The Role of Horses as Instructional and Diagnostic Partners in Riding Lessons
In many types of embodied skills instruction, the learnables—that is, the local and jointly negotiated foci of instruction—emerge from a combination between a pre-existing lesson plan and the spontaneous interaction between teacher and student. Through the analytical lens of Conversation Analysis, t...
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MDPI AG
2025-05-01
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| Series: | Animals |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/10/1418 |
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| author | Beatrice Szczepek Reed Susanne Lundesjö Kvart |
| author_facet | Beatrice Szczepek Reed Susanne Lundesjö Kvart |
| author_sort | Beatrice Szczepek Reed |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | In many types of embodied skills instruction, the learnables—that is, the local and jointly negotiated foci of instruction—emerge from a combination between a pre-existing lesson plan and the spontaneous interaction between teacher and student. Through the analytical lens of Conversation Analysis, this paper investigates the interspecies instruction setting of horse-riding lessons and shows how here, it is not only the human teachers and learners that determine the emergence of new learnables but also the horses. Horses’ actions can initiate new courses of action in a lesson, and horses can thus become interactional partners in the instructional project. Horse-led learnables can be initiated in at least three ways: through horses’ displays of mental or physical states that pre-date the instruction sequence; through actions that respond to local contingencies of the instruction sequence; and through actions that respond specifically to the rider’s actions. In the last case, their responses become diagnostic of the rider’s mistakes. In all three cases, the human participants take their cue from the horse and base new learnables on horses’ actions. Human-led learnables can be adjusted, changed, replaced, or abandoned completely in response to horses. The study broadens the emerging field of interspecies pragmatics to include instructional interactions involving the triad of human–human–horse triad. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-d4cde3bc61a84e828b7bfb620036d312 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 2076-2615 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-05-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Animals |
| spelling | doaj-art-d4cde3bc61a84e828b7bfb620036d3122025-08-20T02:33:36ZengMDPI AGAnimals2076-26152025-05-011510141810.3390/ani15101418The Role of Horses as Instructional and Diagnostic Partners in Riding LessonsBeatrice Szczepek Reed0Susanne Lundesjö Kvart1School of Education, Communication and Society, King’s College London, London SE1 9NH, UKDepartment of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 750 07 Uppsala, SwedenIn many types of embodied skills instruction, the learnables—that is, the local and jointly negotiated foci of instruction—emerge from a combination between a pre-existing lesson plan and the spontaneous interaction between teacher and student. Through the analytical lens of Conversation Analysis, this paper investigates the interspecies instruction setting of horse-riding lessons and shows how here, it is not only the human teachers and learners that determine the emergence of new learnables but also the horses. Horses’ actions can initiate new courses of action in a lesson, and horses can thus become interactional partners in the instructional project. Horse-led learnables can be initiated in at least three ways: through horses’ displays of mental or physical states that pre-date the instruction sequence; through actions that respond to local contingencies of the instruction sequence; and through actions that respond specifically to the rider’s actions. In the last case, their responses become diagnostic of the rider’s mistakes. In all three cases, the human participants take their cue from the horse and base new learnables on horses’ actions. Human-led learnables can be adjusted, changed, replaced, or abandoned completely in response to horses. The study broadens the emerging field of interspecies pragmatics to include instructional interactions involving the triad of human–human–horse triad.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/10/1418conversation analysisinterspecies interactioninstructionhorse-riding lessons |
| spellingShingle | Beatrice Szczepek Reed Susanne Lundesjö Kvart The Role of Horses as Instructional and Diagnostic Partners in Riding Lessons Animals conversation analysis interspecies interaction instruction horse-riding lessons |
| title | The Role of Horses as Instructional and Diagnostic Partners in Riding Lessons |
| title_full | The Role of Horses as Instructional and Diagnostic Partners in Riding Lessons |
| title_fullStr | The Role of Horses as Instructional and Diagnostic Partners in Riding Lessons |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Role of Horses as Instructional and Diagnostic Partners in Riding Lessons |
| title_short | The Role of Horses as Instructional and Diagnostic Partners in Riding Lessons |
| title_sort | role of horses as instructional and diagnostic partners in riding lessons |
| topic | conversation analysis interspecies interaction instruction horse-riding lessons |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/10/1418 |
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