ABSTRACT
In this chapter and the next we shall examine extracts of classroom discourse in order to explore some ways in which joint understandings are established, or may fail to be established. This chapter examines the curriculum content of the lessons, looking in turn at how the various major concepts or principles at stake in the lessons were dealt with. These ‘principles’ are basically what the lessons were ‘about’, what the teacher hoped the pupils would come to understand. The following chapter will concentrate more explicitly on the various communicative processes identifiable in the discourse, through which understandings and misunderstandings appear to arise.
