Abstracts - Earli

accountable professionals. On a methodological level, we identified all the sequences which dealtwith the topic of test reliability and submitted them to both a thematic and discursive analysis. Theanalysis focused on the context in which this theme appeared and on the way in which it was putinto words and topicalised. The results showed that, in the psychologists’ discourse, reliability is abroader notion than in the test designers’ discourse. Firstly, it included many concrete elements ofthe situation and of the clients’ characteristics which were not mentioned by test designers.Therefore, it can be considered to result from a process of learning through practice. Secondly,reliability was associated with the notion of trust. In fact, in the psychologists’ discourse,evaluating whether the results of a test are reliable or not was based upon the psychologist’spersonal involvement and judgement, and gained a moral dimension. We shall show that byreinterpreting the notion of reliability in terms of trust, the psychologists managed to presentthemselves as competent and accountable professionals.What is left unsaid. A study of moral accountability in vocational guidance activities.Åsa Mäkitalo, Department of Education, Göteborg University, SwedenTo become legitimate knowers in institutional settings, participants must learn their accountingpractices, i.e. the authoritative ways of making sense of events, of knowing how to frame tasks andhow to act. Certain ways of categorizing and reasoning accompany institutional activities andfunction as cues and justifications for normative actions in them. Learning to reason ininstitutional contexts, thus, means learning how to make sense according to specificinstitutionalised forms of discourse . Professional and bureaucratic categories dominate thediscourses of institutional settings. Professionals are trained to take a “neutral” stance asinstitutional representatives; they are expected to attend to their tasks as “de-moralized” issuesaccording to some theory, model, or bureaucratic ideal of efficiency. But while the overtly moraldimensions seem to have disappeared in professional jargon and official documents, studies ofdaily activities in present-day institutions reveal that the kind of decision making institutionalactors are engaged in rests on assessments and decisions about people’s normality and moralaccountability. In this study I address how we as analysts may illuminate what it implies to actaccountably as a client in a specific institutional setting where such matters are only alluded to orhinted at. A combination of approaches is suggested to explore implicit accounts as intrinsic toinstitutional activities. The paper more specifically reports on an analysis of moral accountabilityin 30 audio-recorded vocational guidance conversations at a public employment office in Sweden.Participants managed moral accountability by normalizing a person’s conduct, preemptingpotential critique and marking transgression. Clients were never held accountable for lack ofcompetence, knowledge, or skill or for failing to get a job. A critical element in sustaining oneselfas a morally accountable client in this setting is to successfully display one’s efforts properly insitu as well as through the institutional record.– 603 –