Objects that matter
The hybrid and distributed agency in parent-assisted homework interactions
It has been two decades since the social-material turn in social interaction studies proved the heuristic limits
of a logocentric analytical geography. In this paper, we focus on the performative function of objects in an underexplored
learning activity: parent-assisted homework. Adopting a Conversation Analysis informed approach complemented by the ventriloquial
perspective on communication, we illustrate how parent-assisted homework is accomplished through the multiple resources in the
semiotic field. Particularly, we show how participants orient to and exploit the agency of materiality in interaction. In the
conclusion we raise a socio-pedagogical issue concerning the cultural capital embedded in the learning environment as well as the
parents’ competence in recognizing and exploiting it in ways that are aligned with the school culture.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The agency of things: The socio-material turn in social sciences
- 2.1The “ventriloquial perspective” and beyond
- 3.The socio-material approaches in education
- 4.Materiality in action: Homework as an artifact-mediated learning activity
- 5.Data corpus and analytical procedures
- 6.The performativity of objects and the making of the learning environment
- 6.1Defining the frame: The agency of seemingly inert objects in the interactional scene
- 6.2Indicating and inviting to perform the required activity
- 6.2.1Sharing agency with objects
- 6.2.2Delegating agency to objects
- 7.Discussion
- 8.How the school culture enters family cultures through words and things: Concluding remarks
-
References
References
Aakhus, Mark
2007 “
Communication as Design.”
Communication Monographs 74 (1): 112–117.


Akrich, Madeline and Bruno Latour
1992 “
A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies.” In
Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, ed. by
Wiebe E. Bijker and
John Law, 259–264. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Amadini, Monica
2019 “
Costruire Corresponsabilità Educativa nei ‘Tempi per le Famiglie’: Ruoli, Incontri,
Processi [“
Building Co-responsibility in the ‘Times for Families’: Roles, Meetings and Processes.”] In
Comunità e Corresponsabilità Educativa. Soggetti, Compiti, Strategie. [
Communities and Educational Co-responsibility. Subjects, Tasks and Strategies, ed. by
Monica Amadini,
Simona Ferrari,
Simonetta Polenghi, 17–28. Lecce: Pensa Multimedia.

Arcidiacono, Francesco
2013 “
The Family Goes to School.” In
Crossing Boundaries. Intercontextual Dynamics between Family and School, ed. by
Koji Komatsu,
Antonio Iannaccone, and
Giuseppina Marsico, 83–107. Charlotte, NC: IAP.

Arnold, Jeanne E.
2013 “
Mountains of Things.” In
Fast-Forward Family. Home, Work, and Relationships in Middle-Class America, ed. by
Elinor Ochs, and
Tamar Kremer-Sadlik, 67–93. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

Barbanti, Camilla
2019 Che Cosa Fanno gli Oggetti? Una Ricerca Pedagogica sulla Materialità in Atto in una Scuola
Steineriana [
What Do the Objects Do? Pedagogical Research on Materiality in Place in a Steinerian
School]. Milano: FrancoAngeli.

Barley, William C., Paul M. Leonardi, and Diane E. Bailey
2012 “
Engineering Objects for Collaboration: Strategies for Ambiguity and Clarity at Knowledge Boundaries.”
Human Communication Research 38 (3): 280–308.


Barone, Pierangelo
1997 La Materialità Educativa. L’Orizzonte Materialista dell’Epistemologia Pedagogica e la Clinica della
Formazione. [
The Educational Materiality. The Materialistic Horizon in Pedagogical Epistemology and the Formation
Clinics]. Milano: Unicopli.

Barone, Pierangelo, Alessandro Ferrante, and Daniele Sartori
(eds) 2014 Formazione e Post-umanesimo. Sentieri Pedagogici nell’Età della Tecnica [
Education and Post-humanism. Pedagogical Paths in the Technical Age]. Milano: Raffaello Cortina.

Bazzanella, Carla, Cristina Bosco, Alessandro Garcea, Barbara Gili Fivela, Johanna Miecznikowski, and Francesca Tini Brunozzi
2007 “
Italian allora, French alors: Functions, Convergences and
Divergences.”
Catalan Journal of Linguistics 61: 9–30.


