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Teaching and learning moments as subjectively problematic: Foundational assumptions and methodological entailments
Abstract
This article takes a conceptual approach to an issue of pedagogical relevance the presence of teaching and learning moments within educational environments. We suggest sources of philosophical confusions that design patterns for the classification and creation of typologies of classroom events. We identify three foundational assumptions with the way in which classroom events are analyzed: (1) Describing a classroom event (how it may be identified and described as a teaching and learning moment); (2) Devising a procedure for co-classifying events (intro-ducing a typology distinguishing teaching and learning moments); (3) Repurposing decontextualized events to fit a preferred analytic model (distorting the phenomenology of events for the purpose of classifying these as teaching and learning moments). Hitherto these assumptions have obscured the phenomenal integrity of the learning environment; since the topic sought is based on critical incidents according to ana-lysts' interests, but not on the actual identifying details of the setting as made available by the participants. While teaching and learning moments are generic issues, in methodological terms these matters have to be explored in their details. In our article, we align ourselves with particular research approaches, namely ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, that facilitate close analysis of 'perspicuous set-tings', such as classroom interactions, through which phenomena such as teaching and learning moments are made visible as collaborative accomplishments.
Learning is an omnipresent feature of social life. However, in educational fields, learning is often studied through indirect instruments, such as surveys, interviews and coding schemes. In this paper, a praxiological approach to observe learning moments is proposed. This means that learning moments are not explored here through schematic reporting or statistical evaluations, but as accountable and inspectable phenomena as they became available in the corpus explored. Using a video-recorded fragment of interaction that occurred during a second language (L2) class in a primary school in Macau (China), the practical, collaborative instructed experiences of participants (teacher and students) in a lesson are analysed. It was observed that classroom participants attend to the categorial and sequential features of learning environments, which provide the contextual details that afford members’ realization of phenomena as learning moments. Stated differently, learning moments should not be confused with the
successful accomplishment of a lesson plan just to satisfy programmatic (and disciplinary) requirements, but as something produced and accountable by participants as learning in and through their very practices of concerted interaction. As learning moments are ubiquitous characteristics of educational environments, the discussion of the results has pedagogical implications for teacher training, and for the assessment of teaching.
Keywords: conversation analysis, ethnomethodology, learning moments, membership categorization, social competence, turn-allocated categories
Learning is an omnipresent feature of social life. However, in educational fields, learning is often studied through indirect instruments, such as surveys, interviews and coding schemes. In this paper, a praxiological approach to observe learning moments is proposed. This means that learning moments are not explored here through schematic reporting or statistical evaluations, but as accountable and inspectable phenomena as they became available in the corpus explored. Using a video-recorded fragment of interaction that occurred during a second language (L2) class in a primary school in Macau (China), the practical, collaborative instructed experiences of participants (teacher and students) in a lesson are analysed. It was observed that classroom participants attend to the categorial and sequential features of learning environments, which provide the contextual details that afford members’ realization of phenomena as learning moments. Stated differently, learning moments should not be confused with the
successful accomplishment of a lesson plan just to satisfy programmatic (and disciplinary) requirements, but as something produced and accountable by participants as learning in and through their very practices of concerted interaction. As learning moments are ubiquitous characteristics of educational environments, the discussion of the results has pedagogical implications for teacher training, and for the assessment of teaching.
Keywords: conversation analysis, ethnomethodology, learning moments, membership categorization, social competence, turn-allocated categories
Astronomy education research is a growing field but the attention given to informal educational activities, such as telescope observations, museum visits or planetarium sessions, is still relatively scarce. In consequence, the area is poorly studied and understood. Addressing this gap, this present paper examines informal educational practices in an astronomical observatory through detailed analysis of a complete turn at the telescope by a small child, who is observing the Sun with the assistance of a guide. Using Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis this study investigates how this activity was produced in terms of structure and methods, the skills the participants have, and how the interaction between the visitor and the guide occurs. The study of these naturally occurring activities is done in-depth by the repeated inspection of video data, in order to identify the characteristics of the interaction, the organization of the talk and its implications as an educational event. The interactional nature of linguistic exchanges is highlighted; and the study of these activities reveals the practical methods used by guides and public. The present study contributes to our understanding of telescope observations as informal education activities; and shows the importance of research methods that are sensitive to naturally occurring events.
