Editor: Viv Edwards (University of Reading, UK)
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Volume: 10 Number: 2 Page: 132–150
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A 'Good' or a 'Bad' Student: A Study of Communication in Class Assessment Meetings
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Elisabet Cedersund and Lennart G. Svensson
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This article describes a study of class assessment meetings (Swedish: klasskonferenser) in the upper secondary school in Sweden. The study focuses on communicative practices in these meetings, how interactional
patterns are reproduced by the participants in the meetings, and how these patterns are linked to the social organisation of schools. The data consist of 20 audiotaped and transcribed meetings, each about
20 minutes long. The participants are; director of studies (chairperson at the meeting); form teacher of the class under discussion; subject teachers; school nurse; educational welfare officer; study and
career counsellor. The investigation is focused on the participants' accounts of the students' performance and behaviour, and on how, when and why these accounts are provided; i.e. the content, the sequential
structure, and the function of the accounts in the organisational context are analysed. The analyses suggest that the severe time constraints and the standardised agenda lead to a routinisation of the interaction.
As this routinised pattern is taken over by new participants, it maintains the tradition and generates continuity in the social construction of the students, and leads to a somewhat stereotyped evaluation
of student performance. The results of the meetings are, finally, discussed in terms of functions at the group level and from the perspective of the participants.
© Multilingual Matters 1999
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