Bourdieu, Pierre
1986 “
The Forms of Capital.” In
Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. by
John G. Richardson, 241–258. New York: Greenwood.

Bronfenbrenner, Urie
1979 The Ecology of Human Development. Experiments by Nature and Design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Brummans, Boris
2007 “
Death by Document: Tracing the Agency of a Text.”
Qualitative Inquiry 13 (5): 711–727.


Bruni, Attila
2005 “
Shadowing Software and Clinical Records: On the Ethnography of Non-Humans and Heterogeneous
Contexts.”
Organization 12 (3): 357–378.


Budach, Gabriele, Catherine Kell, and Donna Patrick
2015 “
Introduction: Objects and Language in Trans-contextual Communication.”
Social Semiotics 251: 387–400.


Callon, Michel, Arie Rip, and John Law
1986 Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology. Sociology of Science in the Real World. Berlin: Springer.

Caron, André H., and Letizia Caronia
2001 “
Active Users and Active Objects. The Mutual Construction of Families and Communication Technologies.”
Convergence 7 (3): 38–61.


Caron, André H. and Letizia Caronia
2007 Moving Cultures. Mobile Communication in Everyday Life. Montreal-Kingston-London: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Caronia, Letizia
2011 Fenomenologia dell’educazione. Intenzionalità, Cultura e Conoscenza in Pedagogia [
Phenomenology of Education. Intentionality, Culture and Knowledge in Pedagogy]. Milano: Franco Angeli.

Caronia, Letizia
2014 “
Talking Objects: The Recording Devices as Participants in the Research Setting.” Paper presented at ICA Annual Conference. Seattle, May 22–26, 2014.
Caronia, Letizia
2015 “
Totem and Taboo: The Embarrassing Epistemic Work of Things in the Research Setting.”
Qualitative Research 151: 141–165.


Caronia, Letizia
2019 “
Following and Analyzing an Artifact: Culture-through-Things.” In
Methodological and Ontological Principles of Observation and Analysis, ed. by
François Cooren and
Fabienne Malbois, 112–138. New York: Routledge.

Caronia, Letizia and François Cooren
2014 “
Decentering our analytical position: The dialogicity of things.”
Discourse & Communication 81: 41–61.


Caronia, Letizia and Chiara Dalledonne Vandini
Cicourel, Aaron
1980 “
Three Models of Discursive Analysis: The Role of Social Structure.”
Discourse Processes 31: 101–132.


Cicourel, Aaron
1992 “
The Interpenetration of Communicative Contexts: Examples from Medical Encounters.” In
Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, ed. by
Alessandro Duranti, and
Charles Goodwin, 291–310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cole, Michael
1995 “
Culture and Cognitive Development: From Cross-cultural Research to Creating Systems of Cultural
Mediation.”
Culture and Psychology 1(1): 25–54.


Contini, Mariagrazia
(ed) 2012 Dis-alleanze nei Contesti Educativi [
Dis-alliances in Educational Contexts]. Roma: Carocci.

Cook-Gumperz, Jenny, William A. Corsaro, and Jürgen Streeck
(eds) 1986 Children’s Worlds and Children’s Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.


Cooren, François
2006 “
The Organizational World as a Plenum of Agencies.” In
Communication as organizing: Empirical and Theoretical Explorations in the Dynamic of Text and Conversation, ed. by
François Cooren,
James R. Taylor, and
Elizabeth J. Van Every, 81–100. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Cooren, François
2012 “
Communication Theory at the Center: Ventriloquism and the Communicative Constitution of Reality.”
Journal of Communication 621: 1–20.


Cooren, François and Nicholas Bencherki
2010 “
How Things do Things with Words: Ventriloquism, Passion and Technology.”
Encyclopaideia 15 (28): 35–62.

Cooren, François, Gail Fairhurst, and Romain Huët
2012 “
Why Matter Always Matters in (Organizational) Communication.” In
Materiality and Organizing: Social Interaction in a Technological World, ed. by
Paul M. Leonardi,
Bonnie A. Nardi, and
Jannis Kallinikos, 297–315. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Cooren, François and Fabienne Malbois
2019 “
How to Follow and Analyze a Diversity of Beings. An Introduction.” In
Methodological and Ontological Principles of Observation and Analysis, ed. by
François Cooren, and
Fabienne Malbois, 112–138. New York: Routledge.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly and Eugene Rochberg-Halton
1981 The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Douglas, Mary and Baron Isherwood
[1979] 1996 The World of Goods. Toward an Anthropology of Consumption. New York: Routledge.

