Talking moral stances into being: the interactional management of moral reasoning in Aggression Replacement Training (ART) classroom sessions
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Johanna Svahn
Johanna Svahn is Lecturer at the Department of Education at Uppsala University. Her research interests cover children's use of multimodal resources (talk, gaze, gestures, spatial arrangements) in interactional practices (e.g., insults, social exclusion, teasing, and storytelling) in peer group interaction, as well as the interrelation between morality and institutional practices in classroom interaction. Address for correspondence: Department of Education, Uppsala University, Box 2136, 750 02 Uppsala, Sweden 〈johanna.svahn@edu.uu.se 〉.
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Ann-Carita Evaldsson
Ann-Carita Evaldsson is Professor at the Department of Education, Uppsala University. Her work draws on a language socialization approach combined with conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis. Her focus is mainly on children's interactional practices (gossips, insults, disputes, storytelling, corrective routines, etc.) in educational settings, addressing topics such as the social organization of play and games, morality, identity-work (gender, class, and ethnicity), peer learning, and multilingualism. Address for correspondence: Department of Education, Uppsala University, Box 2136, 750 02 Uppsala, Sweden 〈ann-carita.evaldsson@edu.uu.se 〉.
Abstract
The present paper explores the accounting practices through which alternative moral stances are talked into being, and made sense of, as children account for the morally charged topic of “fighting.” Data are drawn from ethnographic work, combined with video recordings of classroom sessions informed by the ART (Aggression Replacement Training) moral reasoning training program, in a fifth-grade class in a Swedish elementary school. An ethnomethodological approach is taken toward how features of the talk-in-interaction during these sessions indirectly make available systems of accountability motivated by institutionalized standards to talk about morality in a certain way. As will be demonstrated, the teachers' use of reversed polarity questions, assertions, and formulations work to hold children accountable for producing a certain moral stance. It is found that the children have learned to artfully design their contributions (justifications, detailing, second-stories, event descriptions, extreme cases) so that they can both comply with and subvert the institutionalized standards at the same time.
About the authors
Johanna Svahn is Lecturer at the Department of Education at Uppsala University. Her research interests cover children's use of multimodal resources (talk, gaze, gestures, spatial arrangements) in interactional practices (e.g., insults, social exclusion, teasing, and storytelling) in peer group interaction, as well as the interrelation between morality and institutional practices in classroom interaction. Address for correspondence: Department of Education, Uppsala University, Box 2136, 750 02 Uppsala, Sweden 〈johanna.svahn@edu.uu.se〉.
Ann-Carita Evaldsson is Professor at the Department of Education, Uppsala University. Her work draws on a language socialization approach combined with conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis. Her focus is mainly on children's interactional practices (gossips, insults, disputes, storytelling, corrective routines, etc.) in educational settings, addressing topics such as the social organization of play and games, morality, identity-work (gender, class, and ethnicity), peer learning, and multilingualism. Address for correspondence: Department of Education, Uppsala University, Box 2136, 750 02 Uppsala, Sweden 〈ann-carita.evaldsson@edu.uu.se〉.
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- The semiotics of inter-panel transition in comic-strip postcards
- Reported writing in court: putting evidence “on record”
- Decrypting the text: the construction and function of disagreement in Bible study sessions
- Talking moral stances into being: the interactional management of moral reasoning in Aggression Replacement Training (ART) classroom sessions
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- The semiotics of inter-panel transition in comic-strip postcards
- Reported writing in court: putting evidence “on record”
- Decrypting the text: the construction and function of disagreement in Bible study sessions
- Talking moral stances into being: the interactional management of moral reasoning in Aggression Replacement Training (ART) classroom sessions
