Morality in Practice
Exploring Childhood, Parenthood and Schooling in Everyday Life
Edited by
Jakob Cromdal [+–]
Linköping University
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Broadly, I’m interested in ethnomethodological perspectives on members’ practical reasoning in various mundane and institutional settings. This includes studies within conversation analysis, discursive psychology and membership categorization analysis.
Specific topics of inquiry include:
children’s interaction within the peer group, particularly in classroom settings as well as during recess activities.
the organization of bilingualism in everyday interaction.
postcognitive approaches to psychological issues such as language development, learning, morality, or emotions.
the practical management of distinct organizational concerns in institutions for children and youth.
Michael Tholander [+–]
Department of Behavioral Sciences and Learning, Linköping University.
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Research interests
A conversation analytic perspective on social interaction, with a special focus on issues such as morality, democracy, power, rhetoric and assessment.
A conversation analytic perspective on social interaction, with a special focus on issues such as morality, democracy, power, rhetoric and assessment.
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology.
This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Series: Studies in Communication in Organisations and Professions
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction
Department of Behavioral Sciences and Learning, Linköping University.
Research interests
A conversation analytic perspective on social interaction, with a special focus on issues such as morality, democracy, power, rhetoric and assessment.
A conversation analytic perspective on social interaction, with a special focus on issues such as morality, democracy, power, rhetoric and assessment.
Linköping University
Broadly, I’m interested in ethnomethodological perspectives on members’ practical reasoning in various mundane and institutional settings. This includes studies within conversation analysis, discursive psychology and membership categorization analysis.
Specific topics of inquiry include:
children’s interaction within the peer group, particularly in classroom settings as well as during recess activities.
the organization of bilingualism in everyday interaction.
postcognitive approaches to psychological issues such as language development, learning, morality, or emotions.
the practical management of distinct organizational concerns in institutions for children and youth.
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Chapter 2
University of California, Berkeley
Merging my graduate degree training in developmental psychology (Ph.D., 2002) and in applied linguistics (Ph.D., 2004), I have developed a research program that is centrally concerned with the role of language and literacy practices in children’s development and education.
As a developmental psychologist, I have always been interested in discerning the sociocultural underpinnings of learning processes. The cognitive capabilities that our neurological apparatus enables us as human beings to attain do not pre-exist and are never abstracted from the social practices in which they develop and are deployed. Cognitive structures are outcomes of social interaction; and mental growth manifests in forms of competencies that are culturally organized and context specific. As an applied linguist, I am drawn to study language, oral and written, both as a central means of learning and as a criticaltarget of cultural transmission. In fact, I see learning throughlanguage and learninglanguage as inseparable dimensions of the process of developing sociocultural competencies. Thus, my research explores the interface between culture and cognition in language and literacy practices across learning contexts.Within this general scope, I have developed three main strands of research: (1) children’s socialization into moral reasoning and discourse (2) reading as psychological process and social practice and (3) language practices in autism.
My research toolkit is comprised of ethnographic and discourse analytic methods. I focus on spontaneously occurring interaction in various social contexts, employing systematic and extended video-recording of focal practices. Through analysis of language structures and sequential organization of interaction I then discern the interplay between sociocultural determinations and individual agency in development and education.
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Chapter 3
Loughborough University
I graduated from University of Central Lancashire (Preston Poly) in 1993 with a traditional psychology degree. Then I completed three years PhD research at Nene College (Leicester University) with Dr Eunice Fisher. I videoed interaction in university tutorials, and conducted conversation analyses of topic production, topic management, academic identity, and the relevance of gender. I developed these and other interests whilst working at the Institute of Behavioural Sciences (University of Derby, 1997-2000) and University College Worcester (2000-2002). I joined the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough in October 2002 and was promoted to Reader (2007) and Chair (2009). I teach on the BSc Social Psychology programme, covering modules in relationships, qualitative methods and forensic psychology.
Loughborough University
I research and write on discourse, conversation and social interaction, where my main focus has been on the relations between psychological topics and everyday talk, or ‘discursive psychology’. This involves examining the ways in which common sense ideas about psychological states (thoughts, plans, emotions, attitudes, personality, and so on), figure as part of the conceptual resources that people use in accounting for their everyday lives. I also look at the ways in which psychological business of any kind is handled or managed in talk, not necessarily by overtly naming mental states. This general concern with common sense psychological discourse is also the basis of a critical interest in the nature and products of psychology as a scientific discipline. My main resource for examining how talk works, increasingly over the last decade, is conversation analysis.
Among the topics I have looked at are: early child language; conversational remembering; ‘script’ talk; classroom education and learning; conversational narratives; causal accounts and attributions; emotion talk; the deployment of identity categories; factual reporting in the news media; various aspects of relationship counselling; the conversational management of speakers’ subjectivity; complaints; irony; and various recent studies of police interrogations, neighbour disputes and mediation. The latter developments are part of an ESRC-funded joint research project with Liz Stokoe. Much of the other work has also been done jointly with various members of DARG, particularly the development of discursive psychology with Jonathan Potter.
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Chapter 4
Stockholm University
Professor Karin Aronsson has previously worked at Linköping University, where she has tutored 27 doctoral dissertations. Aronsson serves on the advisory board of several international peer review journals, and publishes in international journals. Work on bilingualism has been a long term interest: e.g. from her dissertation on bilingual concept formation (Dep. of Psychology, Lund University) to more recent work on the role of repetition and language play in immersion school settings (Cekaite & Aronsson, 2004; 2005), code-switching in peer play in school contexts (Cromdal & Aronsson, 2000), and work on the role of school and sibling play in language shift phenomena (Rindstedt & Aronsson, 2002).
