Conference Agenda

Teaching and learning in classrooms are rarely seamless. Rather, they are characterized by moments of uncertainty, as they are often shaped by interruptions, tensions, shifts in direction, or disturbances in the flow of interaction—what we refer to as breaches in teaching and learning. These moments challenge the established classroom order but can also open new learning opportunities. Their educational significance is contested: some see breaches and the unexpected as disruptions that hinder classroom management and lead to lost learning time (Kraft & Monti-Nussbaum, 2021), while others highlight their potential for learning through productive failure (Kapur, 2016).

From a theory of education perspective, uncertainty is a central structural feature of classroom interaction, as learning cannot simply be manufactured and teaching effects remain contingent on learners’ engagement. Luhmann and Schorr (2000) concisely described this as “technology deficit” of education—the lack of causal controllability and the intrinsic contingency of educational processes. The consequence of this is that teaching and learning remain continually re-specifiable. Referring to a different epistemological tradition but with similar implications, the Joint Action Theory in Didactics conceptualizes contingency of educational processes in terms of “breaches of the didactic contract” (Ligozat & Buyck, 2024). These refer to divergences in tacit expectations between teachers and students, especially around content and instructional goals. Breaches emerge within the ongoing accomplishment of classroom interaction and may result in both digressions and a deeper subject-related understanding. In this view, breaches are considered constitutive moments in the contingent, joint progression of knowledge.

This symposium foregrounds breaches and the unexpected as an analytical lens for understanding subject-related teaching and learning and raises the question about their functionality for classroom interaction.

Florence Ligozat and Yoann Buyck analyze breaches in the didactic contract as subject-specific divergences between teacher and student expectations. Drawing on the Joint Action Theory in Didactics, their study examines how such breaches, observed in primary school mathematics, relate to mesogenesis, topogenesis, and chronogenesis. Rather than treating them as classroom disruptions, the authors conceptualize breaches as indicators of didactic quality, revealing both stagnation in knowledge development and differentiated participation structures in teacher–student interactions.

Simay Birce Cirit analyses divergences in classroom talk as interactional feedback to teachers. Drawing on the didactic contract and the Joint Action Theory framework, the study conceptualizes divergences as discrepancies between teachers’ verbal demands and learner contributions. Based on video data from primary school mathematics lessons, the analysis shows how different types of divergence signal learners’ needs or potentials and guide teachers’ contingent interactional adjustments.

Patrick Schreyer and Tanya Tyagunova examine breaches in the form of student actions that in one way or another call into question the classroom order. Based on video data from third-grade German and math lessons, their study highlights how students subtly challenge instruction through reinterpretation, delay, or noncompliance. These actions reveal implicit norms and prompt negotiations of social and instructional order. Framed as ‘studenting’, such practices illustrate students’ active role in shaping classroom realities, specifically in creating bifurcation points in classroom interaction.

Nikolaj Elf explores breaches as more or less predictable transitional practices shaped by both human and non-human actors. Drawing on sociocultural and sociomaterial theories of writing, the study focuses on school writing across micro-, meso-, and macro-level timescales, ranging from disrupted collaborative writing events to transitions between disciplinary and school levels. These transitions require writers to coordinate changing norms of what counts as writing, leading to different forms of engagement and requiring students to renegotiate their school-related identities.

The French-speaking subject didactics have a longstanding tradition of studying how knowledge content develops within classroom interactions. This tradition can be traced back to the notion of didactic contract first conceptualized within the Theory of Didactic Situation in Mathematics (Brousseau, 1997). Stemming from Rousseau’s notion of social contract (Sarrazy, 1995), the didactic contract is subject-specific: it characterises the set of norms, rules, expectations – most often tacit – that the teacher and the students assign to each other about what must be done and how about instructional tasks. The functioning of the didactic contract becomes visible when one participant does not act according to the expectations of the others, thus creating a “breach” (Mercier et al, 2000; Ligozat et al, 2018; Ligozat, 2025). We contend that such breaches, far from being mere behavioural disruptions in the classroom management, can be productive moments for fostering the learning progression of the students. In this paper, we analyse breaches in the didactic contract occurring in a mathematic lesson at primary school. We use the three dimensions of the JAD-MTQ (Joint Action in Didactics, a Model for analysing the Teaching Quality) to document certain issues in the quality of the didactic interactions observed. An analysis towards the understanding of breaches in the didactic contract through the students’ perspective in the teacher-student interactions (D3) will highlight 1) the decline of the didactic interactions related to an episode of stagnation of the knowledge content development and 2) the ‘differentiated didactic contract’ (Schubauer-Leoni 1989) operating in the management of the students’ speech selection by the teacher, generating unequal participations to the knowledge content development.

