Hello Asa, nice to meet you,

I feeel we share some theoretical frameworks but my own research is very 
centered upon "adult children educational interactions"
All my papers and works are at the moment in italian, so it depends on how 
little or good is your - at least passive -  competence in my language.
Some of my works could perhaps help you for bibliography (almost all 
references are in english!).
 - An article on "Ethnic minority children in teachers' discourse: Strategic 
use and social meaning of referring". An analysis of the way teachers refers 
to ethnic minority children in their accounts (interviews) to see how they 
are constructed as "ethinc" through discourse and how 
discourse-in-interaction (with the interviewer) is not a way to reflect a 
categorization in the mind but a social joint  practice to produce a local 
categorization that depends on the communicative event.

I think it could be useful for you because of a somehow new (for Italy!) way 
to cope with the relationship between discourse and social categorization

- a book: Costruire la conoscenza. Interazione e interpretazione nella 
ricerca in campo educativo, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1997 
On the epistemological assumptions of the use and analysis of interviews as 
situated conversations. Some methodological ideas are proposed to work with 
interviews or accounts in a phenomenological perspective. The main idea is 
that social reality (even the one a research is supposed to reveal) is 
constructed through discourse in interaction and that people are always 
engaged in sense making activity. Even when they partecipate to a research 
interaction
 (translation of the title: Constructing Knowledge. Interaction and 
interpretation in educational research. There is a quite good bibliography 
on: context, talk-in-interaction, narrative, ecc..)

 - A paper on "the Construction and negotiation of  knowledge through 
didactic conversation about foreign people and lands". 
An analisys on how the meaning, sense and representations of "what counts as 
different people and regions" is produced via conversation. Its ongoing 
process, the way turns and contributions are managed  by teacher, work not 
only as a regulation of interactive partecipation to the event, but also as 
a conceptual organization of knowledge. Cultural representations, common 
sense knowledge, stereotypes are at work but they are transformed in and 
though the interaction.
   

In English I wrote the paper I presented at the ECER 98, on talk in 
interaction and informal conversation as ways of constructing children as 
motivated readers in an educational community.
If you are interested on, I could send a file attached. Tell me.

I will prapare a paper for next ECER meeting on the Discoursive construction 
of ethnicity. The title will be something like: Who is born where. The 
Discoursive construction of a Morrocain girl".
 An analysis of how children of ethnic minority community are produced as 
such through the way teachers talk of them and speek with them during 
classoroom acivitties.
The idea is that social identity is produced through a discourse that is 
supposed to reflect or to cope with it.

Just a suggestion: I think perhaps you will know it, but there is a book 
very well made about the reletionships between micro conversation analysis 
(i agree with you, we have to situate verbal interactions) and their context
A. Duranti; C. Goodwin, Rethinking Context: Language as an interactive 
ohenomenon, Cambridge University Press, 1992

See also, M. Moermann, Talking Culture. Ethnography and Conversation 
Analysis, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988    

I suggest you to see the work of Elinor Ochs  (UCLA)
For istance: E. Ochs et al. "Story telling as a Theory building activity" in 
Discourse Processes, 15, 22-37, 1992; or Ochs, Smith; Taylor, "Detective 
stories at Dinner time: Problem solving through Co-narration", in Cultural 
Dinamics,2, 238-257, 1989
And another paper whose title is "Father know best.." I have no the complete 
reference.
Eventhought she works on Development matters, she proposed some goog ideas 
on how dayly discourse is a way through wich people's identities and roles, 
and the meaning af reality people are talking about, are constructed
 I hope this will help you  even if there is nothing on organizations.

If you need some of my italian works, tell me
ciao, Letizia

>Hello Letizia!
>
>I am a doctoral student at Göteborg university in Sweden. I saw your
>selfpresentation in the ethnogaphy-in-education mailing list. My interests
>seems to lie quite near yours, in terms of the interest in discourse and
>talk-in-interaction. In my thesis work I study institutional talk within an
>employment office, i.e. the vocational guidance officers work. I have a
>sociocultural perspective and focus upon how people are categorized and
>defined through the communicative practices of the institution (such as
>administrative routines, documentation, conversations, decision making
>etc.). I'm very interested in your work. Can you maybe give me some
>references I might have some use for? (I hope you write in english, since
>my italian is not very good!)
>
>Right now I am working on an article that focus upon how context is invoked
>by different scholars (Sociocultural/situated approaches versus CA) in
>analyses of social action/talk. Maybe you have some interesting refences
>here that I should read?
>
>Hope to hear from you!
>Best regards,
>Åsa
>________________________________________________
>
>Åsa Mäkitalo (doctoral student)
>Department of Education and Educational Research
>Göteborg University
>Box 300
>SE 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden
>Tel +46 31 773 2393
>Fax +46 31 773 2462
>email [log in to unmask]
>________________________________________________
>
>
>



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