ABSTRACT
This chapter examines classroom interactions in more detail; how the work of learning is conducted; and how issues of behaviour are handled. Under the generic headings of Ignorance and Learning, children and teachers invoked oppositional repertoires because they understood both terms differently. Though in classroom performance children predominantly used one repertoire pairing and teachers the other, both parties could of course use either. The chapter explores behaviour in the sense of social interactions of a kind that become the focus of pupil-teacher and pupil-pupil interactions. In discipline situations, the struggle was reflected less in conflict over the meaning of shared terms, and more in conflicting repertoire pairs. Behaviour in St Donat’s, as in any school, ranged from the mundane to the extreme. The incident to be examined next exemplifies two significant discursive practices. First, it is a ‘deviant case’. Secondly, it reveals how, through their use of repertoire, teachers and children built categorisations of themselves and each other.
