1. Talking moral stances into being: the interactional management of moral reasoning in Aggression Replacement Training (ART) classroom sessions.
- Author
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Svahn, Johanna and Evaldsson, Ann-Carita
- Subjects
- *
CLASSROOMS , *VIDEOS , *FIFTH grade (Education) , *ELEMENTARY schools , *CHILDREN , *ETHNOMETHODOLOGY - Abstract
The present paper explores the accounting practices through which alternative moral stances are talked into being, and made sense of, as children account for the morally charged topic of "fighting." Data are drawn from ethnographic work, combined with video recordings of classroom sessions informed by the ART (Aggression Replacement Training) moral reasoning training program, in a fifth-grade class in a Swedish elementary school. An ethnomethodological approach is taken toward how features of the talk-in-interaction during these sessions indirectly make available systems of accountability motivated by institutionalized standards to talk about morality in a certain way. As will be demonstrated, the teachers' use of reversed polarity questions, assertions, and formulations work to hold children accountable for producing a certain moral stance. It is found that the children have learned to artfully design their contributions (justifications, detailing, second-stories, event descriptions, extreme cases) so that they can both comply with and subvert the institutionalized standards at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2013
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