Is the concept of culture a blind angle in the school subject Danish?

A policy and case study perspective on understandings of culture in Danish and Danish as a second language

Abstract

In its declaration of purpose, a central aim of the L1 subject Danish is “to develop the pupils’ personal and cultural identity”. However, the variable and changing use of the term ‘cultural’ in the curriculum raises important questions of whose cultural identity the L1 subject Danish is supposed to develop and how. The answers to these questions play a central role, especially for pupils with a minority background. Based on the code theory of Basil Bernstein and a critical approach to literacy, this article studies the use of the concept of culture in the subject Danish and the supplementary subject Danish as a foreign language. On a macro level, the article examines the use of terms referring to culture and cultural identity in the national curricula. On a micro level, we use a case study to unravel two upper primary pupils’ attempts to understand and navigate the often implicit cultural norms of the Danish language classroom. The article concludes that the concept of culture in Danish is a tension-filled floating signifier pointing to both Danish national identity, aesthetic norms and linguistic variation. Regarding the case study, we show how the minority boys we have studied consider their primary languages, experiences and backgrounds irrelevant to the subject of Danish and how they adopt different strategies in order to strengthen their position in the classroom. Overall, the article calls for more didactic reflection on the significance of the cultural dimension for students with minority backgrounds and argues that critical literacy theory has interesting perspectives to offer.