The Competent Student

Abstract

The question asked in this paper, “What do students need to know in order to participate effectively in the classroom?” is answered in terms of the synchronization of students' behavior with interactional contexts and the interactional work in the display of academic knowledge, where “social contexts” consist of mutually ratified and constructed environments, and “competence for interaction” is assembled in concert with others. Teachers and students are shown to contribute cooperatively to the social organization of classroom events. This conception of mutual engagement is used to recommend substitution of mutually constitutive, reflexive conceptions for autonomous, undirectional conceptions, in theories of socialization.