Get it together
Smit, Nienke
DOI:
10.33612/diss.160498701
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Publication date:
2021
Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database
Citation for published version (APA):
Smit, N. (2021). Get it together: exploring the dynamics of teacher-student interaction in English as a
foreign language lessons. University of Groningen. https://doi.org/10.33612/diss.160498701
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Scientific summary
An important outcome of communicative foreign language teaching is that learners can use the foreign language in different cultural, educational or professional contexts. Teachers do many different things to support learners in different ways, but one of the most common pedagogical tools for language teachers is to engage learners in elaborate verbal interaction during their lessons. This, however, can be a challenging task for secondary school teachers who are working with teenage learners.
At present, empirical studies describing ecologically valid interactive processes between teachers and teenage learners in English as a foreign language lessons are scarce. Therefore, the main focus of this dissertation is on how English as a foreign language teachers in the Netherlands and their students interact during communicative language lessons and whether these classroom processes lead to co-construction of meaning. The first aim of this research was to contribute to research methodology for observing classroom interaction from a complex dynamic systems perspective. Complex dynamic system theory addresses characteristics of change and is therefore suitable for the analysis of classroom interaction processes. The second empirical aim of this research was to contribute to a better understanding of the real-time process of co-construction of meaning. Finally, this dissertation also addresses the research-practice gap and sought ways to share and validate research findings about the language learning process with teachers. Descriptions of naturalistic classroom observations of the language learning process, in which both students and teachers are involved and mutually influence each other, are at the core of the empirical evidence used in this dissertation.
The focus of the classroom observations was on the teachers’ strategies for scaffolding reading comprehension and on real-time interaction patterns which are formed by teacher questions and students’ answers. The scope of the present study is limited to interactions
between teachers and learners at the micro timescale of the lesson. A central construct in this dissertation is scaffolding (Wood et al., 1976). This metaphor is very popular with educators and researchers. Intuitively the term scaffolding makes a lot of sense, and conceptually it is an attractive construct because it combines cognitive, meta-cognitive and affective. However, the complex and dynamic nature of the scaffolding construct also make it something which is difficult to measure. The complex nature was addressed by observations of a range of teaching strategies aimed at providing calibrated support in the learning process. The dynamics of scaffolding were studied by focusing on how teacher and students respond to each other in real-time.
Classroom interaction patterns emerge from the way teachers and learners respond to each other and teaching routines emerge from these moment to moment actions. Fixed patterns of classroom interaction may form an attractor state (Van Geert & Van Dijk, 2002), which is another word for a dominant pattern that reproduces and maintains itself. An attractor state might be conducive to language learning, however, it might also hinder language learning. Regardless of whether the behavioral pattern is beneficial or not, an important characteristic of an attractor state is that, once formed, the pattern emerges without a lot of effort, but requires substantial effort to change.
The four studies presented in this dissertation describe current EFL teaching practice in the highest levels of Dutch secondary education. The central concern was to find out what is going on in EFL lessons when teachers and learners are engaging in a process aimed at achieving mutual understanding of a written text. Two different observation protocols were developed in order to capture scaffolding behavior in the EFL classroom. The first is the English Reading Comprehension Observation Protocol (ERCOP), which is an event sampling protocol that can be used to identify strategies which teachers are using to activate and support learners during the lesson. The second is the Questions and Answers
in English Language Teaching (QAELT) coding scheme: a coding system that can be used to
quantify patterns that emerge from a series of teacher questions and student answers. Whereas the ERCOP protocol focuses on scaffolding strategies for teaching English reading comprehension, the QAELT instrument zooms in on interactive behavior of both the teacher and the students.
In the ERCOP instrument, teaching strategies were categorized according to six scaffolding categories: modelling, feedback, instructions, explanations, hints and asking questions. The reliability of the instrument was tested in a sample of 20 lessons taught by five different teachers. The analyses revealed that differences in the use of teaching strategies could be largely attributed to differences in teacher behavior. A low proportion of the variance in the observations was caused by interaction effects between teachers and observers. This means that the teaching strategies listed in ERCOP can be observed reliably and that the instrument is not very sensitive to personal observer biases. These results stress the need of combining the use of an observation tool like ERCOP with observation training. It is essential that observers who use ERCOP look through the lens of the instrument and do not let judgements based on personal beliefs about good EFL teaching influence their scores. Rater training is therefore an indispensable part of any observation system.
