Who talks in class?
- Some Pasifika students do not feel comfortable participating in classroom interactions.
- Conversational and literacy practices between children and adults vary widely in different English-speaking communities, as well as in communities where other languages are spoken.
Worldwide, there is a danger that minority students, or those whose home language is not the medium of instruction, will be marginalised and silenced in the classroom. This can happen in New Zealand to Pasifika learners, as well as to other students, unless teachers are very alert to the subtle processes that can make students feel excluded from what is going on at school.
Nakhid (2003) talked in depth to five New Zealand teachers and 12 students about their perceptions of schooling. The Pasifika students she interviewed talked about how:
- they felt different from the non-Pasifika students, who were confident about speaking up in the class and talked easily to the teacher (see the inquiry Being a good learner )
- they felt that they were not as articulate as the non-Pasifika students, and did not feel able to respond to the teacher in the same way as the non-Pasifika students
- they felt as if the teachers and non-Pasifika students made it seem that they worked harder and were faster learners than Pasifika students. This came about because of the way their requests for further information or for clarification about the lesson were responded to.
The students Nakhid interviewed had some perceptions that were quite different from the teachers’ perceptions. One example was that the teachers believed that the students valued specific individual attention and one-to-one opportunities with them. In fact, the students expressed considerable discomfort about classroom practices that singled them out and “exposed them to the class as ‘less capable’ students” (Nakhid, 2003, page 218).
Jones (1991) found a similar situation in research she did nearly 20 years ago. The Pasifika girls she worked with thought there was no point in engaging in talk and discussion with teachers. They also felt that there was something about the way Pākehā girls related to schooling that was different and more successful, in spite of the fact that both they and the Pākehā girls spoke English and worked hard. The teachers in Jones’ study wanted to get the Pasifika students to engage in learning behaviour that would help them to be more successful in the long run. They would say, for example, “You need to work this out for yourself.” Unfortunately, the teachers didn’t manage to establish a successful dialogue with the students to find a common understanding.
The inquiry What do students believe about learning? explores student beliefs about learning behaviour, and you can hear some teachers’ views on effective teaching relationships in the video clip Effective teaching relationships .
Patterns of interaction and discourse
How can it be that Pasifika students who have had all or most of their schooling in New Zealand don’t feel comfortable with classroom interactions? One possible answer lies in the effects of a European tradition that began nearly 2500 years ago. For example, consider this exchange.
Parent: What’s that over there?
Child: Dak.
Parent: Yes, it’s a duck, isn’t it? Do you think it’s going to swim across the pond to eat our bread?
Child: Bwet.
Parent: Our old bread.
This common European question and answer session has links with the method of teaching that Socrates developed, of extracting knowledge from students through skillful questioning. Parents use it and, when babies are too young to speak, the parents provide the answers as well as the questions. This has been called the IRF pattern of Initiation, Response, Feedback. Sometimes the feedback is an evaluation (for example, ‘Good’ or ‘No’) and sometimes the teacher may elaborate on the student’s response, as the parent does in the example above. (This is explored in more detail in the inquiry What is academic language? ). It’s not surprising that some children of Pākehā backgrounds feel comfortable when the teacher does the same thing that their parents and other caregivers have done.
Some children are also used to interrogating adults at length. For example:
Child: Why isn’t that train going?
Parent: It’s waiting for the other one to go past.
Child: What other one? Where’s the other train?
Parent: You can’t see it. It’s further up the line. The signal is red, and that tells the driver not to go yet.
Child: Who makes the signal red?
Pākehā children, especially those in middle-class families, are generally encouraged to ask questions like this, but in other cultural groups it may be impolite or unacceptable for anyone to question in such a direct and persistent manner, and this may apply especially to children.
If you come from a middle-class Pākehā background, you may wonder about other ways that adults and children might interact. Here are some examples of important approaches used by other social groups:
- Children are trained in different types of oral performance.
- Children are encouraged to observe quietly and to copy.
- Children are directly instructed.
- Children are talked to mainly by older children.
All these methods, and others, allow children to learn to speak, interact, and solve problems in the manner of their community. However, the middle-class Pākehā patterns of interaction described above are often the norm in New Zealand classrooms. It’s easy to see why students might feel excluded if they haven’t been brought up to engage in this type of interaction.
You might like to follow up the references at the end of this inquiry to find accounts of various conversational and literacy practices in different English-speaking communities and in communities that use other languages.
