The Perception of Order in Apparent Disorder: a classroom scene observed

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Abstract This paper shows how student teachers can learn to see, through the analysis of videotaped classroom scenes, the underlying rules informing the patterns of interactions between teachers and pupils. In particular they can learn to see from the perspective of pupils who are from different backgrounds to themselves. On first viewing, the classroom scene analysed in this paper is incomprehensible, even frightening, to student teachers. Close analysis, using the tools of interpretative sociology, allows the pupil activity to be seen as quite coherent, as non threatening, and even as laudable, given the way the classroom looks from his perspective.