The study of social interaction in educational settings: accomplishments and unresolved issues

Traduzione di Raffaele Alessandro Panza

The study of face-to-face interaction in educational settings is placed in historical context. The major themes of interactional analysis – that social and cognitive structures are constructed in social interaction, human behavior is context-specific, cultural discontinuity helps explain educational inequality, and learning is a sociocultural process – are reviewed, and the contributions of these findings to theory, methodology and pedagogy are assessed. The paper concludes with a discussion of two unresolved issues: the integration of social structure and interaction in educational analysis and the reconciliation of conflictual and consensual dimensions of learning.

Key words: costruttivismo;
comportamento contesto-specifico;
etnografia critica;
discontinuità culturale;
interazione;
macro-micro connessioni;
microetnografia;
teoria socioculturale