THE “CASE REPORT” GENRE IN PRE-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION: AN ACTIVITY APPROACH

Authors

  • Natalia Ávila Reyes Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
  • Ana María Cortés Lagos Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Abstract

Although higher education writing studies have become increasingly more frequent in Latin America, only few studies have adopted a Writing Across the Curriculum perspective. Moreover, most studies have preferred discursive and linguistic genre descriptions, over writing experiences and perspectives from the community of users of these genres. This article relies on Activity Systems as a descriptive framework for the case-report genre, frequent in pre-service teacher education programs, by triangulating data from interviews to professors, students focus groups and text analysis of approved samples. Results show interesting patterns of linguistic instantiation of activity in procedures such as intertextuality and hedging, as well as the challenges both students and teachers face in teaching and learning this genre.

Keywords:

Case study and report, writing across the curriculum, preservice teachers’ student genres, activity systems