From decoding to meaning - when reading takes shape : The discursive movements of reading in Swedish policy documents.

In recent years, Swedish students' reading comprehension scores have deteriorated, which has raised questions about how reading is understood and given importance in school policy documents. At the same time, research shows that reading comprehension difficulties cannot always be explained solely by a lack of decoding or linguistic understanding, but are also linked to cognitive factors. Against this background, the purpose of this essay is to examine how reading is constructed in the current Swedish curriculum and on the basis for the upcoming curriculum, what changes appear between these documents and in what way cognitive science appears in the documents. The study is conducted as a critical discourse analysis, where the Swedish curriculum in LGR 22 and Subject-specific instructions for Swedish (ÄIS) are analyzed, based on Fairclough's three dimensional model. The analysis focuses on which aspects of reading comprehension are articulated and given legitimacy, and to what extent cognitive science perspectives are expressed. The analysis is related theoretically to The Simple View of Reading and insights from cognitive science. The results show that reading comprehension in both policy documents is mainly constructed through a progression from technical skills towards more advanced text processing, where the use of strategies is given a central role. However, in the basis for the upcoming curriculum, a clearer focus on systematics, structure and explicit components in the reading process emerges, as well as an approach to a more integrated view of reading where cognitive aspects are implied to a greater extent. The essay contributes with a deeper understanding of how reading comprehension is discursively constructed in Swedish policy documents and highlights the tension between technical, functional and cognitive perspectives on reading. Finally, the didactic implications of these discourses for teaching Swedish are discussed.