Oskar Lindwall

The Dark Matter of Lab Work: Illuminating the Negotiation of Disciplined Perception in Mechanics

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.

Contrasting the use of tools for presentation and critique: Some cases from architectural education

This study investigates video recordings of design reviews in architectural education, focusing on how presentations and discussions of designs are contingent on the specific tools employed. In the analyzed recordings, three different setups are utilized: traditional posters, digital slide-show technologies, and combinations of the two. This range of different setups provides a set of contrasts that make visible the role of technologies in shaping the ways in which the reviews are conducted. The analysis is structured in three themes. First, we examine the sequential organization of digital presentations in relation to the spatial structure of poster-based presentations. Second, the different ways in which shared attention is established in digital, paper-based, and hybrid presentation practices are analyzed. Third, we address part-whole relations—how details in presented materials are put in relation to the overarching project or the presentation as a whole. Taken together, the analyses suggest that the detailed organization of the design review is transformed in subtle yet consequential ways through the introduction of digital slide-show technologies. These transformations are consequential not only locally, for the design review itself, but also for the instructive work that is accomplished through this practice. We conclude by discussing some implications for design, arguing that an increased awareness of how the practice is influenced by the different setups might be key for the proper adaptation of presentation technologies to particular purposes.

Vulgar competence, ethnomethodological indifference and curricular design

In the paper, we discuss the relation between ethnomethodologically inspired video analysis and curricular design. Often the relation between analysis and design is taken as a relation between descriptive and prescriptive accounts. Conceptualised in this way, ethnomethodology and curricular design is a world apart. With a focus on ethnomethodologys take on analytical and normative questions, however, some ethnomethodological insights might play an interesting role in investigation as well as development of computer based learning environments. The discussion is structured around four analytical commitments: become vulgarly competent; be indifferent to formal analytic methods, not member concerns; focus on actions and immanent pedagogies, not learning; and, do hybrid studies.

Questions, instructions, and modes of listening in the joint production of guided action : A study of student-teacher collaboration in handicraft education

This article concerns a central issue in education as an institutional activity: instructions and their role in guiding student activities and understanding. In the study, we investigate the tensions between specifics and generalities in the joint production of guided action. This issue is explored in the context of handicraft education—or more specifically, a teacher education program in sloyd. Handicraft is particularly interesting when analysing instructions, since the purposes of instructions are often dual: (1) to bring about a broad, instructionally relevant mode of understanding artefacts (including their origin, aesthetics, etc.), and (2) to guide manual action in the production of such artefacts. In the article, a detailed analysis of an instructional sequence, which includes the production of two distinct types of embroideries, is reported. The analysis sheds light on the role of educational examples in sloyd as well as on the related issue concerning the distinctive difference between the activities of listening to instructions as part of a lecture, on the one hand, and, on the other, listening to instructions in order to be able to accomplish a task.

Inquiries of the body Novice questions and the instructable observability of endodontic scenes

This study explores questions posed by students in response to live video broadcasts of dental treatments. The aim of the study is to show and discuss the reflexive relationship between the questions, what they were occasioned by and how they are responded to. Procedures and anatomical features, that for the seminar leader are unproblematically seen in endodontic terms, repeatedly present problems for the students. Visible but unrecognized shifts in the dentist’s work, for instance, provide occasions for questions of the form ‘What is he doing now?’. In the midst of an ongoing procedure, questions tend to be formulated as noticings that elicit instruction either about some detail of the dentist’s actions or about what a generic ‘one should’ or ‘should not do’, what ‘frequently’ happens and so on. It is shown, however, that the movement between specific here-and-now features on the one hand and more general issues on the other characterizes the entire scope of the relevant material, particularly because the seminar leaders’ answers tend to place even minute details within more general endodontic considerations.

Epistemic status and the recognizability of social actions

Although the production and recognition of social actions have been central concerns for conversation analysis (CA) from the outset, it has recently been argued that CA is yet to develop a systematic analysis of ‘action formation’. As a partial remedy to this situation, John Heritage introduces ‘epistemic status’, which he claims is an unavoidable component of the production and recognition of social action. His proposal addresses the question how is social action produced and recognized? by reference to another question how is relative knowledge recognized? Despite the importance placed on the latter question, it is not clear how it is to be answered in particular cases. We argue that the introduction of epistemic status builds on a reformulation of the action formation problem that unnecessarily de-emphasizes the importance of the sequential environment. Our re-analyses of key sequences cast doubts on the empirical grounding of the epistemic program, and question whether the fundamental role of epistemic status has been convincingly demonstrated.