Brousseau, G. (1997). Theory of Didactical Situations in Mathematics. Didactique Des Mathématiques, 1970–1990. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Ligozat, F. (2025). From the description of teaching and learning in classroom practices to issues in the formation of school subjects. The Joint Action Framework in Didactics. In J. Leicht, P. Schreyer, G. Breidenstein, & F. Heinzel (Hrsg.), Fachlichkeit und Interaktionspraxis im Unterricht: Ansätze und empirische Perspektiven (S. 27–51). Klinkhardt. Ligozat, F., & Buyck, Y. (2024). Comparative didactics: Toward a generic model for analyzing content-specific dimensions of teaching quality. European Educational Research Journal, 23(6), 810–838. https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041241257282 Ligozat, F., Lundqvist, E., & Amade-Escot, C. (2018). Analysing the continuity of teaching and learning in classroom actions: When the joint action framework in didactics meets the pragmatist approach to classroom discourses. European Educational Research Journal, 17(1), 147–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904117701923 Mercier, A., Sensevy, G., & Schubauer-Leoni, M.-L. (2000). How social interactions within a class depend on the teacher’s assessment of the students’ various mathematical capabilities. Zentralblatt Für Didaktik Der Mathematik, 32(5), 126–130. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02655651 Sarrazy, B. (1995). Le contrat didactique—Note de synthèse. Revue française de pédagogie, 112(1), 85–118. Schubauer-Leoni, M.-L. (1989). Didactic interactions in mathematics. Les Dossiers de Psychologie, 37-Social interactions and transmission of knowledge, 37–46. https://perret-clermont.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/dossiers_de_psychologie_1989_37-1.pdf

This study investigates the functionality of breaches in classroom talk. Drawing on Brousseau’s (1997) didactic contract and the concept of breach in the Joint Action Theory Framework (Ligozat et al., 2018), the study adopts the term divergence to refer to a discrepancy between teachers’ verbal demands and learner contributions in classroom talk. The study examines how divergences function as interactional feedback to teachers by signaling learners’ needs or potentials and prompt them to make interactional adjustments in response. According to Brousseau (1997), divergences can generate ‘learning situations’ in which learners recognize the inadequacy or potential of their answers and work on them further with supportive teacher adjustments. The current study uses video data from 15 mathematics lessons across six 3rd-grade primary school classrooms. Using qualitative content analysis, a fine-grained coding scheme was developed through inductive and deductive approaches to categorize divergences and subsequent teacher adjustments. To analyze how divergences function as feedback to teachers, a secondary co-occurrence analysis examined which types of adjustments followed which divergences. Based on the coded segments, selected divergence–adjustment co-occurrences were further examined through in-depth qualitative analysis to capture how these relationships unfold within the sequential flow of classroom interaction. Findings reveal differentiated adjustment tendencies of teachers. For instance, language-related divergences (e.g., linguistic or discursive mismatches) were most frequently followed by direct correction or appropriating, suggesting a preference for immediate teacher-led resolution. In contrast, content-related divergences (e.g., incomplete or incorrect responses) tended to elicit adjustments, such as expanding inquiry, which extended interaction. In line with previous research (e.g., Duran & Jacknick, 2020), divergences caused by learners’ non-responsiveness triggered teachers to clarify or reformulate their own demands. By examining divergence–adjustment trajectories through data examples, the study illustrates how teachers interpret different types of divergence as interactional signals of learners’ needs, difficulties, or potential, and how these interpretations guide their contingent adjustment practices.

Brousseau, G. (1997). Theory of Didactical Situations in Mathematics. Didactique Des Mathématiques, 1970–1990. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Duran, D., & Jacknick, C. M. (2020). Teacher response pursuits in whole class post-task discussions. Linguistics and Education, 56, Article 100808. Ligozat, F., Lundqvist, E., & Amade-Escot, C. (2018). Analysing the continuity of teaching and learning in classroom actions: When the joint action framework in didactics meets the pragmatist approach to classroom discourses. European Educational Research Journal, 17(1), 147–169.

