Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, 6-9 September 2006

DISPLAYS AND DENIALS OF EXPERTISE IN THE INTERACTIONAL PARTNERSHIP WORK OF TEACHERS AND ACADEMICS

Graeme HallQueensland University of Technology andTeaching Australia – Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership

This paper reports one aspect of a study that examined a school/university partnership modelled on the principles of a Professional Development School. The study analysed audio-recordings of interactions that occurred during meetings between groups of teachers and academics as they planned and reported on a collaborative professional learning project. Whereas most research investigating school/university partnerships addresses their outcomes, or attempts to describe and advocate for ideal partnerships, this study considered the actual interactional work of the participants as they engaged in the everyday and ongoing activities of partnership. It showed how partnerships are constructed through everyday talk and activity. Instead of considering the partnership as a predetermined and pre-existing phenomenon, this study adopted the view that the work of partnership is ongoing and accomplished through the social activity of the participants. It showed the local social order of a partnership as it was built, maintained and transformed through the interactional work of the participants. Both the institutional setting and the participants’ enactment of partnership work contributed to the establishment of the social and moral order of the partnership.The major findings of this research resolve into four major themes:

1. the construction of expertise as an accomplished and demonstrated feature of the talk-in-interaction of partnerships;

2. the partnership itself as a social activity accomplished through the interactional activities of the participants, rather than an existing entity or condition;

3. the management of leadership through the interactional activity of the participants in the partnership, rather than as a separate condition or attribute.

4. the activity of talk-in-interaction, accomplished through the social and moral work of the participants as they assemble their activities of partnership through the agency of talk, specifically through the institutional talk of meetings.

A unifying thread through these themes is the recognition of school and university partnership as constructing social interactions rather than only as institutional and systemic structures. This is an important and ever-present way in which this study departs from others that have investigated these kinds of arrangements. The study builds on the open-endedness of social interactions, from which comes much of the creativity and energy of social life as well as the essentially unpredictable outcomes of everyday, lived social relations (Strathern, 2000).

This paper reports just one of the emergent themes – how the participants can be seen to construct through their talk notions of expertise. The themes described above are reflexive, in that each of them influences and is influenced by the others. However it is also possible to consider each of the themes individually, and that is what this paper sets out to achieve in relation to the ways in which participants in this partnership constructed together their own notions of expertise.

Methodology

Ordinariness: the ethnomethodological opportunity

This research derives its data from the unmediated discussions, conversations and interactions among the co-participants during meetings. It seeks to consider these interactions as courses of action, and consequently to analyse them to identify how the participants achieved meaning and social order. These elements of the data are characteristic of ethnomethodology. “Rather than assuming a priori that members share meanings and definitions of situations, ethnomethodologists consider how members achieve them by applying a native capacity to account ‘artfully’ for their actions, rendering them orderly” (Gubrium & Holstein, 2000, p. 491). In other words, co-participants work together to construct the social order of the interactional event, including meeting talk, conversation and interviews. The term “ethnomethodology” was coined by Harold Garfinkel (1967), and was designed originally as a general label for a range of phenomena associated with the use of mundane, everyday knowledge and reasoning by ordinary people (Heritage, 1984). As Hester & Francis (2000) point out, “social life is produced ‘from within’ by members of society and it is the task of ethnomethodology to identify the methods of such production” (p. 1). The researcher temporarily suspends belief in social realities to focus on the data (audio taped and transcribed social interactions between participants) about the world as it exists in the specific context and about the social orderliness within it.

The approach to accounting for the everyday activities of participants taken in this study is an example of applied ethnomethodology (Heap, 1990). This is ethnomethodological work that can hope to have consequences for decision making, and that can make a difference to members (p. 47). Here, ethnomethodological resources are used to analyse closely the activities of the participants in meetings, to show how they do the work of partnership and therefore to clarify the questions that can be asked about the doing of this partnership work. These techniques have been used by other researchers to show how participants in other institutional settings undertake their activities (e.g. Heritage & Sefi, 1992; Silverman & Peräkylä, 1990; Boden, 1994; Gronn, 1983; Danby & Baker, 2000). However, the use of applied ethnomethodology in this study to investigate how partnership work is done through the social activities of participants is a point of departure from previous studies of school and university partnerships.

