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Speculative Participation Structures in IA

Mon, April 25, 9:45 to 11:15am PDT (9:45 to 11:15am PDT), SIG Virtual Rooms, SIG-Learning Sciences Virtual Paper Session Room

Abstract

An intergenerational, multi-disciplinary collective, we meet regularly in the tradition of Interaction Analysis Laboratories (Jordan & Henderson, 1995) to analyze video-based data brought by members, and to learn more about microanalytic methodology. Together, we have become increasingly concerned about the interrelated nature of the sedimented processes of conducting analysis and the ways of engaging, empirical findings, and interpretive meanings allowable by these processes. As such, these processes may serve to exclude perspectives and theories of nondominant communities and their ways of knowing. We consider these processes at the interactional level, and argue for a speculative approach for reimagining more equitable participation structures in microanalysis that “changes the rules of interpretation” (Schalk, 2019, p. 138). Specifically, we consider what could - and should - be through speculative practice of counterstorying (e.g. Author, 2020a; Toliver, 2020) at the interactional level to imagine alternative, more liberatory, participation structures.
We focus on participation structures, or “configurations of interactional rights and responsibilities” (O’Connor & Michaels, 1993, p. 320), as an analytic unit that organizes members’ contributions in an activity. Participation structures shape what kinds of things one might say or do, how they should be said or done, and when. For example, in a lecture, there is a primary speaker who has some kind of expertise, and listeners who remain largely quiet and are expected to learn from the speaker. Within a participation structure, each contribution to the interaction “opens up an array of structurally differentiated possibilities, establishing the participation framework in which the speaker will be guiding his delivery” (Goffman, 1981, p. 137, emphasis added). While participation structures are relatively stable, participation frameworks may shift rapidly during interaction and serve to position participants in relation to each other, ideas, and power in the exchange. Participation structures do not determine participation frameworks, but shape them.
In the tradition of Interaction Analysis (IA), group analysis is a central practice for the method to support the grounded nature of the methodology (developing analytic categories grounded in the data) and to apprentice newcomers (Jordan & Henderson, 1995; Author & Colleague, 2016). A group viewing participation structure typically asks participants to self-select and share what they notice in the video. As with any participation structure, this protocol has both benefits and drawbacks for access to participation and learning. Self-selection, for example, may result in more contributions from participants who perceive themselves as more entitled to speak in the setting (e.g., men or relative oldtimers). Our approach borrows from participation structures and discourse tools from microethnographic work that examined how learners, especially those typically marginalized in formal educational spaces, may be lifted up and their contributions valued. For example, we investigate how Vossoughi’s (2014) social analytic artifacts, “heteroglossic attunement” and “semantic sharpening” may be designed for in alternative participation structures for group viewing. We argue that such discursive tools, which turn participants’ attention to the “ideological echoes” (p. 359) of exchanges within the data being viewed and the analysts’ turns at talk, hold promise for a more liberatory IA.

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