In introducing the special issue on Large Class Pedagogy: Opportunities and Challenges of Massification the present editorial takes stock of the emerging literature on this subject. We seek to contribute to the massificaiton debate by considering one result of it: large class teaching in higher education. Here we look to large classes as a problem in promoting student learning, quality education, and consequently as a challenge to socio-economic development. That said, whilst large classes do pose very specific challenges, they also hold promise and opportunities for innovation in support of student learning. Here we consider the contributions to this special issue from a cross section of disciplines and higher education environments.
The aim of this study was to identify when and how the interactive whiteboard (IWB) functioned as a productive tool that impacted student learning in mathematics. Using video data, field notes, and interview transcripts from 1 school year in two optimal case study classrooms, we were able to examine the unique opportunities afforded by the size of the IWB screen, the manipulation of virtual objects onscreen, and related communication using gestures. We: (i) established criteria for defining "significant learning moments"; (ii) assessed these significant learning moments to determine how the interactive whiteboard was supporting the learning; and (iii) isolated the use of gesture during IWB use to magnify the grain size of our analysis and understanding. The data fell into three types of IWB use: productive (89%), reproductive (2%), and problematic (9%). The study recommends that in order to best support student learning, professional development for teachers should emphasize direct and active student use of the IWB to engage students in inquiry of mathematics.
The article argues that Marx’s use of the concept of ideology in The German Ideology is incidental to a sustained critique of how those he described as the German ideologists think and reason about society and history and that this critique is not simply of an idealist theory that represents society and history as determined by consciousness but of methods of reasoning that treat concepts, even of those of political economy, as determinants. His view of how consciousness is determined historically by our social being does not envisage some kind of mechanical transfer of class status to class consciousness. Rather, he works with an epistemology that takes the concepts foundational to political economy as expressions or reflections of the social relations of a mode of production. The difference between ideology and science is the difference between treating those concepts as the primitives of theory and treating them as sites for exploring the social relations that are expressed in them. Thus, the historical rather than further undermining claims to knowledge, provides both the conditions under which knowledge is possible and its limitations.
Reflexivity has become a signal topic in contemporary discussions of qualitative research, especially in educational studies. It shows two general inflections in the literature. Positional reflexivity leads the analyst to examine place, biography, self, and other to understand how they shape the analytic exercise. Textual reflexivity leads the analyst to examine and then disrupt the very exercise of textual representation. The purpose of this article is to develop a critical reading of contemporary formulations of reflexivity in the literature and then reintroduce an earlier discussion in social science, Garfinkel’s ethno-methodological “constitutive reflexivity.” The author suggests that postmodern attachments not withstanding, positional and textual reflexivities may have far more in common with Enlightenment certainties than is commonly allowed. As for constitutive reflexivity, a brief analysis of a videotaped sequence from a fifth-grade classroom is offered as an example of its alternative program and topics.
This paper reflects on a teaching problem highlighted as part of a second-year undergraduate module in sociology, taught at a UK based institution of higher education. The specific teaching problem – that of student learning as encountered and revealed in seminars – was nested within other issues; some of which related to the characteristics of the discipline of sociology itself, whilst others, related to more localised issues such as the choice of materials available for students to access and download. Whilst the lecture and course material was fixed, the flexibility of the seminar framework enabled the exploration and implementation of an ad hoc intervention in the form of ‘de-classrooming’. This intervention was utilised and developed to enhance the knowledge base and conceptual understanding of the student cohort in relation to “Everyday Life” sociology. The ‘de-classrooming’ intervention proved to be an efficacious pedagogic device, which facilitated dynamic levels of flexibility and creativity by both teacher and learners. As a pedagogic device, it manifested a number of key benefits: such as aiding the clarification of conceptual confusions. Ultimately, the de-classrooming intervention operated to establish an empowered sense of ownership where knowledge and knowledge-generation were concerned, and afforded students unorthodox opportunities for learning enhancement.
