Leiten oder leiten lassen? Gesprächsanalytische Beobachtungen zur interaktiven Aushandlung der Leitungsfunktion im Klassenrat

Abstract

Abstract The class council is a teaching format which takes place regularly, aiming at the teacher stepping back from his/her conventional role as the organizing authority in order to allow the students to participate directly in decision-making processes concerning their everyday school life. This format results in a unique interactional constellation among the participants. In this article, we explore this interactional constellation from the perspective of conversation and interaction analysis. On the basis of videographies of class council sessions in which students and teachers occupy different participation roles, we ask how those roles are negotiated interactively. With a specific focus on the teacher and the moderator (student), we ask to what extent the teacher is able to delegate leadership responsibility among the group. It is shown that teachers are only partly able to do so. Often, teachers influence the interaction on a multimodal level. The challenge of organizing the class council lies in the need for the participants to accomplish different (and in part incompatible) interactional orders: on the one hand, teachers as well as students have to consider their specific participation roles; on the other hand, their participation roles are framed institutionally and cannot easily be changed.