Abstract
This study takes an interest in instructions and instructed actions in the context of manual skills. The analysis focuses on a video recorded episode where a teacher demonstrates how to crochet chain stitches, requests a group of students to reproduce her actions, and then repeatedly corrects the attempts of one of the students. The initial request, and the students’ responses to it, could be seen as preliminary to the series of corrective sequences that come next: the request and the following attempts make it possible for the teacher to launch instructional sequences specifically designed and addressed to the students who need further guidance. In the interaction between the teacher and the novice student, the reasoned character of the instructed actions is not explained so much as installed and tuned. The materiality of the project makes it possible for the two parties to methodically and meticulously adjust their actions in accordance with each other, and towards the gradual realization of the aimed-for results. In connection to this, a number of issues pertaining to the reproducibility and recognizability of manual skills are raised: how instructions-in-interaction orient towards the progression of the skill rather than the interaction itself; how attempts by and mistakes of the instructed party provide grounds for further instruction; and, consequently, how instructions in the form of corrections build on the instructor’s continuous assessments of the instructed actions.
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Acknowledgments
The research reported here was carried out as part of the project Communication and Learning in Sloyd Practices (KOMOLÄR) and the Linnaeus Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in Contemporary Society (LinCS)—both funded by the Swedish Research Council. The text was written while the first author was a visiting scholar at the Centre of Language, Interaction and Culture (CLIC) with a grant from the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT). Special gratitude goes to Chuck and Candy Goodwin for the wealth of insights they shared during this visit. We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the students and teachers in the investigated settings.
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Lindwall, O., Ekström, A. Instruction-in-Interaction: The Teaching and Learning of a Manual Skill. Hum Stud 35, 27–49 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-012-9213-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-012-9213-5