Making Teachters Accountable for Students'Disruptive Classroom Behaviour

Using a more conversational analytical approach, this paper examines the various situated ways in which secondary school students, in interaction with teachers, describe and explain their disruptive classroom behaviour. The focus is on how students account for their behaviour and force accountability on teachers. Students gave accounts and made teachers accountable by deŽning disruptive behaviour in relation to schoolwork and claims about normality, and by drawing on common understandings about teacher identity. In doing so, various discursive devices were used such as extreme case formulations, introducing corroborating witnesses, deploying the notion of consistency, giving detailed descriptions, making category contrasts, and displaying uncertainty and incomprehension. The different accounts all worked in the direction of emphasising the role of the teacher, and the analysis raises questions about power relations in school and the empowerment of students