University students managing engagement, preparation, knowledge and achievement: Interactional evidence from institutional, domestic and virtual settings

Abstract

How do university students engage with each other in the domestic and institutional settings of their lives? While little is known about the dynamics of university versus school classrooms, even less is known about other academic and non-academic environments in which students engage in educational matters. To explore this empirical ‘black-box', conversation analysis was used to analyze a large corpus of audio- and video-recordings of students in tutorials, at home watching television, in a university corridor, and interacting online, as well as through the marginalia written in library textbooks. The analysis focused on the sequential organization of students' orientations to university work and educational activities. We show that, across the data, students minimized or ironized their preparation for and engagement with academic tasks. We also identified patterns in the organization of students' assessments of their own and each other's knowledge and achievements. Overt displays of competence were downgraded or denied. We discuss these findings in the context of cultural trends in education discourse and the interactional constraints against ‘showing off' and ‘self-praise'. We conclude that our multi-setting qualitative methods afford, in particular ways, the generation of knowledge of students' lives, as well as a basis for developing practice and application.