The role of users in training for service professions in the context of tutorial interactions

This article aims at describing in a methodical way how work situations involving the provision of services to “users” may entail specific contingencies and opportunities for novice workers when they have to learn practical skills during internships. The paper is based on video-ethnographic case studies, focusing on verbal and non-verbal interactions between trainees, workplace tutors and users in two distinct institutional contexts: early childhood education and a radiology center in a public hospital. The analyzes produced reveal that users - respectively patients and children - actively contribute to shape interaction processes and that they significantly affect the conditions through which trainees and tutors participate to work production tasks