Abstracts - Earli

y students and by patients are designed, organised and attended to and it is based on the analysisof audio-visual recordings of naturally-occurring training episodes within one clinical unit in amajor UK dental school. The presentation will focus on the detailed analysis of a series of dataextracts drawn from the wider corpus of recordings and the analytic orientation of the paper isdrawn from ethnomethodology and conversation analysis.Understanding and formulations of understanding in their interactional sequences: Studentscarrying out structured tasks in higher educationOskar Lindwall, Göteborg University, SwedenGustav Lymer, Göteborg University, SwedenJonas Ivarsson, Göteborg University, SwedenIn investigating students’ conduct in carrying out didactical tasks, it is notable that understanding,as the ability to go on, and utterances, such as "we get it" or "shouldn’t we go on," are related ininteresting ways: formulations of understandings become part of the same practices and haveconsequences for how the students continue. In the paper, we explore three kinds of circumstanceswhere formulations of understanding and the ability to go on are central. First, we investigatesome episodes where students formulate that they understand and are able to go on. In theinvestigated sequences, the students use different formulations as interchangeable criteria forjustifying their "moving on," thereby highlighting what they make themselves accountable for.Second, we address some episodes where the students express that they do not understand. In theinvestigated courses, the students continuously exclaim, "I don’t get it" when they are unable to goon. In calling the teacher’s attention, this utterance also works as a common request for help.While the possibility of asking a question about what one yet does not know is sometimes seen asa paradox, this request, framed by students solving a particular assignment, can be used by theteacher, in the responsive work with the students, to formulate answers to the questions thestudents where unable to ask themselves. Third, we focus on some sequences where the teacherexplicitly addresses the students’ understanding. Formulations of understanding in these caseshave other interactional consequences than sequences where the students agree that theyunderstand. Instead of deciding that they are able to go on with a new assignment, the studentsbecome responsible for showing their understanding in certain ways. This highlights how thesubject matter is inherently unstable to the criteria by which one might judge someone’s grasp of it.Understanding understanding as an instructional matterDouglas Macbeth, Ohio State University, USAThis paper begins with an incautious review of certain ‘facts of history’ that have shapededucational research in the American context in such a way as to render our Panel’s title an odd orunfamiliar formulation. Its novelty lies in the play of ‘understanding’ twice. ‘Understandingunderstanding’ shows a sequence of different enactments of understanding. The first is ours: theunderstandings of a professional research community. The second—its object—is theirs, or theunderstandings of ordinary worlds, persons, tasks and occasions. The former, of course, animatethe entire corpus of educational research and social science. The latter, however—that and howordinary worlds understand, and do so on any actual occasion—has no topical precedent in theeducational research literature. We have never formulated the practices of understanding. We havenever treated understanding as a practical task of ordinary social worlds, including the worlds ofclassrooms. This paper aims to foreground this lacuna, suggest something of its genealogy, andthen proceed to an analysis of some classroom exhibits to show how understanding is in the firstinstance a practical task and routine achievement, without whose achievements the work of– 150 –