Duranti, Alessandro
(ed) 2004 A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.

Fenwick, Tara and Richard Edwards
2010 Actor-network Theory in Education. London: Routledge.


Fenwick, Tara, Richard Edwards, and Peter Sawchuk
2011 Emerging Approaches to Educational Research. Tracing the Socio-material. London: Routledge.

Fenwick, Tara and Richard Edwards
(eds) 2012 Researching Education Through Actor-network Theory. London: Wiley-Blackwell.


Fenwick, Tara and Paola Landri
2012 “
Materialities, Textures and Pedagogies: Sociomaterial Assemblages in Education.”
Pedagogy, Culture & Society 20(1): 1–7.


Ferrante, Alessandro
2016 Materialità e Azione Educativa [
Materiality and Educational Action]. Milano: FrancoAngeli.

Forsberg, Lucas
2007 “
Homework as Serious Family Business: Power and Subjectivity in Negotiations about School Assignments in Swedish
Families.”
British Journal of Sociology of Education 28(2): 209–222.


Foucault, Michel
1975 Surveiller et Punir. Naissance de la Prison [Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison]. Paris: Gallimard.

Garfinkel, Harold
2002 Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working out Durkheim’s Aphorism. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Garfinkel, Harold and Lawrence Wieder
1992 “
Two Incommensurable, Asymmetrically Alternate Technologies of Social Analysis.” In
Text in Context: Studies in Ethnomethodology, ed. by
Graham Watson, and
Robert M. Seiler, 175–206. Newbury Park: Sage Publications.

Gibson, James J.
1977 “
The Theory of Affordances.” In
Perceiving, Acting and Knowing, ed. by
Robert Shaw, and
John Bransford, 127–143. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Gibson, James J.
1979 The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Goodwin, Charles
1994 “
Professional Vision.”
American Anthropologist 96(3): 606–633.


Goodwin, Charles
2000 “
Action and Embodiment within Situated Human Interaction.”
Journal of Pragmatics 32(10): 1489–1522.


Goodwin, Charles
2007 “
Participation, Stance and Affect in the Organization of Activities”,
Discourse & Society 18(1): 53–73.


Goodwin, Charles
2011 “
Contextures of Action.” In
Embodied Interaction. Language and Body in the Material World, ed. by
Jürgen Streek,
Charles Goodwin, and
Curt LeBaron, 182–193. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goodwin, Charles and Marjorie H. Goodwin
2004 “
Participation.” In
A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, ed. by
Alessandro Duranti, 222–243. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Goodwin, Marjorie H.
1990 He-said-she-said: Talk as Social Organization Among Black Children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Graesch, Anthony P.
2013 “
At Home.” In
Fast-Forward Family. Home, Work, and Relationships in Middle-Class America, ed. by
Elinor Ochs, and
Tamar Kremer-Sadlik, 27–47. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

Heath, Christian and Paul Luff
2013 “
Embodied Action and Organizational Activity.” In
The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by
Jack Sidnell, and
Tanya Stivers, 283–306. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.

Heritage, John
2012a “
The Epistemic Engine: Sequence Organization and Territories of Knowledge.”
Research on Language and Social Interaction 451: 25–50.


Heritage, John
2012b “
Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge.”
Research on Language and Social Interaction 451: 1–25.


Holliday, Adrian
1999 “
Small Cultures.”
Applied Linguistics 20(2): 237–264.


Hoover-Dempsey, Kathleen V., Angela C. Battiato, Joan M. T. Walker, Richard P. Reed, Jennifer M. DeJong, and Kathleen P. Jones
2001 “
Parental involvement in homework.”
Educational Psychologist 36(3): 195–209.


Hutchby, Ian
2001 “
Technologies, Texts and Affordances.”
Sociology 35 (2): 441–456.


Iori, Vanna
1996 Lo spazio vissuto [
The lived space]. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

Iori, Vanna
2002 “
Il Demone del Tempo [
The Demon of the Time].”
Adultità 171: 77–92.

