Teaching and learning how to identify an audible order in traffic: Street-crossing instructional sequences for the visually impaired

Based on a close examination of a video-recorded setting in which a sighted professional gives an orientation and mobility lesson to a visually impaired student, this chapter will be devoted to an analysis of how the two participants orient to audible, moving features of urban settings in order to learn and teach, through various simulated attempts, how to safely cross a street. The learner develops specific listening skills in order to make sense of the instructions the teacher is giving her. The chapter focuses on instructional sequences in and through which the participants (1) initiate a reconfiguration of their location and bodily arrangements, (2) orient to the sounds that make accountable the ongoing trajectories of various categories of motor vehicles, and (3) simulate a “safe” street crossing. It investigates how embodied, instructed practices constitute the urban environment as an ordered setting and turn some specific noises into audible opportunities for a safe crossing. Through this apprenticeship, visually impaired students develop a new set of skills that transform them into competent pedestrians.