Given the mundane, everyday nature of the unmediated data available in this study, and given the nature of that data as naturally occurring, uncontrived talk, an ethnomethodologically based strategy for analysing talk-in-interaction offers an approach to consider the structure of the talk itself, identifying the socially structuring features of talk-in-interaction. This approach is a hallmark of talk-in-interaction, which relies in the

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meaning-making construction of social orderliness and action within the structures of the talk itself.

Talk-in-InteractionIn the 1960s, Harvey Sacks sought to identify, within the ethnomethodological frame, data resources that would provide access to analysis of real, everyday social interaction. He selected talk as the most readily available, universal interactional resource used in the accomplishment of the daily activity of ordinary people as they go about the business of their lives. His choice of talk as a resource was not the result of a linguistic interest, but because of a pragmatic interest. It was readily available, and tape recordings made it infinitely available not only to himself but also to others (Sacks, 1984). The legacy of Sacks’ extensive corpus of analysis of talk-in-interaction, as well as his descriptive and instructive lectures and writings about his methods (Sacks, 1995), have led to the development of conversation analysis as a distinct methodological discipline within the ethnomethodological tradition. A number of his colleagues and contemporaries, including Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson, confirmed and developed Sacks’ pioneering work, and many continue to develop and refine it.

Conversation Analysis (CA)Conversation analysis (CA) is characterised by three main features or assumptions: first, interaction is structurally organised; second, contributions to interaction are contextually oriented; and third, as a result of these two characteristics, no order of detail in interactions can be dismissed as disorderly, accidental or irrelevant (Heritage, 1984, p. 241). These features are the basic foundations on which conversation analysis is built. They are discussed briefly here, and their explication and consequences are made explicit in the analyses in the following chapters.

Conversation analysts assume that talk-in-interaction, like other activities in everyday life, has an inherent structure. That is, it is not random or unorganised. If this were not so, it would be impossible for us to interact in the routinely coordinated ways we do with people whom we do not know and with whom we have not rehearsed our interactional activities (Pomerantz & Fehr, 1997, p.69). Ordinary people, in their everyday interactions, are able to use the resources of language and of talk to make sense of situations and accomplish the realities of daily life. Conversation analysis sets out to make explicit the shared methods individuals use in this shared everyday sense-making.

Membership Category Analysis (MCA)Like conversation analysis, membership category analysis (MCA) emerged from the work of Harvey Sacks, and the two disciplines share the ethnomethodological agenda of analysing and explaining ordinary, everyday activity through the resources of its ordinary, everyday interactions – particularly its talk. While there can be a reflexive relationship between the two, where the types of sequential features of talk are both informed by and can contribute to the speakers’ orientation to their respective membership categories, these features coexist as a result of their emphasis on the

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ordinariness of everyday situations and the work participants do in accomplishing their interactions (Hester & Eglin, 1997, p. 2).

Membership categories, following the work of Sacks, are types or classifications that are used to describe persons (or, less often, things). Groups of membership categories, bound together because of the adherence to a rule of some kind, can be identified as belonging together in collections known as membership category devices (MCD). Thus a device is a collection of membership categories, mediated by some “rule of application” (Hester & Eglin, 1997, p. 4). In conceptualizing membership categorization, Sacks introduced the notion that the activities undertaken by the members of membership categorization devices are “category-bound”. These category-bound activities are resources used by participants to ascribe expected activities to particular categories. Sacks illustrated these related concepts through his well-known example of an utterance: “The baby cried, the mommy picked it up” (Sacks, 1974). “Baby” and “mommy” are membership categories, and the participants in the activity exist as a relational pair who together contribute to the construction of the membership category device of “family”. As observers, our language and cultural resources require us to accomplish the relationship of the mother as the mother of the particular baby. We achieve this through our familiarity with the category-bound activities of babies and mothers as related in the particular utterance. That is, within the membership category device of family, babies cry and their mothers pick them up – activities that are category-bound.

