Hugh Mehan’s Learning Lessons Reconsidered: On the Differences Between the Naturalistic and Critical Analysis of Classroom Discourse

This article begins with a review of the place of Hugh Mehan’s Learning Lessons in the development of the naturalistic study of classroom discourse studies, and especially the sequential analysis of naturally occurring classroom discourse. It then turns to the emergence of an alternative program for classroom discourse studies, in the particulars of critical discourse analysis. There we find a “formal–analytic” program for discourse studies. The middle section of the article takes up the characterization and the differences between these two programs through a critique of formal—and critical—studies of classroom discourse. The article then concludes with an analysis of a fourth-grade lesson on fractions, to suggest what the sequential analysis of naturally occurring classroom discourse may tell us about the work of instruction in the early grades. My aim throughout is to reaffirm the premise and program of naturalistic inquiry as the central innovation of classroom studies in the last 30 years.