‘Cheaters and Stalkers’: Accusations in a classroom

Abstract

This article explores accusations as collaboratively accomplished in classroom peer interactions in the absence of a teacher. The analysis shows how the children use local classroom rules and teacher authority as resources and warrants to invoke multi-layered moral orders and identities, and hold one child accountable through accusations about their behavior. The accused children are categorized in a duplicative way with morally degrading descriptions and as out-group members. This article argues that understanding children’s accusations requires understanding of how such interactions compose and reflect the school context that is co-produced through the implementation of accountable ways in which to behave.

The classroom moral compass – participation, engagement and transgression in classroom interaction

“…We see that appearing to breach the local orderliness of interaction can have negative consequences for members and their moral standing within their peer groups, or may indeed lead to peer-exclusion or categorization as out-group member (see Niemi & Bateman, 2015). In the above example we note how André and Camilla monitor the public chastisement of Sabine, albeit with Camilla averting her gaze when the teacher admonishes Sabine as 'not a good student'.…”

“…These studies foreground how members treat local interactional conduct as orderly and accountable, with transgressions from the 'present but unnoticed organizing properties of talk and action' (Jayyusi, 1991: 242) treated as diverging from some local moral orderliness. In this work, deviations from normative social agreement pertaining to how sociality should be conducted is treated as moral transgression, and can therefore be subject to some form of reprimand (Niemi, 2016;Niemi & Bateman, 2015). For example, in cases where a student -or indeed a teacher -has failed to prepare adequately for a class, as in this extract below, we note in the finely interwoven tapestry of glances and looks, smiles and gesticulation, and verbally explicit calls to account, how a breach in what is treated as a social contract is consequential to both the local order and the moral standing of a member in the class.…”

The construction and maintenance of exclusion, control and dominance through students’ social sitting practices

“…Students develop highly effective strategies for controlling and excluding others (Davies and Hunt 1994;Niemi and Bateman 2015;Read, Francis, and Skelton 2011), and relational aggression is an important tool in delineating group boundaries, excluding people, and controlling and managing behaviour (Currie and Kelly 2006;Merten 1997). Relational aggression is non-physical and often subtle, meaning that this can go unnoticed or be deemed less problematic, resulting in simply trying to 're-socialise' individual offenders (Currie, Kelly, and Pomerantz 2007) or telling students to 'just be friends' (Ringrose 2008).…”

Výzkum interakce mezi spolužáky: přehled konverzačněanalytických studií

“…Některé studie se zabývají takovými jevy, které se ve frontální výuce řízené učitelem běžně nevyskytují. Jedná se například o to, jak se děti hádají a jak si v interakci vzájemně vyhrožují (Niemi, 2014) nebo jak jeden druhého obviňují (Niemi & Bateman, 2015). Na těchto studiích z primárního vzdělávání je zajímavé především jejich zaměření na každodenní verbální agresi v interakci mezi dětmi a také to, jak toto chování začleňují do prostředí školy a třídy.…”