Cultivating Multivocality in Language Classrooms: Contribution of Critical Pedagogy-Informed Teacher Education. Issue 2 (2nd April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Khatib, Mohammad; Miri, Mowla
• Is Part Of: Critical inquiry in language studies. Volume 13:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 98
• Page End: 131
• Publication Date: 2016-04-02
• Subjects: Language and languages -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; 418
• DOI: 10.1080/15427587.2015.1137197
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1542-7587

Abstract

Abstract : Transmission-based language classrooms have been mostly dominated by teachers' authority, as reflected in IRF (Teacher Initiation, Student Response, Teacher Follow up/Feedback) architecture of their discourses. By contrast, Critical Pedagogy (CP) has been after fostering multivocality in and out of classroom borders. Which qualities of teacher talk can cultivate multivocality has remained underexplored, however. To address this lacuna, two typical sessions of an English language teaching (ELT) teacher, totalling 210 minutes, were audio- and video-recorded, narrowly transcribed and analyzed through Conversation Analysis (CA) methodology. Then the teacher participated in a CP-informed teacher education program (TEP) lasting 20 sessions, whose focus of six was on multivocality. After the TEP, another two sessions of the teacher's classroom was recorded and analyzed. Results of the study revealed that before the TEP, the growth of multivocality was curbed by some teacher moves such as "teacher echo, " "limited wait-time, " "frequent interruptions, " "overextended teacher turns, " "rejecting student self-initiated turns, " "excessive emphasis on metalinguistic terms, " and "prohibiting L1 use." Conversely, after the TEP, it was found that the teacher enhanced multivocality via strategies such as "extending wait-time, " "delaying error correction, " "reducing teacher echo, " "using referential questions, " "welcoming student initiation, " and "using L1." Finally, some implications for teachers and teacher educators are presented.