Leader and follower: Towards the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s two interactional categories to describe learning situations?

Abstract

This paper offers a critique of learning viewed solely through the categories of formal Vs. informal education as used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd). This critique is based on the perspectives of ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and sociocultural theory. It considers that any learning consists of the construction of a common object between participants. I examine two possible organizations of interaction as participants construct their learning objects in situations that are glossed as second language learning. In the first case, the activity is led by the teacher, in the second case, by the learner. The article shows that this difference in the organization of social interaction has consequences on the organization of a proximal zone of development and therefore has consequences for learning opportunities. In conclusion, the article proposes to add to the typologies of learning, the interactional categories of leader and follower in order to specify the roles of the teacher and learner in a large number of learning situations.