ABSTRACT
In presenting these three examples of the use of profiles, a problem has arisen. How different are teacher’s and observer’s accounts of the same lesson? This becomes especially clear in the third example, for although teacher’s and observer’s accounts do not actually conflict they do reveal differences in concern. The observer’s task is to present as precisely as he can an account of events as they happen-the teacher’s concern is with the quality of performance, with alternative ways of managing events. What seems to an observer to be a relatively stable, concrete, socially structured series of events seems to the teacher to be fluid, fluctuating, transient and fragile. In many ways what is straightforward to one is problematic for the other.
