This book explores disciplinary connections, continuities and interfaces to understand how interactional competences may be observed and developed in work and training contexts. It presents a range of research contributions that develop an interest in the study of talk-in-interaction, and how it might contribute to the understanding of the learning and development of interactional competences as they are demanded in work and training contexts. The chapters explore diverse empirical contexts and illustrate approaches focusing on the investigation of social interaction as situated, collective and dynamic accomplishments in institutional contexts, in a variety of dimensions or aspects. They also enact specific theoretical categories and methodological procedures for understanding how interactional competences are mobilized and developed in the context of work or training. This book thus identifies the sorts of interactional competences mobilized by participants when addressing the practical problems they are faced with in the circumstances of work or training, and observes how such circumstances  may offer opportunities to the development of interactional competences. It reflects on the possibility for analytic concepts and procedures pertaining to the analysis of talk-in-interaction, and contributes to the professional development of workers.

Chapter “The design and implementation of a course on interactional competence for teachers: Teacher-learning through video-based guided discovery tasks” is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Laurent Filliettaz is a full professor in Adult Education, Language and Work at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland. His expertise includes literacy issues in workplace contexts, multimodal interaction analysis in connection to learning and training practices in vocational education and training. He received his Ph.D. in linguistics in 2000, and has conducted numerous research projects over the years in areas such as pragmatics, interactional sociolinguistics or discourse analysis. Professor Filliettaz is the author of several books and articles published in French and English, analysing the role of language in the workplace and dealing with issues such as cooperation, problem solving, decision making, multiactivity, power, identity and learning. He is currently leading several research programs sponsored by the Swiss national science foundation (SNF) and promoting applied linguistics methods in the field of vocational education and training. He is also an associate editor of various journals in the field of adult and vocational education: Vocations and Learning (Springer), International Journal of Training Research (Taylor & Francis). He also serves on the panel experts for the Swiss National Science foundation (SNF) and the French National Agency for Research (ANR). He has chaired a number of international conferences, including the European Association for Learning and Instruction (EARLI SIG 14), the 4th conference on Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice and the 6th conference of the French association for Vocational Didactics (RPDP).

Evelyne Berger is a lecturer at La Source School of Nursing in Lausanne, Switzerland. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics in 2010 at the University of Neuchâtel, and obtained grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation for two postdoctoral projects. She is currently co-leader of a research project financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation aiming at experimenting and investigating the benefits of using of Conversation Analysis as a training method in vocational education. Using Conversation Analysis, she studied turn-taking practices, storytellings, question design and epistemics in classroom interactions and ordinary talk in French. Her research focuses on the notion of interactional competence and its development in the field of second language learning and nursing education. She has also published papers in journals such as Applied Linguistics, Journal of Pragmatics, Linguistics and Education, and Text & Talk, as well as a monograph by Peter Lang Editions in 2016.

Anne-Sylvie Horlacher is a Scientific Collaborator at the Center for Applied Linguistics at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. She is also a Post-doc Researcher in a scientific project financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation at La Source School of Nursing in Lausanne, Switzerland. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics in 2012 at the University of Neuchâtel. Between 2012 and 2018, she has been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of French Linguistics at the University of Basel, Switzerland. In 2019, she carried out her work as a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She analyzes ordinary and institutional settings of interaction with the methods of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. A first line of research is dedicated to understanding how participants use grammar as a resource for interaction. A second line of research is dedicated to talk at work, and more specifically to requests in service encounters. A third line of research is dedicated to investigating the ways in which Conversation Analysis can be used as a training method in vocational education. She thereby contributes to quite central topics that are currently much debated in Conversation Analysis and in broader fields: expertise, epistemics, institutionality, interactional competence. She has several publications in journals on these topics (Discourse Studies, Journal of Pragmatics, Pragmatics, Langage & Société, Langue française). She also published a monograph by De Boeck Editions in 2015, and another one in 2015 by John Benjamins, and coauthored with Simona Pekarek Doehler (University of Neuchâtel) and Elwys De Stefani (University of Heidelberg).

Anna Claudia Ticca is a linguist, working on a research programme at ICAR lab (ENS of Lyon/ ASLAN), France. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics at the Università di Pisa, Italy, with a thesis on multilingual healthcare interactions in a Yucatec rural village, Mexico. She has participated in numerous rearch projects over the years in areas such as Conversation Analysis and Interactional Sociolinguistics. Her research focuses on social interactions with participants having asymmetric access to semiotic and epistemic resources, also in presence of mediating third parties such as interpreters. In addition, she is interested in developing and implementing training methods to improve professionals' (healthcare practitioners, interpreters, educato    gj  rs) interactional skills. Her work has been published in several languages, in international journals and edited books such as the Journal of Pragmatics, Discourse Processes, Language et Société, John Benjamins. She is also an editorial board member.