Looking beyond reductive interpretations

Over time I began to acknowledge the possibility of more complex interpretations of particular situations, fo e a ple athe tha ushi g to la el lasses as tea he -centred o stude t- e t ed , trying instead to understand why the classes might appear this way.

The role of the teacher was one area that came to the fore in observation data, in particular the apparent high level of teacher control in classes and my interpretation of classes, particularly in earlier observations, as teacher-centred. For example, as mentioned earlier, in Section 6.3.1, in [Obs. 1] I noted:

Very teacher-centred, i.e. teacher  class, class  teacher. Teacher very controlling, students mainly silent.

In [Obs. 7] also, I noted the teacher kept quite firm control of the class, as can be seen through the following observation notes, taken over a 25-minute period:

The teacher stands at the front. She sa s hat is a k? The students answer in u iso alo g the li es of a pla e he e people keep thei o e . The teacher asks for words connected with bank. 5 or 6 students offer suggestions, such as deposit, interest, savings, they all stand up when answering. She then uses the u fi ished se te e st le , sa i g fo e a ple i a loud oi e e put ou o e i a … a d the stude ts o plete the se te e. She recaps all the words covered at the e d of this pa t. … The teacher is still [after 15 minutes] at the front leading/controlling everything. The students are told to stand up and try to

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e olle t fo the sel es the o ds the e o e ed i the lass so fa muttering them to themselves. The teacher tells them that if they can recall full the o ds o e ed the a sit do . The students seem very compliant. The teacher gets individual students to recap the words for the class. She asks if the e a e a dou ts a d e plai s the o d i te est agai . A e tea he - centred class.

As can be seen from this description, the teacher is leading and directing every part of the lass a d, as fo [O s. ], I i te p eted the lass as e tea he - e t ed , at no point during the observation considering that the students were doing anything that was not tightly controlled by the teacher. Indeed, reading back the description, I can understand this interpretation as almost every sentence starts with what the teacher did, rather than what the students did, and there seems to be little opportunity for students to make their own choices or work out things themselves in their own time.

This typifies how I was initially tending to judge classes in this manner, in terms of there being too much teacher control and teacher-centredness, and too little student engagement and participation, looking to label classes either tea he - e t ed and ie i g tea he -centredness as defi ie t ased o Weste TE“OL led understanding of tea he - e t ed ess . Indeed, the majority of the classes I observed in the earlier part of the study came across as teacher-centred, and therefore in my view at the time defi ie t , though I now appreciate that this was only relative to my expectations based on my own past experiences.

However, my thinking on this changed over the course of the study. I moved away from seeing approaches I was less accustomed to as necessarily deficient and began to consider the different influences on what was happening in the classroom time, such as the new textbooks that were being used at that time. This can be seen from the discussion following the observation notes below:

The lass sta ts ith the tea he aski g stude ts to e ie a eadi g te t the d read for homework. She then asks the class to say what it was a out, the p ofile

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of an Indian astronaut), then elicits the information that should be given in a p ofile of so eo e a d ites it o the la k oa d. “tude ts a e desig ated as ast o auts o i te ie e s a d a e gi e -8 minutes to prepare themselves fo o k i te ie s ased o the headi gs o the oa d. The see to eg oup themselves to do this, and are clearly familiar with this type of activity. The stude ts the a out the o k i te ie s i pai s ith o e stude t as the astronaut and the other as the interviewer. After approximately 5 minutes, the teacher brings the activity to a close by asking 3 pairs (one after another) to come to the front of the class to perform the interview. [Obs. 13]

The stude ts p epa e a poste -style advert in groups. The group work (making the poste is all i L . [Obs. 15]

Following these observations, I noted:

I ot su e if I sa o e stude t-centred teaching today, or if it was just teachers following the textbook, which just happens to more closely resemble what I consider as more student-centred tea hi g. [Field notes, July 2009]

These textbooks were in turn based around what were being packaged as new app oa hes, su h as the a ti it ethod that the e t uote f o o se atio otes refers to:

The teacher tells the students that the e goi g to ite a diary entry for the main character in the story they read yesterday. She elicits how they might begin the diary and introduces words they might want to use. The students start writing diaries. The teacher comes over to chat with me and tells me this is an e a ple of the a ti it ethod of tea hi g that they now use. The students get on quietly, asking for help where necessary from their classmates in L1. The teacher speaks mostly in English with a very small amount of L1, mainly for t a slati g o a ula … Four stude ts ead the dia ies the e itten to the

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lass. … This lass feels o e student-centred a d communicative than most classes I e at hed. [O s. ]

In this class, the students are guided towards working on diary entries and were then left to get on with constructing them, getting help from the teacher or their peers if and when they needed it. For these reasons, I interpreted the class at the time as being more

stude t- e t ed a d o u i ati e tha othe s I had see .

However, I would question whether this was a deliberate attempt to prioritise student- centred o u i ati e tea hi g o whether, as with the previous examples, the teacher was simply following the textbook.

There is a kind of textbook-imposed student-centredness happening in the sense that the textbook is encouraging students to be active and work in groups and the teacher to facilitate and monitor.

The above comments illustrate how my own position moved from a more polar opposites way of thinking, labelling a class as either tea he - e t ed or stude t-

e t ed , towards a less reductive perspective on what I was seeing, trying to be more cautious about quickly or simplistically labelling classes in this way.

More broadly, they illustrate how I was appreciating the complexity of the teaching situatio that I as o se i g, o i g f o a i a tea he - e t ed ess as defi ie

e sus stude t- e t ed ess as the goal a of seei g the lasses to o side i g hat I ea t tea he - e t ed a d stude t- e t ed as ell as the many other factors that might be affecting the degree of teacher-centredness or student-centredness in classes, such as the assessment systems, the expectations of the different stakeholders involved including school management and parents, and the textbooks being used.

Summary

This chapter has discussed ways in which my perspectives as an education professional and as a researcher changed and developed over the course of the study, focusing in