Evaluating Cognitive Competences in Interaction

Evaluation is a part of everyday life. Competences, knowledge and skills are assessed in ordinary as well as in institutional settings like hospitals, clinics and schools. This volume investigates how evaluations are being carried out interactionally. More specifically, it explores how people evaluate each others’ cognitive competences as they deal with each others’ understandings, knowings, feelings, doings, hearings and learnings face-to-face.

The contributions focus on different evaluation activities in a variety of institutional settings in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Holland and the United States of America.

All the contributions approach the theme by use of Ethnomethodology (EM) and/or Conversation Analysis (CA). Thus, the analytic interests concern how participants organize activities of evaluating cognitive competences by means of recognizable interactional methods. This approach differs from other approaches and research interests within cognitive science as it concentrates on how people in interaction orient towards cognitive competence irrespective of scientific theories.