Teacher questions and student answers are common verbal classroom behavior that can be observed relatively easily. Moreover, teacher questions can scaffold the language learning process and structure the lesson. In the second study, the focus was on patterns emerging from teacher questions and learner answers in order to better understand the process of scaffolding EFL reading comprehension. The aim of this study was to investigate co-adaptation, which is the bidirectional process emerging from the way in which teachers and learners adapt their questions and responses to each other. Four
experienced teachers were each observed twice in two different groups, resulting in a dataset of 16 lessons. The results revealed that co-adaptation between the teachers’ questions and students’ answers frequently led to patterns that were characterized by closed teacher questions and short or no student answers. The analyses also showed that teachers ask many questions. For every observed teacher there was at least one lesson in which a positive association was found between the level of the question and the level of the student answers. This suggests that teacher questions can drive the interaction and that the students adapt the level of their response to the level of the teacher’s question. However, for only one out of fifteen lessons a positive significant correlation was found between the level of a student answer and the follow-up teacher question. There was virtually no evidence that teachers adapt the level of the follow-up question to what the student has previously said. In only one of the observed lessons the process of co-adaptation between teacher and students led to optimal interaction patterns which were formed by a relatively large number of open-ended teacher questions combined with extended student turns.
The third study analyzed how patterns formed by teacher questions and student answer interactions might vary or stabilize during the lessons. The sample consisted of lesson observations of forty different EFL teachers, teaching learners from 14 to 17 years old in the highest levels of Dutch education. Co-construction of meaning in this study was operationalized as extended episodes of open-ended teacher questions and longer student answers. The results revealed that most interaction in the observed lessons can be characterized by high levels of teacher activity and low levels of student activity. In addition, interaction characterized by a lot of teacher questions did not lead to increases in student activity. Three types of interaction, labelled zones of interaction, with varying levels of teacher and student activity were identified. Zone 3 was the “co-construction of meaning zone” characterized by active teachers and active students. However, patterns
of teacher-student interaction rarely stabilized for more than two questions in a row. This was the case for a large majority of the observed interactions. Only nine lessons out of 40 had a slight but significant tendency to stay in a zone if interaction was already there. This suggests that teacher-student interaction which is formed by question and answer sequences is unstable. The results also revealed that the least stable type of interaction was interaction in zone 3, which is the type of interaction which is needed for co-construction of meaning. The study showed that extended episodes of active engagement were scarce and highly idiosyncratic. This suggests that prolonged stays in zone 3, characterized by extended sequences of open-ended teacher questions without predefined student answers, might be teacher and learner behavior to strive for. The volatile teacher-student interaction patterns observed in this study in which open questions play an important, but currently limited role, suggest room to find ways to optimize student contributions in order foster adaptation that leads to co-construction of meaning.
The fourth study aimed to validate the observational evidence and asked a group of teachers who had not been observed whether they recognized the observations. A group of 57 teachers attending a presentation about classroom interaction filled out a short questionnaire about the observational evidence. The respondents confirmed that the observed patterns also reflected their teaching experiences. They were also asked what they thought was the best explanation for the observed patterns. According to the respondents, emotional factors rather than students’ proficiency levels, lesson content, lesson activities or motivational aspects might explain limited student participation. Most of the respondents suggested to implement formative evaluation practices in order to make students feel more competent and some respondents suggested that interaction could be improved by using different teaching materials. As an additional area of investigation, respondents suggested to focus attention of ways to foster a safe
learning environment. Classroom routines that are conducive to fostering engagement and active language use were mentioned as possible areas for future research. These results seem to support the idea that social, cognitive and affective elements play a role when a teacher wants to provide the right support at the right moment in time.
This leads to the following conclusion. First of all, teacher scaffolding in the language classroom can be best understood as a flexible behavioral repertoire. Secondly, observations revealed mainly patterns characterized by asymmetric adaptation, which means that in which in some cases sometimes groups of learners adapt the level of the question to the teacher but the teacher does not necessarily respond to the learners. Thirdly, teachers ask many questions, but these questions often lead to short student answers or even to no answers at all. Fourthly, teacher question and student answer patterns throughout the lesson are highly variable and co-construction of meaning emerging from open-ended teacher questions and extended student turns was not observed. Finally, teachers recognize the dominant interactional patterns in which they themselves are far more active than their students and attribute these patterns to emotional factors.
This dissertation has shown that a complex dynamic systems approach yields important insights into classroom interactional processes. The ways in which teacher and students respond to each other from moment to moment are the building blocks for the process of interaction. Analyses of the teacher-student interaction process revealed that mechanisms such as co-adaptation leading to co-construction of meaning may emerge from self-organization, but also that the outcomes of this process cannot be simply attributed to either the teacher or the learner. Finally, the most important message of this dissertation for teachers, teacher educators, managers and policy makers is the idea that teachers and students shape the language learning process together, which
stresses the crucial need for all participants to accept this shared responsibility if you want to get it together.
