Reflexivity has become a signal topic in contemporary discussions of qualitative research, especially in educational studies. It shows two general inflections in the literature. Positional reflexivity leads the analyst to examine place, biography, self, and other to understand how they shape the analytic exercise. Textual reflexivity leads the analyst to examine and then disrupt the very exercise of textual representation. The purpose of this article is to develop a critical reading of contemporary formulations of reflexivity in the literature and then reintroduce an earlier discussion in social science, Garfinkel’s ethno-methodological “constitutive reflexivity.” The author suggests that postmodern attachments not withstanding, positional and textual reflexivities may have far more in common with Enlightenment certainties than is commonly allowed. As for constitutive reflexivity, a brief analysis of a videotaped sequence from a fifth-grade classroom is offered as an example of its alternative program and topics.

This article attempts to align a familiar task of classroom teaching, eliciting from students correct answers about their lessons, with a major organizational domain in studies of natural conversation, that of conversational repair. Numerous studies have analyzed correction sequences in classroom discourse, and our discussion pays special attention to McHoul's (1990) treatment of “repair in classroom talk.” McHoul directly measures the findings on repair in studies of natural conversation to the regularities of correction sequences in classroom lessons. It is argued, contra McHoul, that repair is a different, and prior, order of discursive work, and one that premises the very possibility of classroom correction. Further, the difference may have wider relevance for understanding repair and correction as “co-operating” organizations of talk-in-interaction more generally.

This article begins with a review of the place of Hugh Mehan's Learning Lessons Lessons (1979a) to review and assess its place within the continuing development of what I want to call the "analytic culture" of classroom studies.1 The culture I have in mind includes those studies broadly characterized as "qualitative," and classroom discourse studies in particular. They have been a major voice and transformative influence within the educational DOUGLAS MACBETH is an Associate Professor of Education in the School of Educational Policy and Leadership, Ohio State University, Ramseyer Hall, 21 West Woodruff Ave., Columbus, OH 43210; e-mail macbeth.1@osu.edu. His specializations include naturalistic inquiry, classroom instruction, and classroom discourse studies.

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