyday teaching situations.
This research project investigates how first-grade teachers design and deliver explicit phonics instruction. Using classroom video recordings, the study examines how teachers combine speech, images, gestures, writing, and instructional materials to make phoneme–grapheme relationships clear. It also explores how students respond during lessons—what engages them, what challenges arise, and how teachers support their learning moment by moment. Teachers are further invited to watch selected clips from their own lessons and reflect on their instructional decisions. These stimulated recall interviews offer valuable insight into their reasoning: how they choose materials, address linguistic challenges, integrate meaning-making, and adapt instruction to diverse learners.
By combining social-semiotic analysis of multimodal teaching with insights from the Science of Reading, the project provides a nuanced account of how phonics is practiced in the classroom. Its findings aim to inform teacher education, instructional materials, and policy discussions, contributing to a more balanced understanding of how early literacy instruction can be both systematic and engaging.
The project forms part of the research conducted within the research groups Educational Linguistics and Literacy and Teaching, as well as within the Linnaeus knowledge environment: Education in Transformation.
