Ewa Bergh Nestlog

Ewa Bergh Nestlog is a Ph.D. and Professor in Swedish Language Education. Since 2010 she has been employed at Linnaeus University, and since 2021 she has been commissioned as vice dean for teacher education, faculty of arts and humanities.

Degrees

• Ph.D. in Swedish Language Education, Linnaeus University, 2012
• Licentiate in Swedish Language Education, Växjö University, 2009
• M.A. specializing in Swedish, Växjö University, 2005
• Certificate of education as subject teacher of Swedish, Religion and History, Gothenburg University, 1985

Other relevant education

• Leadership training (LUPA), Linnaeus University, 2017
• Leadership training: Development, group and leader (UGL), Core Code, 2015
• Research supervisor training, Linnaeus University, 2013
• Teaching practice supervisor training, Kalmar University College, 1996
• Teaching Swedish for immigrants, 40 credits, Lund University, 1989
• First Certificate in English, University of Cambridge, 1980
• Certificate of Proficiency in English, including translation English-Swedish and Swedish-English, University of Cambridge, 1980

Bergh Nestlog has a background as a subject teacher in Swedish, Swedish as a second language, religion and history. Earlier in her career she has taught in comprehensive school, upper secondary school and adult education. In addition, she has served as director of education at the National Centre for Language, Reading and Writing Development at the National Agency for Education.

Teaching

Bergh Nestlog is active in postgraduate education, where she has been responsible for courses and examination in “Sociocultural and Dialogical Perspectives” and “Literacy and Multimodality”. She is also involved in the parts of the course “Theory and Method in Applied Linguistics: an Overview” that concern systemic functional linguistics and classroom interaction. She is supervising the following Ph.D. students, whose research projects are related to didactics and multilingualism:

• Main supervisor for a Ph.D. student in Swedish with a didactic focus (Victoria Dryselius, Linnaeus University)
• Main supervisor for two Ph.D. students in Swedish, in the multilingualism environment (Gabriel Bobeck and Johanna Rylner Kjellgren, Linnaeus University)
• Assistant supervisor for a Ph.D. student in Swedish (Maria Valtonen, Linnaeus University)
• Assistant supervisor for a Ph.D. student in science didactics (Feyza Cilingir, Linköping University)

In addition, Bergh Nestlog is involved in matters related to teaching in the comprehensive school teacher programme, especially in overall questions of educational structures and subject content in the subject of Swedish language, and in the development of courses in teaching functional grammar. She is also involved in the supervision and examination of essay projects.

Together with Kristina Danielsson she has published a book about functional writing practices, Textskapande i grundskolan: Utveckla funktionella skrivpraktiker, which is aimed at comprehensive school teachers and student teachers.

During her time at the National Agency for Education she worked with in-service training of teachers from more than half of the municipalities in Sweden.

Research

In her research, Bergh Nestlog studies literacy practices in grades 1–6 of comprehensive school, in classrooms where pupils have Swedish as their first or second language. She investigates pupils’ texts, their text-making and meaning-making in their texts, and studies how teachers implement their teaching in terms of subject literacy in different school subjects. Her theoretical interest is primarily focused on social semiotic perspectives and systemic functional linguistics, along with dialogism and critical discourse analysis.

Bergh Nestlog is primarily involved in the following research environments at Linnaeus University: The Centre for Educational Linguistics (EdLing), the Centre for Subject Didactic Research in the Arts and Humanities at Linnaeus University (CÄHL) and Literacy and Teaching (LoU). These research groups belong to the Knowledge Environment Linnaeus: Education in Change. Together with Professor Marie Källkvist she is the director of EdLing, and they are also part of the management group of Knowledge Environment Linnaeus: Education in Change.

She is engaged in a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council, “Transformations of Transformations: An Interdisciplinary Study of Pupils’ Meaning-Making through Transformations of Representations in Science Classes”, studying physics teaching in middle school with a focus on how subject content is expressed and transformed through interaction in the classroom and in texts that pupils and teachers create. The aim of this project, which is carried out in grades 4–6 of comprehensive school, is to understand how pupils can be supported in moving between their everyday experiences and scientific ways of making sense of natural phenomena. The project is a collaboration with teachers to develop working methods that support pupils’ meaning-making through different semiotic modalities.