The purpose of this article is to examine the practical work that participants in a second language (L2) classroom are doing in the course of their actions. These actions are observed through the accounts produced by members, which in turn represent their rationalities, or ethno-methods (Garfinkel, 2002), that are in use during the ongoing sequence of utterances. Based on the extracts presented for analysis, this article concentrates on how participants produce and recognise the context in which they are in, and to which they orient their work; and how this context becomes an inspectable phenomenon of inquiry through ethno-methods, such as the invocation of membership categories (‘teacher’ and ‘student’) produced along the course of the interaction. The materials on which I shall focus my discussions were gathered from a first grade Portuguese as an L2 classroom in a primary school in Macau, China. The results indicated an ongoing production of categorial aspects that enabled participants to have no problems in following the sequential organisation of the talk and other conduct in a way that it was ‘just enough’ to make L2 lesson events happen.
Following Firth & Wagner's (1997, 2007) call for a social reconceptualization of central tenets of second language acquisition (SLA) research, this special issue of The Modern Language Journal focuses on practices for teaching and learning a second language (L2) with special attention to the details of socio-interactional contexts of teaching and learning behaviors/activities. Its goal is to unveil learning processes and practices as socially observable phenomena in situ and in vivo and to discuss pedagogical implications of the findings. As such, the issue focuses on some well-established concepts from the SLA field, including noticing, attention, and corrective feedback, but aims to explore and reconceptualize them in terms of social displays of behavior and social practices as seen through the lens of conversation analysis. This Introduction sets the stage for the articles in the special issue by tracing SLA's interest in socio-interactional aspects of learning before moving on to a brief discussion of the epistemology of CA. We then outline the ways in which the individual articles empirically contribute to a social understanding of learning and cognition in SLA, before summarizing the main points addressed in the special issue.
This book provides insight into the everyday activities co-produced by teachers and young children, demonstrating the fine details of teaching and learning as knowledge is shared through the everyday activities of talk-in-interaction. Adopting an ethnomethodological perspective, together with conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis, it reveals how teaching and learning are jointly accomplished during activities such as pretend play episodes, during disputes, managing illness and talking about the environment. Through in-depth studies of child-teacher interactions, the book explores the means by which knowledge is transferred and episodes of teaching and learning are co-constructed by participants, shedding light on the co-production of social order, the communication of knowledge and manner in which professional and relational identities are made relevant in interaction. As such, Conversation Analysis and Early Childhood Education will be of interest not only to scholars of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, but also to those working in the areas of early childhood studies and pedagogy.
Over the past decade, but especially in the past few years, programs with a promise label have been advanced at the local, state, and federal levels. To advance understanding of the design, implementation, and impact of the many different versions of emerging programs, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers need an organizing framework. To address this knowledge need, this study uses descriptive and cluster analyses of 289 programs that meet the following criteria: have a primary goal of increasing higher education attainment, promise a financial award to eligible students, have some “place” requirement, and focus on the traditional college-age population. Results suggest that state- versus non-state sponsorship, financial award structure (e.g., first/last dollar), type of postsecondary educational institutions at which the award may be used, and eligibility criteria (universal vs. merit or need) are important differentiators among programs. The results provide a foundation for future research on college promise programs.
Educators recognize aha moments as powerful aspects of learning. Yet limited research has been performed regarding how to promote these learning moments. This article describes an exploratory study of aha learning moments as experienced and described by participants. Findings showed use of visuals, scenarios, storytelling, Socratic questions, and expert explanation led to aha learning moments. The findings provide guidance regarding the types of learning strategies that can be used to promote aha moments.
