ABSTRACT
This chapter considers teaching in vocational classrooms, focusing specifically on automotive technology. It focuses on the automotive technology classroom. Classroom dialogue provides invaluable insight into the context of educational settings. The chapter provides a perspective on the social nature of education, for example allowing analysis of the way in which meaning is co-constructed by teachers and students rather than being transmitted from teachers to students. It examines some features of how automotive technology tutors achieve this in their teaching. It describes key relational features of discourse in the automotive technology classrooms. Tutors combine qualifications in their ‘trade’, industry experience in their trade, and tertiary teaching qualifications. The chapter also considers how in their teaching, automotive technology tutors draw on the well-studied initiation-response-evaluation sequence structure.
