November 12

11:30am-1pm

Sage 5711

In this talk, Michele Friedner (Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago) analyzes how special educators at a school for children with intellectual disabilities in India engage in collaborative sense-making projects with the children with whom they work (although there is the question of what collaboration actually means) and in the process they create create rich social worlds that are oriented towards the present and the near future. Friedner examines teachers' goal setting, acts of communicative repair, and attempts to create happy endings. Friedner ends by thinking about how these social worlds might grow or contract and what it means to focus on one "exceptional" organization.