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Has any occupational group been the subject of as much research as elementary or primary school teachers? Written by a former elementary school teacher, this intensive study considers how the foundations of the ongoing teacher reform movement have appealed to researchers through its successive stages. By tracing these ideas back to their historical roots, Jonathan Neufeld illustrates how they actually descend from the physical and biological sciences rather than from student/teacher relationships. Neufeld's in-depth analysis of economic trends during the 20th century shows how economic and educational reforms are closely related. He demonstrates how the century-long movement to develop teachers became obsessed with turning them into soldiers of a failing economy. This book rewrites the existing foundations and outlines a future direction that will excite researchers and practitioners alike. It introduces alternative theoretical foundations and propositions to inspire innovative discussions about teachers' continuing educational development and what it could mean to teach children in classrooms. Since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1982, "teacher development" has become a universal term, used to express an international movement to professionalize teachers. But imagine if the foundations of this research had little to do with life in the classroom. How would we then begin to discover what "development" means to practising teachers? Redefining Teacher Development will appeal to researchers in teacher instruction and development, as well as practising teachers with an interest in how research has conceptualised their field.
'I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell', writes Michael Polanyi, whose work paved the way for the likes of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper. "The Tacit Dimension", originally published in 1967, argues that such tacit knowledge - tradition, inherited practices, implied values, and prejudgments - is a crucial part of scientific knowledge. Back in print for a new generation of students and scholars, this volume challenges the assumption that skepticism, rather than established belief, lies at the heart of scientific discovery.
How do artists and designers teaching in universities communicate creative practise as they teach art/design? There is much discussion about the ‘mystery’ of creativity, but little understanding of how teaching occurs in creative contexts. Understanding this topic better will develop greater knowledge within the academy of how art and design is communicated by the creative practitioners who teach it, and could benefit other academic disciplines. In this article, I draw on data from a recent Australian study with artist/designer-academics. It provides rich qualitative data to explore in detail how artists and designers teaching in universities communicate creative practise as they teach art/design. Tacit and embodied knowledge theories are used to provide frameworks for explaining this phenomenon. I argue that artist/designer-academics embody their creative practises and communicate these through teaching in both tacit and explicit forms, and that they do this through modelling knowledge, skills and practise.
This study examines the practical work of a pair of students and an instructor using probeware in a mechanics lab. The aim of the study is to describe and discuss a type of interactional sequence that we refer to as dark matter, the ordinary backdrop to the extraordinary sequences that are easily recognizable as clear-cut instances of learning. Although this work is downplayed in the research literature, describing it is critical to properly understanding lab work as an educational practice. With a focus on the negotiation of disciplined perception, we analyze a number of episodes wherein a pair of students and an instructor struggle with the construction and interpretation of a graph depicting a linear relationship between force and acceleration. We demonstrate an intimate interplay between how the students display their problems and understandings and how the instructor tries to make the subject matter content visible and thus learnable. The analyzed episodes are illuminating with regard to the analytical notion of disciplined perception as applied to graph interpretation; the cognitive and practical competencies involved in producing, recognizing, and understanding graphs in mechanics; and the interactive work by which these competencies are made into objects of learning and instruction.
Examining a fragment of interaction that occurred during a surgery at a teaching hospital, we explore how particular instructed experiences are produced for two trainees, a surgeon in the residency program and a medical student in a surgical clerkship. We are concerned with what is produced as learnable in each case. Stated slightly differently, we are interested in the ways in which the attending surgeon uses demonstrations as instruction and the ways in which recipients of that instruction, in this case the resident and the clerk, respond with enactments of those demonstrated actions. The recipients of this kind of instruction participate in a form of experiential learning in which they enact their own versions of the instructor's demonstrated actions to be observed and assessed by the instructor. These enactments provide learners with experiential access to the instructor's demonstrated actions. They are designed to be experiences that learners may draw upon to make experientially warranted claims at some later time.
This article describes the findings from a study of the transformation experiences of African war survivors to understand how the process of transformative learning is experienced in posttrauma contexts. A narrative inquiry was conducted based on 12 interviews of African war survivors in Canada and 6 autobiographical accounts of survivors living in Canada, United States, and England. The results show that the following six themes of a postwar narrative define the process of transformation: (1) resonance as transformative learning moment, (2) realizing purpose in the postwar narrative, (3) social consciousness as an outcome of transformation learning, (4) determination: the will to achieve postwar goals, (5) spiritual and moral development, and (6) value of life. The theme of resonance as transformative learning moment is the core of this process and raises questions for the practice of transformative learning where trauma and social change are part of the context.
