Abstract
This article explores embodied responses to teacher reproaches during classroom interaction. Drawing on multimodal conversation analysis as a method, the analysis focuses on teacher-initiated reproach-sequences and particularly on the specific touch type that is produced within the sequence: student-to-student hand-on-shoulder touch. In the analyzed sequences, the teacher reproach or critical evaluation is addressed to an individual student who responds to it verbally and through embodied orientation followed by an embodied response, a hand-on-shoulder touch by a student located close to the addressed student. By constructing an embodied response with recycled touch type that is frequently used by teachers for pedagogical purposes, the student that uses the hand-on-shoulder touch orients to a dual role in classroom interaction: first to the academic aspect of the student role by following the teacher agenda, and second to the aspect of peer relations and social bonding by teasing and displaying compassion towards the reproached student.
Highlights
The institutional roles of teacher and student in classrooms are constructed through a realization of the rights and responsibilities in classroom interaction (e.g. Gardner, 2013; McHoul, 1978)
Our article presents an analysis of sequences that involve teachers’ reproaches or critical evaluations addressed to an individual student as well as the responses of both the addressee and the peers located next to the addressee
We have focused on embodied responses, and even on the tactile practice of student-to-student hand-on-shoulder touch, which is initiated by the peer located next to the addressed student
Summary
The institutional roles of teacher and student in classrooms are constructed through a realization of the rights and responsibilities in classroom interaction (e.g. Gardner, 2013; McHoul, 1978). We examine a certain type of tactile response to teacher reproaches, the handon-shoulder touch (Heinonen, Karvonen, & Tainio, 2020), initiated by a student and addressed to another. Even though teachers are aware of the sensitivity to students’ individual territories of self, this type of touching is considered as one of the routine pedagogic tools in comprehensive schools (Heinonen, Karvonen, & Tainio, 2020; Tainio et al, 2019) about territories of self, see Goffman, 1972) Touching one another remains a highly frequent and mundane means of interacting between peers in classrooms, and the touch is used both as an expression of intimacy, friendship and social bonding, as well as exclusion, bullying and violence According to our observations on Finnish classroom interaction, a frequent type of touch is the hand-on-shoulder touch, with all its variations, which can be initiated both by a teacher and a student but usually the only targets of this touch are students (Heinonen, Karvonen, & Tainio, 2020; Tainio et al, 2019). Before analyzing the examples, we present a brief review of the research on reproaches and critical evaluations as well as on touching in classroom interaction
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