Bergh Nestlog is interested in subject didactics, in teaching and learning from a theoretical linguistic perspective. Based on linguistic theories, she has developed scientific terminology and models for the systematic study of teaching in different school subjects (Bergh Nestlog 2019 & 2020). As a continuation of this project, she has launched a research project on disciplinary literacy, with the aim of arriving at a deeper knowledge of subject literacy in the training of comprehensive school teachers and in comprehensive school grades 4–6 in the subjects of English, physical education and health, mathematics, Swedish, science and social sciences. The project studies how subject language and subject literacy manifest themselves when teacher educators, student teachers and teaching-practice instructors talk about and teach the subject. It also examines how ideas about subject language and subject literacy are presented in conversations with responsible leaders and in steering documents in teacher education and in schools.

In her previous research, Bergh Nestlog has studied, among other things, the teaching of writing and pupils’ argumentational and explanatory texts in grades 4–6 of comprehensive school (Bergh Nestlog 2008; 2009a; 2009b; 2012; 2014), critical perspectives on teaching in various teaching practices in grades 4–6 (Bergh Nestlog 2015), multilingual pupils’ science texts and meaning-making in grades 1–3 (Bergh Nestlog 2017; Zetterholm & Bergh Nestlog 2017), literacy perspectives on children’s reading to book dogs (Bergh Nestlog & Ehriander 2016 & 2019), and teachers’ collegial work in the Reading Boost (Läslyftet) and one of the teachers’ teaching practice where pupils in grades 5 and 6 created multimodal texts in geography (Danielsson, Bergh Nestlog & Krogh 2019; Bergh Nestlog, Danielsson & Krogh 2020). She has also been editor of two issues of HumaNetten in which most of the contributions underwent peer review (Hägerdahl et al. 2019 & 2020). In 2013, she received the Linnaeus Academy Prize for the best dissertation.

Bergh Nestlog has peer-reviewed articles in the following journals and conference publications:

• HumaNetten
• Nordisk tidsskrift for andrespråksforskning (Nordand)
• Forskning om undervisning och lärande (ForskUL)
• Educare
• National Network for Swedish with a Didactic Focus (SMDI)
• Svenskans beskrivning

Commissions

Bergh Nestlog has been active for many years in collaborative assignments at schools and in contexts of in-service training for teachers. She is in demand as a lecturer all over Sweden and in recent years has led in-service training in methods to develop language and knowledge, as part of the National Agency for Education’s government-appointed mission Collaboration for the Best School. She has also been responsible for developing three modules and has written several articles for the Reading Boost: Writing in All Subjects (grades 4–6) and Writing in All Subjects (grades 7–9) (together with Kristina Danielsson) and Oral Communication (from preschool class to grade 9). In addition, she has been engaged as a writer in the Reading Boost module Critical text Work (grades 7–9) and in the Special Education Boost module Inclusion and School Practice (grades 1–9). She has also been project manager for the training of supervisors in the Reading Boost and has previously been responsible for Linnaeus University’s regional network for Swedish and subject languages. Within the framework of this network, she and Desirée Fristedt have edited a book where researchers and teachers have written about language in all subjects (Bergh Nestlog & Fristedt 2016; Bergh Nestlog 2016). On behalf of the Swedish National Agency for Education, she was the chief writer for the assessment support Language on the Way – Survey Material for Swedish and Swedish as a Second Language in Grades 7–9 part 1 and part 2.

Her interest in collaboration has also led to assignments on the board of the national network for research and postgraduate education in Swedish with a didactic focus (SMDI), where she has been a member since 2013. She has previously been a member of the board of the Swedish Teachers’ Association, when she was editor, together with Nils Larsson, of two annuals, 2015 and 2016.

In 2018 and 2019, she was commissioned by the Swedish Higher Education Authority, in collaboration with researchers from other universities, to assess educational programmes for comprehensive school teachers and subject teachers in Sweden. In addition, she has been engaged as expert reviewer in various contexts, such as appointments at Gothenburg University and Linnaeus University, and by the Swedish National Agency for Education (as external reviewer of a number of modules in the Reading Boost), by the publishing house Natur & Kultur and by the Schools Inspectorate.