En focalisant notre attention sur l'atelier comme lieu de formation des improvisateurs et improvisatrices de théâtre, cet article vise à réintroduire le Théâtre d'Improvisation dans le processus d'apprentissage qui l'accompagne. Dirigé par un·e chef·fe d'atelier chargé·e de la gestion des exercices, des consignes ainsi que des retours, l'atelier se construit comme un jeu interactionnel et discursif visant à transmettre des compétences à improviser. Ce processus suppose des modalités d'ajustements collectifs et de compréhension mutuelle entre les comédien·ne·s qui s'exercent et le·la (...) chef·fe d'atelier qui prend le rôle de conseiller·ère, d'évaluateur·rice et d'enseignant·e. En ce sens, le travail d'atelier relève d'une dynamique particulière en tant que performance avant la performance publique, impliquant d'élargir la notion d'exercice à ses débordements interactionnels. Au sein de ce cadre pédagogique, le retour, moment d'échanges en aval de l'exercice, devient un phénomène primordial. S'il recouvre différentes fonctions telles que l'évaluation, la critique ou le conseil, le retour offre aussi la possibilité de déréférencer le propos de l'exercice en question pour traiter du Théâtre d'Improvisation comme pratique. Le retour dans sa dimension épisémiotique permet dès lors de saisir le passage de l'exercice, comme phénomène éphémère et localisé à la pratique du Théâtre d'Improvisation, comme discipline stabilisée et collective. (shrink)

Developing novices’ proficiency in skilful activities is central to the reproduction of human societies. The interactional practices through which instruction is accomplished have provided a rich focus for ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies examining classroom settings, and, more recently, non-classroom environments of instruction in practical and manual skills. This paper examines the work of instruction in basketball training and in particular the correction of player performances, which are a ubiquitous and central feature of instruction in basketball training sessions. A central (...) part of this instructional action relies on the coach observing training activities to determine players’ competencies and to extract relevant correctables from the players’ embodied displays, which are in turn embedded within complex arrangements of rapidly moving bodies situated in material environments. In this paper we examine the visual-analytic work involved in both organizing and observing a basketball training activity, demonstrating the sequential layering of multiple membership categorization devices drawn upon in producing and recognizing actions in this setting. We argue that the coach deploys spatial orientations which function analogously to membership categorization devices, with players’ bodily positions relative to one another and the material structure of the surround generating category-like sets of rights, responsibilities, and sequential relevancies. As we demonstrate, these orientations provide crucial resources for the identification of players’ errors and thereby for the organization of instruction in interaction in this setting. (shrink)

This article deals with surgical practice as it is locally organized within the course of the operation; it focuses on the way in which surgical action shaping the body for the local purposes of the operation is organized in a timely, situated, interactive manner. In order to do that, I offer a systematic analysis of the instructions addressed by a chief surgeon to his assistant in the form of directives during a surgical operation, as well as of instructed actions of (...) the assistant following the directives of the surgeon. In this way, I aim to show how surgery is a methodic collaborative achievement, relying on finely tuned coordination between staff members. More generally, the article sketches a systematic and detailed analysis of instructions as situated accomplishments in time, and of instructed action as resulting from an embodied and indexical understanding of directives and requests as they are produced in time and in context. (shrink)

While it is recognized that instruction between co-workers is a central component of everyday workplace interaction and learning, this study investigates the ways in which such instructional events are practically initiated in interaction. We analyse recordings of everyday work at a radio station, where journalists prepare and broadcast local news. In our data, a distinction can be made between two interactional contexts from which instructional interactions emerge: searches, where one party is looking for a suitable helper; and established interactions, where (...) the initiation of instruction is prefigured by immediate prior interaction. A further finding is that these two contexts are associated with two different ways of initiating instruction. Direct requests are used in established interactions. In searches, we instead find questions regarding the other person’s procedural knowledge – what we term know-how questions. We finally discuss the ways in which instructional configurations are assembled without reference to institutionally defined instructor/instructed roles. (shrink)

In higher education programs that train students for professions with high standards of safety, such as aviation, shipping and healthcare, exercises in simulated environments provide opportunities for training in educational settings. This study explores the use of simulators in maritime education, taking an interest in how navigation training is achieved by using simulated environments. By conducting an interaction analysis of video data, the study examines how training students to coordinate with other vessels in traffic is topicalized in simulator exercises, focusing (...) on discourses of temporality in instructions. The results show how instruction during simulations is a continuous interactional achievement built on the ability to assess the fit between the assessment criteria at work in the specifics of the situation and the ongoing tasks as they unfold. During simulations temporality becomes a matter for instruction, both when assessing how to develop the students’ understanding and as a topic in its own right. The results highlight tightly coupled relationships among tasks, instruction and technology. The implications for simulator-based training call for refocusing on training tasks rather than specific skills, and emphasize the importance of professional guidance in order to guide the students toward the discourses of maritime work practice in simulator-based training. (shrink)

Examining a fragment of interaction that occurred during a surgery at a teaching hospital, we explore how particular instructed experiences are produced for two trainees, a surgeon in the residency program and a medical student in a surgical clerkship. We are concerned with what is produced as learnable in each case. Stated slightly differently, we are interested in the ways in which the attending surgeon uses demonstrations as instruction and the ways in which recipients of that instruction, in this case (...) the resident and the clerk, respond with enactments of those demonstrated actions. The recipients of this kind of instruction participate in a form of experiential learning in which they enact their own versions of the instructor’s demonstrated actions to be observed and assessed by the instructor. These enactments provide learners with experiential access to the instructor’s demonstrated actions. They are designed to be experiences that learners may draw upon to make experientially warranted claims at some later time. (shrink)

This article explores the organization of instructional corrections in pre-clinical dental education. The students are practising manual skills using a simulator and tutors are inspecting and evaluating their progress. Simulators and simulation are critical to the organization of contemporary healthcare training, and the academic literature that explores forms of simulation in healthcare tends to consider the ‘fidelity’ of systems and the extent to which they match the clinical situations that they are designed to mimic. In contrast, this article considers how (...) tutors and students explicitly attend to matters of realism in the course of instructional sequences. We highlight the ways in which tutors routinely invoke ‘real life’ in instructional corrections and we discuss how these sequences reveal the work that tutors undertake to compensate for the ‘chronic insufficiency’ of the simulator. We show how tutors emphasize the reasoned character of manual bodily skills, reasons linked to the complexities and contingencies of clinical practice. To explore these issues and concerns, the article draws on the analysis of audio-visual data of everyday instruction. (shrink)

Employing conversation analysis, this article investigates instructions in lessons for guitar and Japanese calligraphy. In receiving an instruction, the students in the guitar lessons are expected to immediately follow the instruction. In contrast to the guitar lessons, the students in the calligraphy lessons are not institutionally expected to immediately follow the teacher’s instructions but to receive them. However, the students often gesticulate what they learned from and could make sense of the prior instruction upon completion of an instruction activity. I (...) call this phenomenon embodied solitary confirmation. By demonstrating the interactional procedure for this practice, this article respecifies reflection as an interactional phenomenon and elucidates an organization of multiactivity. (shrink)