Chapter 6: Starting Out as a Driver: Progression in Instructed Pedal Work

This chapter is about learning a procedure for handling a complex technological artifact. Taking the example of a driving instructor teaching a trainee driver how to start a car over a series of trials, it demonstrates how progression in an instructional activity can be observed and analyzed as a member’s phenomenon, and how both driving instructors’ and trainee drivers’ actions are performed with reference to a joint history of previous trials, thereby invoking an aspect of remembering.

In order to make a car move forward, a driver must master a complex procedure, centrally involving the feet and the car control pedals, that needs to be performed in a particular way. The analysis shows, over a series of starts, how this procedure is at first unpacked by a driving instructor (henceforth DI) and a trainee driver (TD) as a series of basic steps. These steps are then gradually reformulated in a way that observably builds on the TD’s new competence. In other words, this chapter demonstrates how progression is accountably built as a relevant feature of the participants’ activity through the details of giving and receiving instructions.