Sorting pupils in a report-card meeting: Categorization in a situated activity system

Abstract

The teaching team that we examine during a report-card meeting works with a finely tuned measurement system for accountably deciding on pupils' future school careers. A substantial part of the sorting work is routinized and is based upon pupil results produced during the school year. But there are also pupils with overall scores that set them in a discussion zone. The discussions about such disputable cases are not only revealing as to what kind of criteria the teachers use for assessing pupils, they also make observable the descriptive practices the teaching team uses for granting access to higher-level schools within the highly differentiated high-school system in the Netherlands. We examine a descriptive practice the teachers use for characterizing a pupil in order to take a position in the discussion about which school type suits him best. The focus is on membership-categorization practices that typify pupils and on the criteria that account for membership-category ascription. We show that the way the teachers cast their assessments of pupils has to be analyzed within the situated activity system that organizes the decision making in the report-card meeting.