Instructional work in textile craft Studies of interaction, embodiment and the making of objects

Abstract: The focus for this thesis is instructions and their role in guiding students’ activities and understandings in the context of textile craft. The empirical material consists of video recordings of courses in textile craft offered as part of teacher education programs. In four empirical studies, instructions directed towards competences in craft are investigated with the ambition to provide praxeological accounts of learning and instruction in domains where bodily dimensions and manual actions are prominent. The studies take an ethnomethodological approach to the study of learning and instruction. In the studies, instructions related to different stages of the making of craft objects are analysed. Study I highlights instructional work related to objects-yet-to-be and the distinction between listening to instructions as part of a lecture and listening to instructions when trying to use them for the purpose of making an object is discussed. Study II and III explore instructions in relation to developing-objects and examine instructions as a collaboration of hands and the intercorporeal dimensions of teaching and learning craft are scrutinised. In Study IV, objects-as-completed are analysed by investigating a certain way of addressing assessment as an educational topic. The manifest character of skills and understandings in craft provide specific conditions for learning and instruction. In craft education, skilled action is not just explained but also shown and established through bodily instructions that make the targeted skills available through bodily understandings of moving and touching. The bodily conduct of students comprises a resource for teachers to assess students’ understanding of the subject matter being taught as the materiality of craft activities reveal the crafters’ understanding of the activity at hand. The thesis demonstrates how skills in craft are made available to students in and through opportunities to see, feel and act in craft-specific ways.