for participation in interaction with the teacher. It is clear that students bring differences to the classroom in terms of linguistic and cultural competencies, and in terms of ethnic and gender identities. In this paper, however, I will take the social-constructionist perspective, that relevant differences between students are constructed in the interaction. I want to present a method for studying differences in educational achievement in terms of micro turn-by-turn interaction processes. I will argue that this approach does not render linguistic, cultural, ethnic or gender differences irrelevant, rather it looks at whether and how participants in interaction make these or other differences relevant.
PARTICIPATION AND IDENTITY Different Identities in Interaction
In this section, I want to elaborate on the interactional construction of differences in terms of participation in classroom activities and students' different social identities that are constructed in this process. I will illustrate my argument with data from a mathematics class. The students in this class are 12-13 years of age and in their first year of secondary education. In this fragment, the teacher starts with the correction of the homework: Transcript 1 (KL/WI/091199/45-113) (These data were translated from Dutch into English. The original Dutch transcript appears below the translation. See Appendix A for transcription conventions).