MCA, then, can be described as studying the choices participants make, the moral work they do, in enacting their everyday activities (Jervis-Tracey, 2003). Furthermore, the accessible nature of the transcribed talk and its close analysis allow us to see this moral work at play. The categories constructed, whether they are categories of persons or categories of places, are “constructed not as physical or material spaces or places, but as idealized courses of morally accountable action (Baker & Keogh, 1995, p. 265). The moral accountability of this work underlines the nature of the choices made by participants in relation to preferred or dispreferred options (Levinson, 1983).

In the study reported here, specific membership categories were oriented to by participants. Members present themselves as members of the categories of teacher and academic in ways that show they understand the attributes of those categories and how these are accomplished through the activities of members. However these activities vary, and a member might sometimes be heard undertaking activities bound to one category and sometimes to another. For example, the category-bound activities of the principal sometimes accomplish for him membership of the category of teacher, sometimes that of researcher, sometimes that of leader. This shows once again how the accomplishment and membership of categories through interaction among participants is always in a state of flux..

Data Analysis through TranscriptionAt every stage of data collection and analysis, the researcher makes judgements that become part of the values context of the study. Even the recordings of the actual talk are

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not able to be described as value-free or neutral, since there have already been decisions made regarding, for example, the placement of microphones and the timing of the commencement of recording. The data were analysed through transcription processes relying on the conventions described by Psathas (1995). After careful listening to the tape recordings, passages were selected for transcription on the basis of their contribution to understanding aspects of the partnership work of the participants in the meetings. An important feature of this treatment of the data is that the act of transcribing talk in this manner is itself analytical. The talk itself is data. The recording of the talk constitutes a representation of the data, and the transcription is the analyst’s interpretation – the researcher’s account of the features of the talk.

Steps to AnalysisAnalysts of talk-in-interaction utilize a number of resources and strategies to explore and explain the work accomplished in a particular situation. However there are a number of commonalities among the techniques used by different analysts. While there are several suggestions for how to begin conversation analysis (ten Have, 1999), I have drawn on Pomerantz and Fehr’s (1997, pp. 71-74) set of “tools” to describe how analysis generally proceeds and to assist in approaching the analysis of talk. Pomerantz and Fehr point out that analysts draw on their own language and knowledge resources in analysing talk, and that these tools are simply one of a number of approaches. Nevertheless, this approach proved useful in this study as a means of providing structure and purpose to the analysis task. The tools consist of a set of five steps the analyst can take. Although presented in a chronological order, this order sometimes moves about among the steps. The steps suggested by Pomerantz and Fehr (1997) are set out here in summary:

1. Select a sequence. 2. Characterise the actions in the sequence. 3. Consider the language and other resources participants use to package their

actions. 4. Consider the effect of the timing and taking of turns on understanding actions

and topics. 5. Consider how the ways the actions were accomplished implicate certain

identities, roles and relationships.

These examples of the strategies used by conversation analysts to make accessible the data they collect through processes of transcription reinforce the notion that transcription is “a selective process reflecting theoretical goals and definitions” (Ochs, 1979, p. 44). The transparency and accessibility of the data and its representation are keys to the claims of conversation analysis to be a rigorous empirical discipline, closely connecting data, transcription and analysis (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998, p. 92).

(Co-)constructing the category of expert as cultural workThe ways in which participants relate to one another can be considered from cultural perspectives. These ways comprise such elements as values, power and order, and they influence and are influenced by the interactions. One common sociological approach to a consideration of the cultural aspects of these interactions would be grounded in an

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understanding that culture circumscribes action. That is, one could account for participants’ actions in terms of the cultural context within which they occur.

