Sören Ohlhus

Fluency and the integration of semiotic resources in interactional learning processes

Abstract Fluency plays an important and largely unreflected role as a diagnostic tool in learning interactions. In our paper, we present a case study of videographed remedial lessons in mathematics, addressing the question of how useful the concept of fluency is for a description of learning as an observable and accountable interactive process. The concept of fluency in discourse and specifically in learning interactions is discussed and elaborated on the basis of our findings. In the reconstruction of interactive learning processes, fluency proves to be a phenomenon towards which both tutors and pupils orient themselves, while relying on different aspects of fluency in their coordinated effort to establish a global schema of calculation steps. In addition, fluency can provide a window on the progressive nature of a longitudinal learning process. As the pupil’s performance of the technique to be learned becomes more and more fluent, this can serve as an indication of the planning processes involved, allowing for a more integrated realisation of the practice. This integration can be made clear by examining different aspects of interactive, multimodal and linguistic fluency.

Editorial to special issue ‘The social organisation of learning in classroom interaction and beyond’

Studies on learning-in-interaction inspired by conversation analysis share the view that learning and teaching take place in the domain of public social practices. This view establishes a unique perspective on learning as an achievement in embodied talk-in-interaction. A growing body of research focus on the role of linguistic and other semiotic resources in the social organisation of learning processes (e.g. Goodwin 2000, 2013; Jakonen 2015; Bateman 2016; Heller 2016), analyse their sequential organisation (e.g. Mehan 1985; Zemel and Koschmann 2011), or are concerned with mutually constructed conversational practices and routines of learning activities (e.g. Atkinson and Delamont 1977) and how they may change over time (cf. Hellermann 2008; Kern submitted). Building on the results of this line of research, it is the aim of this special issue to provide a collection of papers that further pursue the questions of what makes an interaction – within classroom or beyond – a learning and teaching interaction, and how participants organise themselves and the environment in order to mutually construct a successful learning process. Learning processes are seen as characterised by specific situational aspects, which contribute to their establishment as learning processes. Situational aspects include the environment and the semiotic resources it provides, the interactional asymmetry typical to educational settings, the participants’ locally negotiated roles despite the existing asymmetry and the pedagogical focus that has to be established via the construction of learning objects. As learning processes unfold in time, participants need to organise themselves and the semiotic resources provided by the situational setting. The papers’ joint analytical focus is the in situ interactional organisation of learning processes, in which participants employ a wide variety of semiotic resources to outline and establish learning objects by accomplishing interactional practices, while reflecting upon and negotiating their role in this process. Within this shared focus, two main themes can be identified, which the special issue’s contributions attend to. One theme is concerned with how access to learning objects is established and managed by participants; the second theme deals with the use and organisation of semiotic resources for the constitution of specific practices within sequences of learning processes in educational settings. Whereas the first theme concerns the multimodality of practices occurring in learning processes and their contribution to the construction of learning objects, the second theme relates to the reflexivity of interactionally established