Space and discourse interleaved: intertextuality and interpretation in the education of architects

This study examines a sequence of instructional work taken from the practice of critique in architectural education. In analyzing the ways in which one instructor assesses and interprets how a group of students have worked with references to other architects and to well-known buildings, the study provides a respecification of notions of interpretation and intertextuality as practical features of design work: design anticipates professional interpretation, and is thus prospectively oriented towards the retrospective ascription of intertextual meanings. The sequence revolves around highly ideologically charged sites. The instructional work around the use of references to these sites highlights the modes of architectural reasoning implicated in the competent handling of ideology in relation to aesthetic expression. Finally, the space of the critique itself is shown as a rich site for the reproduction of architectural knowledge, in which multiple spatial and disciplinary contexts are embedded through representation, discourse, and embodied practice.

‘Working in the dark’: Swedish general dental practitioners on the complexity of root canal treatment

AIM To explore elements of reasoning and understanding that might obstruct the performance of good-quality root canal treatment (RCT) and make general dental practitioners (GDPs) produce and accept root fillings of inferior quality. METHODOLOGY The study was designed as a qualitative and explorative study based on seven videotaped focus group interviews analysed by means of qualitative content analysis. Nine predetermined questions were followed. Thirty-three GDPs (4-6 dentists/interview), employed in the Public Dental Health Service in Gothenburg, Sweden, participated. RESULTS Feelings such as anxiety, frustration, stress or exhaustion were associated with RCT. In general, RCT was regarded as complex, mysterious and embedded in uncertainty. A feeling of loss of control was frequently described in relation to all procedural steps from negotiating the canal to prognostic deliberations. Reasons could include challenging canals, complicated instruments and the fact that treatment had to be performed in a concealed space without visible insight. Several dentists questioned the requirements for correctly performing RCT, and some indicated that striving towards optimal technical root filling quality should not be expected in each case in general practice. Most of the GDPs were unable to complete a case within the remuneration system, and they therefore either spent more time than the set fee allowed for or accepted a suboptimal root filling when the time limit was reached. CONCLUSIONS High levels of stress and frustration in relation to RCT were reported by the GDPs. RCT was regarded as complex and was often performed with an overall sense of lack of control.

The body in medical work and medical training: An introduction

Within ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, there is a longstanding interest in the social and practical organization of medical work (see ten Have, 1995). As testified by a large number of publications, encounters between healthcare professionals and clients have also proven to be a generative domain of empirical research. In particular, there are many studies of the communication between physicians and patients in primary care. Through detailed analysis of talk-in-interaction, these studies have examined a wealth of topics and phenomena, including the structure of patient interviews, the delivery of diagnosis and the management of interactional troubles (e.g. Heritage and Maynard, 2006; Stivers, 2007). This special issue draws together scholars from North America, Europe and Japan who use video records to analyse medical work and medical training. The contributors all investigate settings ‘beyond the doctor–patient consultation’ (Pilnick et al., 2009: 790). While the studies build on previous research on healthcare communication, and take an interest in the sequential organization of talk, they also share a concern for the ways in which visual, embodied and material features are constitutive of the investigated settings – especially the various ways in which the body becomes part of the workplace interaction. For almost two decades, a handful of researchers and research groups have explored video recordings of operating theatres (Hindmarsh and Pilnick, 2002; Koschmann et al., 2007, 2011; Mondada, 2003, 2011; Pilnick and Hindmarsh, 1999; Sanchez Svensson, 2007; Sanchez Svensson et al., 2009; Zemel et al., 2011). In this issue, there are two studies that continue to investigate interactions that occur during surgeries. Mondada analyses the coordination of surgical teams with a special interest for the ways in which directives and requests are used and responded to. Zemel and Koschmann also look at the use and uptake of directives, but in their case there is a particular interest in issues of learning and instruction. Moving from surgeries to discussions about diagnostic work, Lymer and his co-authors examine how a group of medical specialists attempts to formulate potential ‘pitfalls’ in the use of a new radiographic technology – how, for instance, the professionals discuss the ways in which the technique renders and refracts bodily structures and entities. Two studies in the issue address the interplay between students 514671 DIS0010.1177/1461445613514671Discourse StudiesLindwall research-article2014