Visual Sociology in the Classroom: Fostering Interaction Awareness Using Video

In this paper we will present an empirical research about the interactions between teacher and students in a grade three of a secondary school analyzed with video. The methodologies, which shaped our data collection and analysis, are the action research, the conversation analysis of institutional talk within a class, the stimulated recall, and the visual sociology with Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software. We taped some lessons; through the replay of their daily activity we involved students and teacher separately in an auto-observation and video analysis process with the software Transana, highlighting those behaviors which were outstanding for them, eliciting their subjective meanings. Finally we organized a group discussion about the respective interpretative video analysis of the lesson, allowing a reciprocal meta-communication. This method of group video–analysis forces a re-examination of fixed practices, helping to redefine rigid patterns of interaction and didactic routine.