This paper builds on the work of Baker (1985:361) who contends that "[t]here is little evidence of cumulative scholarship ... during the first decade of the journal," 1973 to 1983. Examination of the papers published in Teaching Sociology from 1984 to 1999 suggests that a scholarship of teaching and learning is emerging. While many characteristics of the papers and the authors remain constant, when compared to the early years of the journal, it is clear that fewer papers contain no assessment at all, and an increasing number of papers contain simple assessment measures.
This article examines the sociological significance of sociolinguistic research in the area of education. The goal of my examination is to demonstrate that the study of language use in naturally occurring situations (1) contributes to an understanding of the role of language in education, (2) contributes to an understanding of the role of schooling in social stratification, and (3) contributes to sociological theory by revealing issues not otherwise available for sociological analysis. In the body of the article, sociolinguistic studies of language use in contrasting settings are reviewed, and studies which suggest that language is the medium through which stratification occurs in schools are discussed. Before reviewing selected sociolinguistic studies in educational settings, I will place this line of research in the context of social stratification theories and the historical period of the work.
Traditionally, when the human sciences consider foundational issues such as epistemology and method, they do so by theorising them. Ethnomethodology, however, attempts to make such foundational matters a focus of attention, and directly enquires into them. This book reappraises the significance of ethnomethodology in sociology in particular, and in the human sciences in general. It demonstrates how, through its empirical enquiries into the ordered properties of social action, ethnomethodology provides a radical respecification of the foundations of the human sciences, an achievement that has often been misunderstood. The chapters, by leading scholars, take up the specification of action and order in theorising, logic, epistemology, measurement, evidence, the social actor, cognition, language and culture, and moral judgement, and underscore the ramifications for the human sciences of the ethnomethodologist's approach. This is a systematic and coherent collection which explicitly addresses fundamental conceptual issues. The clear exposition of the central tenets of ethnomethodology is especially welcome.
In this article, I have examined how a drama-based practicum had an impact on learning in meaningful ways for preservice teachers and grade-6 students during a three-week alternative teaching placement. Because the nature of drama-based teaching and learning invites participants to think and feel with ideas and emotions continually intersecting, I investigated cognitive and affective learning moments during a collective play development unit. Participants' recorded responses indicate that using this process to address social justice issues created a conducive and rewarding learning environment. /// Dans cet article, l'auteur explique comment un stage de trois semaines faisant appel à l'art dramatique a eu des répercussions positives sur l'apprentissage chez des étudiants-maîtres en stage et des élèves de 6e année. Comme les idées et les émotions sont continuellement en interaction dans l'enseignement et l'apprentissage basés sur l'art dramatique, l'auteur a étudié les apprentissages cognitifs et affectifs des participants au cours des trois semaines durant lesquelles s'est déroulé un projet d'élaboration collective d'une pièce de théâtre. Les réponses enregistrées des participants indiquent que le recours à ce processus pour traiter de questions de justice sociale a créé un environnement propice à l'apprentissage.
The paper analyses an interview describing how K came to be defined by her friends as mentally ill. The method of analysis assumes that the structure of the conceptual scheme `mental illness' which the reader uses in recognizing `mental illness' is isomorphic with that organizing the text and hence is discoverable `in' it. The full text of the interview is presented as the data. The analysis explicates the interpretation of the text as a method of reading. The text is found to provide instructions for its interpretation and for the authorization of its facticity. K's mental illness is to be located in the collection of instances of K's behaviour which the interview records. How is behaviour to be described as `mentally ill type' behaviour? It is suggested that the interview as a whole organizes a `cutting-out' procedure whereby K's behaviour is presented as making sense neither to her friends nor to the reader of the text. The procedure involves showing for each instance of her behaviour as well as for the collection as a whole that K's behaviour is not properly provided for by relevant social rules or definitions of the situation. To be recognizable as `mentally ill type' behaviour examples of K's actions must be constituted as anomalies rather than as deviations from a norm or rule.
Stronach and Allan state that the use of humor by the disabled is an attempt to reintegrate themselves back into a social surround. Seeing this assignment of a reintegration function as a bit too teleological, and given the absence of interactional data, the reviewer is critical of the authors' reliance on literary research and offers an alternative way to study humor in interaction.
