Resolving trouble in peer interaction around digital technology : multimodal negotiations of interactional space in face-to-face and hybrid classrooms
Year: 2024
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Despite the ubiquitous role of technology in today’s classrooms, we lack a comprehensive understanding of trouble resolutions around it. This dissertation shows how pupils resolve trouble in peer interactions around and via digital technology at Finnish comprehensive schools. It also sheds light on how (re)negotiations of interactional space, or space of mutual embodied orientation and attention, feature in trouble resolution processes. Drawing on multimodal conversation analysis and video data from English as a Foreign Language lessons, the study offers a multimodal, micro-level analysis of the verbal, embodied, material, and digital resources used to collaboratively resolve two types of trouble related to technology, tasks, and peer interaction. The first concerns asymmetric access to digital devices and to classroom interactions, which hinders beginning and participating in tasks and building shared interactional spaces. It is resolved by negotiating access to a device through multimodal resources such as body shifts or rearrangements of the material environment (Article I) and, in hybrid classrooms, by testing technological tools to contact a remote pupil (Article II). The second trouble type halts the progression of already ongoing tasks. In these cases, shifts of eye gaze are used as one of the first resources to indicate and resolve trouble with the progression of tasks and interactions (Article III), and varied embodied resources together with digital actions can be used to manage mistakes made by peers during shared tasks (Article IV). The study highlights trouble resolutions as complex multimodal achievements and offers new insights into classroom peer interactions around technology and into interactional space. It introduces the concept of shared digital task space, which refers to a layer of the local interactional space formed when a group of pupils work on a digital device. In addition, the dissertation has implications for pedagogical practice and technological development as it draws attention to the potential problematics of incorporating technology into classrooms.
Author: Vänttinen, Minttu
Institution: University of Jyväskylä
Language: Finnish
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
Funder: Jyväskylän Yliopisto
OpenAlex ID: W7033889356