Landowski, Erik and Gianfanco Marrone
(eds) 2002 La Società degli Oggetti. Problemi di Interoggettività [
The Society of Objects. Problems of Interobjectivity]. Rome: Meltemi.

Landri, Paola and Assunta Viteritti
2016 “
Introduzione: le Masse Mancanti in Educazione [
Introduction: the Missing Masses in Education].”
Scuola Democratica. Learning for Democracy 7(1): 7–22.

Latour, Bruno
1987 Science in Action. How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Latour, Bruno
1996 “
On Interobjectivity.”
Mind, Culture and Activity 3(4): 228–245.


Latour, Bruno
1999 Pandora’s Hope. Essays on the reality of Science Studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Latour, Bruno
2002 “
Una Sociologia senza Oggetto? Note sull’Interoggettività [
A Sociology without Objects? Notes on Interobjectivity].” In
La Società degli Oggetti, ed. by
Eric Landowski, and
Gianfranco Marrone, 203–229. Roma: Meltemi.

Latour, Bruno
2005 Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

Latour, Bruno
2013 An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger
1991 Situated Learning. Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Mantegazza, Raffaele
1998 Filosofia dell’Educazione [
Philosophy of Education]. Milano: Mondadori.

Mantegazza, Raffaele
2001 Unica Rosa. Cinque Saggi sul Materialismo Pedagogico [
Only Rose. Five Essays on Pedagogical Materialism]. Milano: Ghibli.

Marsico, Giuseppina
2013 “
Moving between the Social Spaces. Conditions for Boundaries Crossing.” In
Crossing Boundaries. Intercontextual Dyamics between Family and School, ed. by
Koji Komatsu,
Antonio Iannaccone, and
Giuseppina Marsico, 361–374. Charlotte, NC: IAP.

Massa, Riccardo
1986 Le Tecniche e i Corpi. Verso una Scienza dell’Educazione [
The Tecniques and the Bodies. Toward a Science of Education]. Milano: Unicopli.

Massa, Riccardo
1987 Educare o Istruire? La Fine della Pedagogia nella Cultura Contemporanea [
Educating or Instructing? The End of Pedagogy in Contemporary Culture]. Milano: Unicopli.

Massa, Riccardo
1990 “
Dalla Scienza Pedagogica alla Clinica della Formazione [
From the Pedagogical Science to the Formation Clinics].” In
Istituzioni di Pedagogia e Scienze dell’Educazione [
Institutions of Pedagogy and Education Sciences], ed. by
Riccardo Massa, 561–593. Roma, Bari: Laterza.

McGregor, Jane
2004 “
Spatiality and the Place of the Material in Schools.”
Pedagogy, Culture and Society 12(3): 347–372.


Mondada, Lorenza
2011 “
The Systematic Organization of Concurrent Courses of Action within Multi-activity.” In
Embodied Interaction. Language and Body in the Material World, ed. by
Jürgen Streeck,
Charles Goodwin, and
Curtis LeBaron, 207–226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Montessori, Maria
1950 La Scoperta del Bambino [
The Discovery of the Child]. Milano: Garzanti.

Norman, Donald A.
1988 The Psychology of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.

Oury, Fernand, and Aida Vasquez
1967 “
Vers une Pédagogie Institutionnelle [
Toward an Institutional Pedagogy]”.
Recherches 71: 243–252.

Pati, Luigi
2019 Scuola e Famiglia. Relazione e Corresponsabilità Educativa [
School and Family: Relationship and Educational Co-responsibility]. Brescia: Scholé.

Pickering, Andrew
1995 The Mangle of Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.


Pillet-Shore, Danielle
2012 “
The Problems with Praise in Parent-teacher Interaction”,
Communication Monographs 79(2):181–204.


Pillet-Shore, Danielle
2015 “
Being a ‘Good Parent’ in Parent–Teacher Conferences”,
Journal of Communication 65(2): 373–395.


Pontecorvo, Clotilde
1993 La Condivisione della Conoscenza [
The Sharing of Knowledge]. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

Pontecorvo, Clotilde
1999 Manuale di Psicologia dell’Educazione [
Handbook of Psychology of Education]. Bologna: Il Mulino.

