Procedural Display and Classroom Lessons

ABSTRACT

Based on the microethnographic analysis of classroom lessons and on the application of cultural anthropology theory to classroom education, we argue that classroom lessons need to be understood as procedural display. Procedural display is display by teacher and students to each other of a set of interactional procedures which themselves count as doing a lesson. We argue that procedural display is not the same as nor necessarily related to the acquisition of intended academic or nonacademic content or skills. We further argue that acknowledgment of procedural display calls into question recent process-product research and effectiveness studies, among others. We argue that theoretical models of how classrooms work need to accommodate classroom lessons as procedural display.