The Organization of Transitions between Observing and Teaching in the Budo Class

This article is an illustration of the multimodal way in which judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu teachers manage activity transitions from observing the students to teaching them. The data is collected from three beginner-level judo classes, filmed in Finland in autumn 2013, and two intermediary level Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes, filmed in Finland in autumn 2015. Different communicative moves employed by the teachers are examined through multimodal conversation analysis, and the sequential organization of these moves is presented in the analysis. The way participation changes, and is changed, during these transition sequences is also discussed. The findings indicate that these transition sequences are deeply multimodal and collaborative by nature. The teacher may be pedagogically responsible for the class, but the in-situ management of the transitions is largely dependent on the students and their embodied conduct.