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ORGANIZING CLASSROOM CONTEXTS: AN ANALYSIS OF INTERACTION IN TWO COLLEGE CLASSROOMS (CONVERSATIONAL, VIDEOTAPE, INSTRUCTION, LECTURE, ETHNOMETHODOLOGY)
Abstract
The study provides a description and analysis of interaction in two college classrooms to examine the relationship between interaction and social context. Specifically, the study focused on the question: how do college classroom participants interactionally organize, maintain, and change the social contexts of the classroom? By grounding the findings in video-tape recordings and transcripts, the data are retrievable and the findings are open to reexamination and evaluation. The study approached the relationship between interaction and context from an ethnomethodological perspective and utilized conversational analytic techniques in the analysis. Three claims drawn from an ethnomethodological perspective guided the study: (1) the meaning of any particular interactional sequence is dependent on the context in which it occurs; (2) contexts are the participants' practical accomplishments; and (3) contexts have standard and patterned features which can be observed, described, and analyzed. These claims enabled the study to identify typical classroom contexts and the participants' contextualizing work in solving the routine problems of organizing, maintaining, and changing contexts. From the literature a framework was developed for analyzing contexts which consisted of four categories of contextual features: activity, identity, time, and space. Using this framework the study identified five phase level contexts during each class session: Before Class, Beginning Class, Class, Ending Class, and After Class. A description and analysis of Beginning Class, Class, and Ending Class revealed the contextualizing work that participants do to solve their routine problems of making sense of one another and coordinating their activity. The study makes three contributions to future research on interaction in classrooms and multi-party settings. First, the study provides a framework for examining social contexts and contextualizing practices in any multi-party settings. Second, the study offers a model of classroom interaction which emphasizes the work of both the instructor and students in classroom contextualizing work. Third, the study offers a model for improving classroom interaction which emphasizes the actual practices of instructors and students.
Subject Area
Communication
Recommended Citation
MCGUKIN, JOHN DREW, "ORGANIZING CLASSROOM CONTEXTS: AN ANALYSIS OF INTERACTION IN TWO COLLEGE CLASSROOMS (CONVERSATIONAL, VIDEOTAPE, INSTRUCTION, LECTURE, ETHNOMETHODOLOGY)" (1986). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8614465.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8614465