Pontecorvo, Clotilde, Anna M. Ajello, and Cristina Zucchermaglio
1991 Discutendo si Impara [
By Discussing, You Learn]. Roma: La Nuova Italia Scientifica.

Pontecorvo, Clotilde, Anna M. Ajello, and Cristina Zucchermaglio
1995 I Contesti Sociali dell’Apprendimento [
The Social Contexts for Learning]. Milano: LED.

Pontecorvo, Clotilde, Alessandra Fasulo, and Laura Sterponi
2001 “
Mutual Apprentices: The Making of Parenthood and Childhood in Family Dinner Conversations.”
Human Development 441: 342–363.


Pontecorvo, Clotilde, Vivian Liberati, and Camilla Monaco
2013 “
How School Enters Family Everyday Life.” In
Crossing Boundaries. Intercontextual Dyamics between Family and School, ed. by
Koji Komatsu,
Antonio Iannaccone, and
Giuseppina Marsico, 3–34. Charlotte, NC: IAP.

Riva, Mariagrazia
2016 “
Per un’Ermeneutica delle Pratiche Educative Concrete. Il contributo della Psicoanalisi allo Studio
della Materialità Educativa [
For an Hermeneutics of Concrete Educational Practices. The Contribution of Psychoanalysis to the Study
of Educational Materiality].”
Scuola Democratica. Learning for Democracy 7(1): 249–260.

Roehl, Tobias
2012 “
Disassembling the Classroom. An Ethnographic Approach to the Materiality of Education.”
Ethnography and Education 7(1): 109–126.


Salomone, Igor
1997 Il Setting Pedagogico. Vincoli e Possibilità per l’Interazione Educativa [
The Pedagogical Setting. Constraints and Possibilites for Learning Interaction]. Roma: Carocci.

Schegloff, Emanuel A.
1987 “
Between Macro and Micro: Contexts and Other Connections.” In
The Micro-Macro Link, ed. by
Jeffrey C. Alexander,
Bernhard Giesen,
Richard Munch, and
Neil J. Smelser, 207–234. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Schegloff, Emanuel A.
1997 “
Whose Text? Whose Context?”.
Discourse & Society 81:165–187.


Schegloff, Emanuel A., and Harvey Sacks
1973 “
Opening up closings”.
Semiotica, 8(4): 289–327.


Stevanovic, Melisa, and Anssi Peräkylä
2012 “
Deontic Authority in Interaction: The Right to Announce, Propose and Decide.”
Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45:3: 297–321.


Streeck, Jürgen
2011 “
The Changing Meanings of Things: Found Objects and Inscriptions in Social Interaction”. In
Embodied Interaction. Language and Body in the Material World, ed. by
Jürgen Streeck,
Charles Goodwin, and
Curtis LeBaron, 67–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Streeck, Jurgen, Charles Goodwin, and Curtis LeBaron
(eds) 2011 Embodied Interaction: Language and Body in the Material World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Taylor, James and Elizabeth Van Every
2011 The Situated Organization. Case Studies in the Pragmatics of Communication Research. New York: Routledge.

Tramma, Sergio
2009 Che Cos’è l’Educazione Informale? [
What is Informal Education?] Roma: Carocci Editore.

Vygotskij, Lev S.
1962 [1934] Thought and Language. Cambridge, MASS: MIT Press.


Weininger, Elliot B., and Annette Lareau
2003 “
Translating Bourdieu into the American Context: the Question of Social Class and Family-school
Relations.”
Poetics 311: 375–402.


Wertsch, James V.
1985 Vygotsky and the Social Formation of the Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wertsch, James V.
1991 “
A Sociocultural Approach to Socially Shared Cognition.” In
Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition, ed. by
Lauren B. Resnick,
John M. Levine, and
Stephanie D. Teasley, 85–100. American Psychological Association.


Wertsch, James V., and Leslie J. Rupert
1993 “
The Authority of Cultural Tools in a Sociocultural Approach to Mediated Agency.”
Cognition and Instruction 11(3&4): 227–239.


Wingard, Leah, and Lucas Forsberg
2009 “
Parent Involvement in Children’s Homework in American and Swedish Dual-earner Families.”
Journal of Pragmatics 411: 1576–1595.


Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 april 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.