Danielle Pillet-Shore
Doing ‘okay’: On the multiple metrics of an assessment
This paper examines ‘okay’ deployed as an assessment of student performance in parent-teacher conference interactions. It aims to elucidate what is being done by a speaker who terms a student’s performance ‘okay’ and a recipient who accepts or resists it so termed. This work builds upon my Master’s research in which I examined the interactional practices that teachers use in these conferences to manage the delivery and reception of unfavorable student assessments/evaluations. Since the winter of 2000, I have been gathering video- and audio-tape recorded parent-teacher conference interactions, amassing a corpus of data that currently totals 37 conferences. I am currently analyzing these data to, among other things, document and describe: the overall structural organization of these conferences; how parents/caregivers present themselves as ‘good parents’ to teachers and, reciprocally, how teachers present themselves as ‘good teachers’ to parents/caregivers; and how parents and teachers deliver and receive assessments/evaluations of their children/students.
More broadly, I am interested in the close study of recorded episodes of all manner of naturally occurring interaction including, but not limited to, interactions that take place within educational settings, medical settings and ordinary conversation.
Danielle Pillet-Shore is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
