Displays of Epistemic Access: Student Responses to Teacher Explanations

This article presents an analysis of classroom encounters in which teachers explain mathematics problems to individual students. In these encounters, the students produce different displays of epistemic access, including displays of knowing and displays of understanding. This article argues in the first place that displays of knowing and displays of understanding are different interactional objects that come in different sequential positions. In the second place, it argues that some sequences have a preference for a claim of epistemic access, while others have a preference for a demonstration.