An ethnomethodological perspective focusing on the everyday activities of participants provides an opportunity for a different view. Through their category-bound activities in everyday interaction, participants construct membership categories for themselves and one another. The various aspects of the constructed categorizations, including membership activities, have been described as cultural resources, and the orderliness of these resources as occurring as a result of their use rather than their use being circumscribed by some pre-existing cultural environment (Hester & Eglin, 1997, p. 20). Considered from this perspective, then, culture is something that “is done” rather than something that a group has. It is seen to be situated inside action (Baker, 2000), and is both shaped by and shaping of the interactional work of participants. In this way, partnership-in-action is the phenomenon under investigation.

In the social interactions of the participants in this study, a particular cultural element that comprises one way that they relate to one another is that of expertise. As analysis of the data in this chapter reveals, the expertise that the participants bring to the partnership is constructed through their interactions. This co-construction of expertise seems to be an important feature of the interactions. Other researchers studying other kinds of institutional contexts using these ethnomethodological resources have made similar observations. Mehan (1983), for example, studied the interactions of parents and school personnel in meetings as they discussed the placement of children in special education settings. He reported how the outcome was negotiated through the talk-in-interaction of the meeting participants (Mehan, 1983). The ways in which the participants used language in the meetings constructed the kinds of authority or expertise their talk conveyed and constructed. In the cases in Mehan’s (1983) study the technical, objective language of the “professionals” was more influential than the more contingent talk of the “lay” participants, namely the parents and teachers. Similar findings are reported by Heritage and Sefi (1992), who studied the interactions between health visitors (advice givers) and first-time mothers (clients). They noted how, through their use of language, advice givers often attempt to ameliorate their advice, taking a “friendly” stance rather than an expert one. Nevertheless the asymmetry of the relationship usually prevailed, and the advice was either received defensively or rejected entirely. Whitford’s (1994) suggestion, that university partners in such collaborations need to be sensitive to the risk of perceptions of elitism in their claims to expertise, is also germane. These examples of the cultural aspects of expertise emerge throughout the discussion in this chapter.

Throughout the discussion of these passages of talk, I have identified and analysed the various membership category devices constructed to describe the participants and their activities. These devices (MCDs) are described by the participants themselves, and always co-constructed by the participants. Each device “carries a moral baggage” (Silverman & Peräkylä, 1990, p. 304), such as the implication of ascribing a particular category or attribute (or predicate) over an alternative one. Both the utterances and the silences separating them include moral implications. In this way, the work of constructing moral order among the participants in the study is done through membership

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categorization – and this work in turn occurs through the talk of the participants (Silverman, 1998). Analysis focuses on those aspects made hearably relevant by the participants themselves during the meeting talk. The assumption here is that the participants orient to, follow and are guided by a set of institutional rules or courses of action that suggest what can and cannot be talked about. These rules relate to such issues as who can introduce topics, and guide and lead the discussion in particular ways.

There are three distinct ways in which the participants in this study are heard, through their talk, to construct the category of expert. This work is undertaken both by teachers and by academics, and occurs across the range of meetings that were conducted over the period of the study. These three processes are: constructing expertise as an attribute of others, by describing the category-bound

activities of expert; constructing and claiming expertise for oneself through describing ones own

category-bound activities of expert; claiming expertise through the activity of denying it.One example of how each of these ways of approaching the construction of the category of expert, using the data of the meeting talk, is now considered in some detail.

Construction of others as experts

Extract 1

TR1A: 330 - 3391 P What do you think is the role (1.0) [inaud] but what do

you think might be the role of the people from the university?

2 Tess Well to inform us maybe about (2.0) are there different methods of action research and maybe like give us some ideas on how to actually (1.0) carry out

3 P like a facilitator but processes of investigating=4 Tess mm (0.5) might be action research might not be (0.5) be

something else5 Anita I found last year (1.0) with (1.0) Jim was very helpful

(1.0) but unless you told him (0.5) what it was you wanted (2.0) well, no, if you told him what it was you wanted he was more helpful he could be focussed on things

6 P Perhaps that was a strategy he was using7 Anita Well perhaps. In the beginning he would just send

emails off with little bits and pieces, but once I said "OK I like this I want to go with this one" (0.5) then (0.5) everything focussed toward that so if we can tell them what it is we want them to do instead of saying you know how can you help us?

