The function of contextual knowledge: A videotaped class session in France

Abstract

This paper concerns seeing; specifically, what should and what can be seen in a classroom situation in a progressive school in Paris. It focuses on a lesson given in a foreign cultural context and the possibility of documenting it and reconstructing it: first, as far as possible, unaffectedly and out of context, to achieve comparative and interpretative classroom research. The emphasis will be on the way the subject matter is set up and the role the learners assume. It will become apparent that technical recordings, which are helpful in allowing literal transcriptions and descriptions, tempt us into abandoning objectiveness, thereby overlooking certain facts and circumstances. Only contextual information that is subsequently acquired, and repeated considerations of the actions/practices of individual participants, will allow for a new perspective of observations. It is the possibility of videography that renders actions and reactions ‘visible’, revealing that which had formerly gone unnoticed.