Stein2026
| Stein2026 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | INCOLLECTION |
| Key | Stein2026 |
| Author(s) | Fabíola Stein, Helen Melander Bowden, Johanna Svahn |
| Title | Situated Apprenticeship in the Research Lab: Collaborative and Epistemic Dimensions of Discovering Work |
| Editor(s) | Laurent Filliettaz, Evelyne Berger, Anne-Sylvie Horlacher, Anna Claudia Ticca |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, discovering work, situated apprenticeship, epistemic ecologies, interactional competencies, scientific laboratory |
| Publisher | Springer |
| Year | 2026 |
| Language | English |
| City | Singapore |
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| Pages | 81-102 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1007/978-981-92-0026-9_4 |
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| Howpublished | |
| Book title | Developing Interactional Competences at and for Work: Analyzing Talk-in-Interaction in different Professional and Training Contexts |
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Abstract
The chapter explores how various interactional competences are mobilized and developed during discovering work in a university laboratory. In this setting—where research activities are closely intertwined with the integration of new members through situated apprenticeship – an instance in which a master’s and a doctoral student collaboratively examine and interpret a graph showing chemical materials’ light-absorption (UV-Vis graphs) is analysed. Drawing on the concept of research teams as dynamic epistemic ecologies (Goodwin, Journal of Pragmatics 46:8–23, 2013; Jacoby, & Gonzales, Issues in Applied Linguistics 2:149–181, 1991), and by tracing the moment-by-moment unfolding of laboratory activities, the study highlights how the participants engage collaboratively in constructing, examining and interpreting inscriptions. The analysis shows how this practical and analytical work requires the ability to recognize and categorize critical visual differences in the graph, while simultaneously navigating challenges of understanding and the identification of potential research findings. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates how epistemic asymmetries shift dynamically, as the novice researcher takes a more active role in verbally articulating his observations, while the more experienced researcher, in attending to the novice’s understanding and contributions, models professional skills, conduct and appropriate emotional responses – thereby also developing his own supervisory and collaborative abilities. Ultimately, the study sheds light on the bidirectional nature of apprenticeship, showing how participants render visual phenomena relevant, not as self-evident displays, but as products of professional judgments that also involve grappling with moments of uncertainty.
Notes
