Institutionally appropriate communication is a major issue in organizations today. The ability to interact within institutional contexts represents a set of practices society members have available for sharing information and communicating, complaining, negotiating, solving problems, bringing off specific tasks, transmitting knowledge and learning. Responsive to context-specific motivations and at the same time transcending any specific interaction, interactional competences are not abstract abilities but are constructed within rich interactional environments, assessed and interpreted according to collectively shared and valid principles. 

The International conference Interactional Competences in Institutional Practices is intended to convene the state of the art in research on interactional competences within institutional contexts (professional interactions; teaching-learning interactions in school and/or in the workplace; professional-non professional interactions). The conference will be held at the University of Neuchâtel in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, from November 21 through November 22 2014. 

We envision this to be a series of presentations, with peer-reviewed contributions and invited speakers, focussing on interactional competences in institutional settings and promoting research from the broad range of institutional interactions researchers. We welcome contributions on both theoretical and applied research based on naturalistic observations.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Competence and multimodality
• Competence and learning
• Competence and assessment
• Competence and identity
• Competence and knowledge
• Legitimate competence and mechanisms of institutional legitimization
• Competence, intervention and change 

The conference includes:

• Plenary lectures by invited speakers.
• Individual presentations: 20 min. lecture, 10 min. discussion.
• Posters: special slots for poster communications will be included in the conference program. 

The event will mark the end of the IC-You - Interactional Competences in Institutional Practices - research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and carried out from 2011 by the University of Neuchâtel, the University of Geneva and the Haute Ecole de Santé Arc.

Contact:   [email protected]