Seating order as a symbolic arrangement

The study set out to explore the bases on which the school assesses pupils' educability and which show up as pupil categorizations manifested in seati ng order, The research was carried out with ethnographic methods and focuse d on the classroom situations of one first-grade class during one autumn te rm. The points of interest were those changes and episodes in which the sea ting order organized the action. Four stages were discerned in the assignme nt of seating order: the first stage was the spontaneous order created by t he pupils themselves on their first day of school; the seating order of the other three stages was set zip by the teacher oil the basis of mixing boys and girls, of reading skills, of settledness, of capability for pair-work, and of "interpersonal chemistry". It was found that the teacher made all a ctive use of seating order as a pedagogical instrument. The pupils seemed t o adopt the classification criteria and used them in their talk, but the ap plication of these criteria, especially gender and interpersonal relations, was a constant source of dispute between the pupils and the teacher. It wa s concluded that seating order manifests, implements, and conveys to the pu pils important symbolic elements of the representation of educability endor sed by the school.