Students’ unsolicited initiations in a science classroom as displays of competence

Previous research has shown that students orient to being seen as competent, displayed through their answers to teacher questions, and through their questions and comments. This paper adds to previous research by focusing on students’ initiations in making sense of concepts in a science classroom through unsolicited comments and the teacher's responses to them. The data is drawn from lessons in the first year of high school in Australia where students are being introduced to chemistry concepts. Using the methods of conversation analysis, the analysis focused on unsolicited student initiations to uncover the interplay between interactional and discipline competences. Findings reveal that the students offered displays and applications of their understanding through their multimodal initiations which led to the co-construction of student competence through teacher affirmation and validation. This was made visible in the teacher's feedback, expansion of points, and invitations to further explore concepts and initial noticings.