[Participants: P = school principalTess, Anita = teachers]

This exchange is an extract taken from a segment of talk in a meeting among a group of seven teachers, including the principal. The discussion focuses on the possible roles of

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the academics in the project. Only the principal and two of the teachers – Tess and Anita – are heard in this segment of the talk. The exchange follows a general, informal discussion about the possible nature of the issue to be investigated in the forthcoming collaborative work. The opening question by the principal (turn 1) sets the direction for the talk that follows. In this introductory phase, there is an invitation to consider and share views about the likely roles of the academics. This is task-orienting behaviour (Heritage, 1997, p. 166), which clearly sets the intended agenda for the content of the talk to follow. The formal nature of the turn taking that follows is also indicative of the institutional nature of the setting (Boden, 1994; Drew & Heritage, 1992). The teachers are in a meeting to consider an aspect of this professional learning project. The institutional nature of this talk is characterised by the physical nature of the work as a meeting event convened to achieve institutional goals, and its social dimension as the place where the teachers act together. The institutional work is further accomplished through the principal's opening question / task orientation.

The calling of the meeting can be seen also as an accountable action (ten Have, 1999, p.17). This opening talk by the principal is an opportunity to account for the existence of the meeting immediately after the exchange of greetings. He provides this account by naming the “people from the university” in a particular way and inviting the teachers present at the meeting to propose what part these other partners might play in the work that is being planned. The principal’s interactional intent here is reflected in the category name he chooses to use for these partners. He could have named them as “academics”, as “lecturers”, as “researchers”, or even used their personal names and not categorised them at all. The principal influences the inferences that will be made about those he is naming in this way, as well as describing them, in this naming activity (Silverman, 1998, p. 16). In fact by choosing not to allocate a category beyond the naming of the place the people come from (the university), he provides an opportunity for the other meeting participants to propose for themselves some appropriate categories for the university partners.

Tess is the first to take up the principal's invitation, offering practical ways that the academics might help. In so doing, she assigns to “the people of the university” the membership category of research practitioners, as experts in the processes of inquiry. She does this by attributing activities to the perceived nature of academics' work: informing teachers about alternative ways of doing action research, and providing alternatives to action research as a methodology. The emphasis in Tess's talk can be seen to be on the academics' role to "inform". Her emphasis is on their role rather than on the content of their information. This is in line with the principal’s request (turn 1). She proposes, "Well to inform us maybe about" (turn 2), but then pauses for 2 seconds. This pause might be an invitation for other participants to suggest what the information might be. When no input is forthcoming, she makes some suggestions of her own. What follows are some activities she proposes as appropriate for the academics (turn 2).

The principal (turn 3) paraphrases Tess’s proposal. In this intervention, reinforcing her attributing to the academics the activity of facilitating inquiry, the principal co-constructs with Tess the expertise of the academics. He also gives Tess an opportunity to re-assess

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the possibility that action research might not be the only course of action available (turn 4).

Construction of self as expert

However, Anita intervenes and injects a note of caution based on her earlier experience in working with one of the academics. We are able to identify in her intervention how she constructs her own expertise through describing her activities, and how she acknowledges the sensitivity of making this claim to expertise through elements of the structure of her talk as well as by not naming the attribute of expertise that she constructs.

4 Tess mm (0.5) might be action research might not be (0.5) be something else

5 Anita I found last year (1.0) with (1.0) Jim was very helpful (1.0) but unless you told him (0.5) what it was you wanted (2.0) well, no, if you told him what it was you wanted he was more helpful he could be focussed on things

Her contribution to the talk is punctuated by pauses, which may be invitations for others to take over the talk and affirm her own experience. An alternative explanation of these pauses could be as an indication of some sensitivity (Silverman & Peräkylä, 1990), in that Anita is being evaluative of her earlier interaction with Jim. When intervention by other participants is not forthcoming, she describes her previously successful experience to propose how the group might ensure that their own agendas are dominant in the current project.