It is first argued that a niche for information science, unclaimed by any other discipline, can be found by admitting the near-autonomy of Popper's World III - the world of objective knowledge. The task of information science can then be defined as the exploration of this world of objective knowledge which is an extension of, but is distinct from, the world of documentation and librarianship. The Popperian ontology then has to be extended to admit the concept of information and its relation to subjective and objective know ledge. The spaces of Popper's three worlds are then con sidered. It is argued that cognitive and physical spaces are not identical and that this lack of identity creates problems for the proper quantification of information phenomena.
The sociological study of education involves focusing upon teaching and learning, upon explicit instruction and the acquisition of the tacit knowledge and skills that are essential if learners are to become enculturated into a new habitus. Sociological insight into these processes can come from research on conventional educational settings, but is greater when unfamiliar, settings are studied. This paper focuses upon a pedagogic setting of an unconventional kind – a martial art, capoeira.
Harold Garfinkel wrote a series of highly detailed and lengthy ‘memos’ during his time (1951-53) at Princeton, where remarkable developments in information theory were taking place. These very substantial manuscripts have been edited by Anne Warfield Rawls in Toward a Sociological Theory of Information (Garfinkel 2008). This paper explores some of the implications of these memos, which we suggest are still relevant for the study of ‘information’ and information theory. Definitional privilege of ‘information’ as a technical term has been arrogated by information science, which thereby excludes the interactional occasions of use of ‘information’. The authors examine some ‘professional’ and ‘laic’ determinations of ‘information’. Looking at in situ uses of ‘information’ shows how dealing with ‘information’ is characterized by ad hoc practices, such as specifications, ‘authorization’ and ‘particularization’ procedures. The authors report on a series of workplace studies in academic libraries, looking at how librarians account for ‘information’ through practices of classification. Classifying ‘information’ is a member’s local accomplishment, and explicating practices of classifying ‘information’ undermines the formal-analytic project of the ‘Philosophy of Information,’ as formulated, for instance, by Luciano Floridi. Implications of Garfinkel’s work must remain beyond the purview of information science if it is to maintain its status as the recognized field dealing with ‘information’. However, such omission risks ‘losing the phenomenon’ of ‘information’: to adapt an argument from Dorothy Smith (Catalyst, 8, pp 39–54, 1974), it trades upon decontextualized uses and recontextualizes ‘information’ for the practical purposes of formal analysis.
In this article Hugh Mehan calls for a new approach to the study of schooling. He notes that the research methods that dominated the study of school effects in the last two decades—large-scale surveys and field observation—have failed to examine the processes by which school participants create school structures. The approach Mehan advocates, "constitutive ethnography," would give equal attention to the processes as well as the outcomes of structuring activities. He outlines the method of constitutive ethnography and illustrates its application in studies of classroom organization, testing encounters, and counseling sessions. Mehan concludes by calling for "constitutive career studies" of individuals as they participate in a range of school events.
In this paper I shall outline the approach to consciousness adopted by ethnomethodology and its `associate'conversation(al) analysis. I shall attempt to do this by taking a minimalist stance, namely a basic formulation of the elements of these approaches, trying to strip away the ornate superstructures which have been erected upon that basis. I shall proceed in two ways. First, I shall seek to define ethnomethodology and conversation analysis by contrasting them to varying degrees with a variety of other approaches: symbolic interactionism and, derivatively, the work of Goffman, the -social psychology of Rom Harre and his associates and with Norbert Wiley. Secondly, I shall give some examples of the use of the notion of `self'held by ethnomethodologists and conversation analysts that take a definitive turn towards a non-ironic, non-mentalist, non-essentialist and non-cognitivist approach to knowledge, consciousness and self.
Teaching and learning the various aspects of a school discipline's contents (its ‘subject knowledge') are obviously part of the main agenda for high schools. While a vast body of material exists on curriculum contents, on pedagogic techniques for their dissemination and on the psychology of learning, very little attention has been paid to actual sites of learning in relation to the production of knowledge and its acquisition. This is especially so regarding the discursive practices which are the main means of teaching and learning in those places.