Co-construction of teacher-as-observer

The paper presents an analysis of how a status of teacher-as-observer is co-constructed by a teacher and students during a discussion task. The data are drawn from video-recordings of a student discussion in an English language class at a Japanese university. Affordances of the spatial organization of the classroom for participant action and interaction are discussed. The analysis shows how the teacher does a display of just observing, how the students disattend the teacher, how the teacher may respond to student talk, and how the teacher’s actions are sensitive to the state of student interaction. It is argued that the participants contribute in different ways to the co-construction of the teacher-as-observer. It is also argued that this teacher in this classroom is thereby co-constructed as not only an observer, but an attentive observer and good teacher.