Tess and Anita each use the word "Well" to introduce one of their utterances (turns 2, 7). In Tess's case (turn 2), "Well" can serve to claim her place as the speaker, to "gain the floor" of the meeting, while she begins her response to the principal's question. This use of the pre-placed appositional (Schegloff, 1992) indicates that Tess seeks to have the next turn. When the principal proposes (turn 6) that this procedure (of waiting for the teacher to specify what support is required) might be an intentional strategy of Jim's (category of academic), Anita signals possible weak disagreement. Anita, then, uses "Well" (turn 7) as perhaps a preface to some weak disagreement with what has gone before (Heritage, 1997). It softens the disagreement by acknowledging the legitimacy of the preceding talk, but indicates that what follows adds some uncertainty to what has been said. This use of "Well" as a pre-placed appositional helps to identify the speaker as perhaps a more cautious and critical, even expert, consumer of the academics' advice than is Tess. Anita qualifies and further describes the activity of an academic as a result of her prior experience in turn 7.

5 Anita I found last year (1.0) with (1.0) Jim was very helpful (1.0) but unless you told him (0.5) what it was you wanted (2.0) well, no, if you told him what it was you wanted he was more helpful he could be focussed on things

6 P Perhaps that was a strategy he was using7 Anita Well perhaps. In the beginning he would just send

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emails off with little bits and pieces, but once I said OK I like this I want to go with this one (0.5) then (0.5) everything focussed toward that so if we can tell them what it is we want them to do instead of saying you know how can you help us?

In this passage of talk (turns 5 to 7), Anita begins tentatively. In her first entry into the conversation (turn 5), her talk is punctuated by pauses – five in one sentence, generally of from one to two seconds' duration. By turn 7, the pauses are not as long. However, she chooses her words carefully, and self-repairs at an important point. Speaking about an earlier experience in working with Jim, she first uses the passage "unless you told him (0.5) what it was you wanted ", but again uses the indicator of disagreement (this time within her own talk) "well, no" before her repair, saying "if you told him what it was you wanted". Anita has replaced the negative connotation of "unless" with a more positive "if", which has the effect of changing the action on a teacher's part from that of a subject to that of an active participant in the transaction (Greene, 1973). This action on the part of a teacher, according to the theorising Anita is doing through this talk, ensures that the teacher assumes control of the relationship. It results in Jim (category of academic) being more helpful when directed by the teacher partner to be more focussed. Anita generalises her theorising to the category of teacher rather than personalising it to herself through the use of the pronoun "you" (turn 5) rather than "I", even though it is a personal and recent experience of hers that is being related. The use of the systematically ambiguous “you” relies on the collaboration of the hearer in providing an interpretation that includes hearers and well as the speaker in the referent of the pronoun (Sacks, 1995, p. 165).

There are three sequential organisation consequences that have been identified as indicating and accompanying talk about sensitive matters: pauses, self-corrections, and delay of the sensitive issue (Silverman & Peräkylä, 1990, pp. 295-300). In this one turn, Anita has used all three of these strategies. It is very likely, then, that her apparent reluctance to account for her previous experience is a result of sensitivities relating to perceived asymmetry between the positions of academic and teacher (ten Have, 1991), rather than a result of her inexperience in participating in partnership activity.

Anita’s re-iteration that Jim did not become focussed in his role until after she had more precisely defined and communicated what it was that she wanted to achieve was a relating of her own narrative about this experience. It is clearly heard to be theorised for her in the almost triumphant summary, "so if we can tell them what it is we want them to do instead of saying you know how can you help us?" In this extract, Anita is doing the moral work of explicating why one course of action is preferable to another. She achieves this work in terms of the desired outcomes of the relationship and the experience she has had using alternative strategies, by selecting the strategy that, in her experience, has been demonstrated to be more likely to achieve the intended result. The analysis suggests that Anita may not be experienced at doing this moral work in a public way with her colleagues, given the care with which she proceeds, the delicacy identified through the use of pauses. However she also provides a reminder that the partnership work requires a sense of direction and intended outcomes for all parties, and the opportunity for all to make choices about the work. It is clearly moral work, in that the talk provides evidence

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of choice, of preference, and of equal opportunity for actualisation through partnership. Equally importantly, however, Anita is undertaking the activity of an expert negotiator, achieving from the relationship the kind of support that she knows she needs.