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Chapter 5
Queensland University of Technology
Maryanne Theobald is Senior Lecturer in Education at Queensland University of Technology, (QUT). Her research interests include children’s participation in the early years, and children’s talk-in-interaction in disputes and friendships in the home, school, playground, with digital technologies and in multilingual contexts. Maryanne’s methodological expertise is in qualitative approaches including ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, and participatory research using video-playback. Maryanne has experience as editor currently editing a special volume on children’s peer cultures within multilingual settings from various theoretical and methodological lenses (Emerald, due 2016) and has co-edited an ethnomethodological collection, Disputes in everyday life (Emerald, 2012).
Maryanne is unit coordinator in various units in the School of Early Childhood, including a foundational unit on historical and comparative perspectives in early childhood.
Queensland University of Technology
Professor Susan Danby’s areas of expertise are in early years language and social interaction, childhood studies, and early literacy. Her methodological expertise is in qualitative approaches, including ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. She has published in the following areas: qualitative research, classroom discourse, helpline talk, gender, classroom interaction, early childhood education pedagogy, talk and interaction, children’s work and play, teacher-student interactions.
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Chapter 6
Uppsala University
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Chapter 7
Department of Linguistics and Philology
Uppsala University
Uppsala University
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Chapter 8
Department of Behavioral Sciences and Learning, Linköping University.
Research interests
A conversation analytic perspective on social interaction, with a special focus on issues such as morality, democracy, power, rhetoric and assessment.
A conversation analytic perspective on social interaction, with a special focus on issues such as morality, democracy, power, rhetoric and assessment.
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Chapter 9
Oklahoma State University
Laurie Schick, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Oklahoma State University
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Oklahoma State University
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Chapter 10
Uppsala University
My areas of research specialization comprise the broader field of children’s identitywork, language practices and socialization as socially situated and locally constituted phenomena. I have carried out ethnographic research with preadolescent girls and boys focusing on peer group interactions and adult-child encounters across educational settings (school, preschool, leisure-time program).
My research can be organized in three interrelated subfields: 1a) From a peer language socialization approach, examining play and games, and children’s interactional practices (i.e. disputes, gossip, story telling, insults, accounts, bullying) and 1b) children’s identity-work in their social and cultural contexts, in particular multiethnic peer groups 2) Pedagogical discourse, moral ordering and language ideologies as an integral part of children’s peer culture and adult-child interaction 3) Methodological issues: studies of talk-in-interaction, combining ethnography with conversation analysis and ethnomethodological concerns for membership categorizations
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Chapter 11
Annice I Barber
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Chapter 12
Loughborough University
I work in the broad interdisciplinary field of discourse studies, with a particular focus on the way careful analyses of interaction can provide a way of understanding and reworking basic psychological questions. This way of thinking about interaction research is called discursive psychology.
Loughborough University
Alexa Hepburn has published widely on issues of child protection and bullying in school situations, and on developments in discursive and critical psychology. She has delivered more than 40 invited talks and keynotes, and 23 workshops on interaction analysis in 7 different countries around the world. Her work ranges across family mealtimes, helplines and clinical and counselling encounters; her research into various interactional features of the NSPCC Helpline was awarded a Leverhulme fellowship. Her two books – An Introduction to Critical Social Psychology and Discursive research in Practice: New approaches to psychology and interaction – reflect a dual focus on developing greater methodological innovation in psychology, and on the construction of young people and their rights and competences. Recent work has developed a particular interest in emotion in interaction, in particular crying and its different styles of reception, and also orientations to, and displays of, asymmetries, rights and competences. She is currently co-authoring a book on Transcribing for Social Research, and delivering workshops for helpline practitioners.
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
Chapter 13
Queensland University of Technology
Professor Susan Danby’s areas of expertise are in early years language and social interaction, childhood studies, and early literacy. Her methodological expertise is in qualitative approaches, including ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. She has published in the following areas: qualitative research, classroom discourse, helpline talk, gender, classroom interaction, early childhood education pedagogy, talk and interaction, children’s work and play, teacher-student interactions.
University of Queensland
Associate Professor Michael Emmison is an honorary faculty member in Sociology at the School of Social Sciences having recently retired after 39 years of service at the University of Queensland. His farewell address was titled ‘Sociology, Discovery and Progress: lessons from the study of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction’.
His research interests and publications have spanned a number of fields but for the last decade he has primarily worked in two areas. First, the analysis of conversational interaction, particularly talk in institutional settings such as telephone helplines. Second the use of visual information for conducting social research. He serves on the editorial boards of Visual Communication and the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography and his most recent book is Researching the Visual (2nd ed) co-authored with Philip Smith and Margery Mayall. He was the Keynote speaker at the Australian Institute of Ethnomethodology and Conversational Analysis conference in November 2012.
Issues of morality and children have traditionally been investigated within the realm of developmental psychology, treating the human ability to adopt certain values as a matter of individual and cognitive growth. As an alternative, this book approaches the morality of young persons from a practice oriented perspective. In essence, such an approach adopts a view of morality as something participants jointly accomplish in going about their everyday social affairs. That is to say, rather than relying on developmental theory or moral philosophy in exploring the moral worlds of young persons, a practice oriented approach adopts a primarily empirical stance, leaning on qualitative analysis of naturally occurring social interaction as found in, for example, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. This collection brings together scholars from Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Twelve empirical chapters focus on different aspects of everyday morality as practiced among children and youth as well as a range of participants who act in their role as adults, lay or professional, to foster, educate and in various ways support young people in daily life. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, who briefly present a practice based perspective on morality, situating at the same time the individual chapters within the fields of discursive research on children and youth in society.
