Questions, Instructions, and Modes of Listening in the Joint Production of Guided Action: A Study of Student–Teacher Collaboration in Handicraft Education

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• classroom interaction
• educational discourse
• handicraft education
• sloyd

Notes

¹ The pictures of Delsbo embroidery and Järvsö embroidery are republished with the kind permission of Bonnier Publications A/S, Köpenhamn.

² Satin stitch is a series of stitches laid closely together side by side (see picture 1).

³ Stem stitch is regular small stitches along the line of a design (see picture 1).

⁴ The teacher has given her written consent to participate in the KOMOLÄR project.

⁵ The episodes we present were transcribed using a notation inspired by conversation analysis. Pauses are represented by numbers of seconds within parentheses, with (.) indicating micro pauses, italics showing emphasis, and co‐occurring talk being horizontally aligned, with square brackets marking the onset of overlap. Extended vowel sounds are marked with colons, as in e:::h. The degree symbol ° means that the speech enclosed was noticeably quieter and speech enclosed by * indicates a laughing voice. Comments within double parentheses mark additional comments. The original transcripts are in Swedish, please contact the author for a copy.

⁶ All names are fictional. The students gave their written consent to participate in the KOMOLÄR project.

⁷ Kurbits refers an old Swedish floral painting style.