Reconstructing context: The conventionalization of classroom knowledge

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Abstract
Extracts of classroom discourse involving teachers and groups of 9‐year‐olds are analyzed in terms of what they reveal about the establishment of shared knowledge between teacher and pupils. This shared knowledge is identified with the “context” of the discourse as this develops through time, context being defined as “intermental,” in Vygotsky's (1978) terms, that is to say, as existing intersubjectively for the participants rather than objectively for the investigators. The analysis focuses upon a specific aspect of the process: the way in which classroom events are recalled and reconstructed (after Bartlett, 1932). These reconstructions serve as the shared conceptions and understandings that are then the context for further teaching and learning. The notion of education as an inculcation of pupils into an established culture of educated thought and practice is offered as a necessary synthesis of the usually opposed child‐oriented and transmissional approaches to education.

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