Claiming expertise through its denial

TR2A: 174 - 1791 P Some of the people coming in are bringing in some good

prior knowledge ((referring to teachers newly appointed to the school))

2 Jim [Yes3 Jen [mm4 Jim And that's really good because we're not going to do this

as as experts in 5 Jen [No6 Jim [mathematics (.) or even as experts in pedagogy. What we're

gonna do, from my perspective (.) 7 Jen mm8 Jim is to facilitate (0.5) these people's learning about

themselves (.) and about their practice (.) in recognising that they have some skills (0.5) to take charge of their own professional development and to facilitate their peers'

9 Jen mm10 Jim (.)in the future.

Participants: P = school principalJim, Jen = academics

In this second extract, the academics (Jen and Jim) and the principal discuss how the academics can contribute to the teacher group in ways that would enhance the likelihood of successful collaborative work. These first few turns at talk introduce the ideal activities of the members of the collaborative project. As analysis shows, one category co-constructed is the category of “academics”; another is “teacher”; and another is “principal”. This extract shows how the members are sketching out “who the participants relevantly are,… what they do and should do, … and how these categories and activities connect” (Baker, 2000, pp. 107-8).

In turn 1, the principal refers to newly appointed teachers and the prior knowledge that they bring to the school. He points out that these teachers already have knowledge relevant to the school's project. Jim’s and Jen’s responses (turns 2, 3) overlap as they each acknowledge the principal’s assertion. However Jim continues by beginning to define the professional role of the academics in the project. In so doing, he orients to activities that situate them in the category device of "academic" and define their predicates or attributes within that device. He does this by naming what they are not going to be: they are not going to be “experts in … mathematics” (turns 4 and 6) or “even .. experts in pedagogy” (turn 6).

The use of “not” to assist in the categorization work Jim does is a significant activity on his part, and raises a number of questions about how he constructs the notion of expertise in this talk, and about how we hear his construction. It could appear that Jim is

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contributing to the construction of the category of “facilitator” by himself and Jen by excluding some attributes and activities from that category. By excluding expertise in mathematics and pedagogy from the category’s attributes, Jim is heard to clarify his expectation of what the activities might include. Closer attention to Jim’s talk, however, reveals that he limits this exclusion of activities to this particular and specific episode of partnership work. He says (turn 4) that “we’re not going to do this (my emphasis) as experts in …”. Thus Jim is not excluding the possibility that they, the academics, could in fact bring such expertise to another project. This in turn can be heard as a claim to these types of expertise, as well as a claim to the authority within the partnership to decide when to use the different types of expertise the academics possess. Thus Jim’s apparent claim not to be an expert is in fact quite the opposite – it is a claim to significant expertise, enhanced by a claim to the power to decide when to use it (Firth, personal communication, 5 July 2002). This accomplishment of the attribute of expertise through the apparent denial of it is an important theme in the talk studied in this research. Jim’s construction of expertise through its denial, however, is achieved concurrently with his construction of his and Jen’s expertise as facilitators by describing the category-bound activities of that category. The analysis provides an opportunity to identify how Jim actually claims the expertise of the academics in the content of the partnership work as well as in the facilitation process by denying one and describing the other.

ConclusionIn these brief extracts taken from the talk of just two of a series of meetings, we hear the culture of the school and the academy being made by the participants, and the new culture of the collaborative work being accomplished. These cultures are both pre-existing and under construction. The work of “making” them in ways and forms that are situationally relevant to the project of the collaboration is done “retrospectively and prospectively” at the moment of the meeting talk (Baker, 1996, p. 97). The cultural artefacts constructed through the participants’ talk do the interactional social and moral work of partnership building and accomplishing the goal setting and planning work. These cultural artefacts have been constructed in the form of expertise, of leadership and of collaboration. In this instance, we have looked closely at the construction of the artifact of expertise by the participants and at the different ways in which this is achieved.

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