This paper examines moments of the unexpected in classroom interaction, showing how learners may actively challenge the established classroom order, and task demands. Using video-based data from third-grade German and maths lessons, the analysis focuses on student-initiated acts of reinterpretation, delay and subtle subversion that interrupt the expected flow of instruction. Theoretically, the article combines the concept of the didactic contract and its breaches (Brousseau, 1997; Ligozat & Buyck, 2024) with praxeological and sociology of knowledge perspectives (Martens & Asbrand, 2022). It investigates how such student actions initiate negotiations about social and subject-specific order, rendering implicit norms visible and necessarily creating bifurcation points—moments of choosing how to interpret rules, norms, and expectations, and how to deal with actions that challenge them. These student actions are therefore not considered to be deficient behaviours, but rather contributions to the co-construction of instructional reality. Breaches are relational in nature, emerging from the dynamic interplay of participants and revealing how students understand, appropriate, and reshape the ongoing learning situation. In this sense, the observed practices can be related to research on the “student job”, which conceptualizes students’ participation in classroom interaction as the situated, routinized accomplishment of instructional demands, including pragmatic adjustments, strategic compliance, and selective engagement with subject-matter expectations (Breidenstein, 2006). Preliminary findings suggest that breaches produced in whole-class interaction may explicitly challenge subject-specific demands, but are often re-framed and contained through teachers’ interactional moves. Breaches occurring in student-centered phases tend to be more frequent, yet remain comparatively invisible within the overall instructional flow. These practices can be seen as facets of studenting (Fenstermacher, 1986), highlighting students’ active role in enacting, reframing, and at times contesting their participation in classroom life.

Breidenstein, G. (2006). Teilnahme am Unterricht: Ethnographische Studien zum Schülerjob. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Brousseau, G. (1997). Theory of Didactical Situations in Mathematics. Didactique Des Mathématiques, 1970–1990. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Fenstermacher, G. D. (1986). Philosophy of research on teaching: Three aspects. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (Vol. 3, pp. 37–49). Collier Macmillan Publishers. Ligozat, F., & Buyck, Y. (2024). Comparative didactics: Toward a generic model for analyzing content-specific dimensions of teaching quality. European Educational Research Journal, 23(6), 810–838. https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041241257282 Martens, M., & Asbrand, B. (2022). Documentary Classroom Research. Theory and Methodology. In M. Martens, B. Asbrand, T. Buchborn, & J. Menthe (Eds.), Dokumentarische Unterrichtsforschung in den Fachdidaktiken: Theoretische Grundlagen und Forschungspraxis (pp. 19–38). Springer VS.

This paper explores breaches as more or less predictable writing practices amongst students in digitalised L1 classrooms. The presentation draws on data from an ongoing study of ‘Writer Identity and Writing Development in Grades 6 and 7’ (WriDe), which is an explorative study of student writing in Danish L1 funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark. Theoretically, the study is indebted to sociocultural and sociomaterial/posthuman frameworks (Prior, 2006; Leander & Ehret, 2019) that make more or less strong, and differing, claims as to whether writing development is shaped by both human and non-human actors, and whether writing development could be rationally designed, or should rather be conceptualised as emerging and unpredictable. Some empirical research suggests that students’ writing development in school can be designed, through rational strategic instruction, to meet desired end goals in ‘effective’ ways (Graham & Perin, 2007). However, sociocultural research finds that writing development is shaped by multiple contextual aspects, including fluid student identity (Jeffery & Wilcox, 2013) and changing norms of what counts as disciplinary writing in transitional subject-specific writing practices (Skaftun et al., 2017; Krogh & Jakobsen, 2019). Furthermore, sociomaterial writing research would highlight the affective and emerging nature of student writing that makes writing development rather unpredictable from a teacher perspective, yet meaningful from a student and school subject perspective (Leander & Boldt, 2013). Empirically-analytically, the presentation analyses microevents of collaborative writing from the WriDe project illuminating some of the fascinating, (un)predictable occurrences of students’ writing and ‘non-writing’ activities in L1 teaching and discussing whether such writing should be considered an acknowledgeable and meaningful breach or not.

Bazerman, C., Applebee, A., Berninger, V., Brandt, D., Graham, S., Matsuda, P., Murphy, S., Rowe, D., & Schleppegrell, M. (2017). Taking the long view on writing development. Research in the Teaching of English, 51, 351–360. https://doi.org/10.58680/rte201728980 Jeffery, J. V., & Wilcox, K. (2013). ‘How do I do it if I don’t like writing?’: Adolescents’ stances toward writing across disciplines. Reading and Writing, 25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-013-9493-9 Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high school—A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Alliance for Excellent Education. Krogh, E., & Jakobsen, K. S. (Eds.). (2019). Understanding young people’s writing development: Identity, disciplinarity, and education. Routledge. Leander, K. M., & Ehret, C. (Eds.). (2019). Affect in literacy teaching and learning: pedagogies, politics and coming to know. Routledge. Prior, P. (2006). A sociocultural theory of writing. In C. A. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (pp. 54–66). The Guilford Press. Skaftun, A., Igland, M.-A., Husebø, D., Nome, S., & Nygard, A. O. (2017). Glimpses of dialogue: Transitional practices in digitalised classrooms. Learning, Media and Technology, 43(1), 1–14.