Teaching in school as organizing and adjusting students’ learning processes are social acts based on knowledge and experiences that the activity demands consciously and unconsciously from its participants. Formalized teaching should therefore be analysed as situated communicative practices which are developed within the frame of an established activity with longs and strong traditions (Säljö, 2001). Teaching and learning are not straightforward, but vulnerable projects, where teachers and students are dependent on each other and their mutual interaction (Vygotsky 1978, 1999, Wertsch 1991, 1998, Wells 1999, 2001, 2006). In the classroom teaching involves daily face to face encounters between pupils and teachers and is thus a moral as well as an academic issue. A central question is how the teacher can establish and support classroom interactions where the different learners are recognized as participants, not just recipients. In this paper a situation from a science lesson is used to highlight teaching as creating space for participation. An essential aspect with the situation presented is that the interaction that takes place in the classroom is not a pre-planned activity. It grows out of the here - and - now situation and develops as a consequence of the teacher’s awareness and response in the situation and through pupils’ and teacher’s mutual struggling with how to understand and create meaning to an academic topic.

At the core of the analyses is Rommetveit’s (2003, 1991) perspectives attuning to the attunement of the other, co-authorship and epistemic responsibility (Rommetveit, 1991). Also drawn into this analysis is Wright’s discussion on social responsivity ( Wright 2000, Asplund 1987). Rommetveit claims that the notion of co-authorship remains unacknowledged because it is something we take for granted in most situations. When we meet upon situations where we have different concerns, we will, as a rule, try to attune our own linguistic meaning to the attunement of the other. In dialogues of conflicting interest, this will not necessarily be the matter. In a conversation epistemic dominance may be attained by one of the conversation partners, by controlling words and expressions used and also by topicalizing what is talked about. Rommetveit introduces the concept of epistemic (co-) responsibility and argues that this expression combines both epistemic and ethical issues in communication. Social responsivity (Asplund, 1987) can be interpreted as a qualification of intersubjectivity (Wright, 2000). A situation that is genuinely responsive will always be characterized by creativity and the possibility of surprise attached to it. The outcome is not guaranteed beforehand, but depends on the response given. 

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