This study examines classroom task instructions—phases traditionally associatedwith noninteractional objectives and operations—and reveals their compositionas interactionally complex and cocrafted. Analyses of video sequences of taskinstructional activity from three different secondary school lessons show thatstudent questions routinely contribute to making task instructions followable. In thisenvironment, student questions set up tensions between the demand to respond tothe individual and responsibility to uphold the general instructional agenda. Datashow that, as addressees of student questions, instructors take great care to meetboth individual and collective accountabilities. To meet obligation to the addresseeand exploit the instructional benefit of the question for the cohort, dualaddressivity—targeting two or more addressees in response to a student question—proves a crucial method for achieving such principled practice. Educationally, itappears vital to recognize student instructed action as integral to task-relatedlearning.
Funding agencies: Committee for Educational Sciences of the Swedish Research Council