Making contexts: The social construction of lessons in two languages

This chapter presents a study that was influenced by two theoretical approaches based on the idea that learning and teaching are complementary aspects of education and that education is accomplished as a system of interactions. First, the microethnographic approach to the study of schooling; Second, the socio-historical approach to the study of learning and development. A basic premise of microethnographic studies is that social events such as classroom lessons are interactional accomplishments. One interpretation of the difference between reading levels exhibited in the two classrooms would be to claim that reading skills do not transfer across language settings. Our analysis of lessons across language and instructional settings indicated that the manifestation and complexity of reading behaviors within them is heavily influenced by the lessons’ organization of instruction. When the students encountered roughly comparable organizations of instructional activities in these two language settings, their reading behaviors were very similar in both.