An Analysis of Primary School Children's Accounts of Classroom Interaction

Abstract

The ethogenic paradigm refocuses the attention of researchers on the capacity people have to make an account of their actions, their thinking and their experience. This capacity is deemed to be essentially human and therefore at the heart of research endeavours which seek to understand the nature of man. The process of accounting, then, becomes a central concern both in terms of an analysis of the process itself, and in terms of the knowledge people have of the social worlds of which they are members. This paper is about the social world of childhood, as told to me by a group of primary school children with particular reference to their accounts of life in the classroom. The children reveal ..