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In social and psychological studies the key tenet is the assumption that the emotional atmosphere, or ‘climate’, in which a group works, exerts a directive influence on behaviour and people’s relationship. In classroom situations where conditions of good climate exist, there is opportunity for students to express themselves freely; moreover, they work more cohesive as a social group. Group cohesiveness determines to a high degree the development of cognition of its members. This idea is traced in various learning theories, such as Vygotsky’s (1978) theory of social development, Bandura’s (1977) social learning theory, Johnson and Johnson’s (1989) theory of cooperative learning.
Group power and individual behaviour
Psychological studies of group behaviour have found that individuals behave differently in groups than they do when they are alone. ‘All groups posses a power to influence and establish their own norms of behaviour and attitudes within their community’ (Bany and Johnson 1964:39). What is more all groups tend to make members conform to these norms and values approved by the group. The values established by the group can vary in extremes. A group may display an atmosphere in which the members feel free because of prevailing kindness and friendliness. In another group, an atmosphere of suspicion, jealousy, or high competitiveness may exist. The kind of pressure that operates to influence individual behaviour can be overt and subtle. It can range from mild teasing to strong ridicule if the group member fails to conform. But an observer should take into account that a classroom group does not always give overt evidence of being a cohesive unity. Sometimes a quarrel over an incident that happened during the play period does not indicate the class group is not friendly, or a vigorous disagreement over group work shows a lack of solidarity. That is why every situation should be treated and reflected within a specific context.
5.1.3 Gender differences in behaviour
There are some stereotypes of gender differences in behaviour such as that boys are generally more aggressive, physically and verbally, and enjoy taking risks whereas girls are more sociable, more nurturing and more compliant. Teachers are aware of this phenomenon and they tend to challenge ‘disruptive’ boys and not girls during questioning sessions. Children's interaction with each other is also affected by the gender composition of their working groups. An anonymous reviewer in the studies of Pica, Holliday Lewis, Berducci, and Newman (1991) has noticed that ‘the concept of gender is a relational construct and very much influenced by interlocutors’ perceptions of each other during social interaction’ (Pica et al., 1991:369).
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The description of the task
The overall task (see Appendix 1) is targeted to raise awareness with student teachers about the factors that enhance positive classroom climate and classroom discipline respectively. The second task relates to gender differences in physical behaviour and attitude to each other, the teacher and the lesson in general. Another concern of the task involves studying students’ preferences for seats within different types of seating arrangements. The more advanced aim is to give student teachers a hint about the type of communication as well as the amount of communication that learners produce in different classroom arrangement.
This task is accomplished during the first meeting of a trainee with the class group. Student teachers are recommended to take a position aside from the pupils’ desks to notice facial expressions, emotions and any other physical motions every time the teacher attends to an individual or small group of learners. I have chosen the procedure of teacher’s attendance to learners as a measurement of learners’ behaviour. Although it does not indicate the frequency of occurrence of learners’ behaviour but it gives a student-teacher the idea about the techniques of classroom management, student-student, and teacher-students relationships in particular. For example, if a learner is doing another task different from the lesson objectives the teacher keeps the situation on alert and might attend to the pupil immediately.
A grid of learners’ seating arrangement should give student teachers a rough idea about the method that the teacher employs as it is described above. Gender indication is important as it provides a good picture of social climate and relationship, and teacher’s techniques of classroom management.
Student teachers are guided with some graphical symbols that reflect this or that physical behaviour which typically occurs in the classroom. At the same time pre-service teachers feel free in adding any other symbols for different behaviour than is indicated in the case if they notice during observation. I have introduced graphic symbols to put against every student on the grid without verbal description as symbolic indication is more feasible. This technique permits pre-service teachers to capture non-verbal behaviour that occurs very fast in real time. The system provides graphic symbols that are internationally recognised and comprehensive. Moreover, graphic symbolic indication simplifies the design and further analysis. Graphic symbols reflect concrete non-verbal behaviour and allow an observer to keep and recall the events that have happened during the lesson very easily. After the lesson student teachers have more time to describe the behaviour they observed in more precise words while reflecting on the influence of physical behaviour of students on the classroom climate.
Student teachers are guided with three additional tasks. They are recommended to make some field notices on the learner’s response to the teacher’s attendance. Fixing actual utterances that are produced by learners should promote further recollection of the type and the amount of language produced by the pupils in different positions. Another task provides the idea about learners’ behaviour and comfort while changing their positions. Pre-service teachers should capture the ‘action zone’ (Shamim 1996:123) of students where they feel free in movements without disturbing each other physically. Finally, student teachers are asked to notice and fix the behaviour of learners in two time intervals, at the beginning and at the end of working on the task in a new seating arrangement. In so doing student teachers should infer learners’ preferences for seating arrangement and the amount of time they can work together comfortably.
After the lesson student teachers are recommended to comment on all the tasks mentioned above immediately. During further post-observation discussion they continue their reflection on the relationship between seating arrangement and social climate in the classroom. Analysing gender-related differences in physical behaviour pre-service teachers will infer learners’ attitude to each other, the teacher and studying process in general. As it was mentioned above analysis of the type of utterances and their amount will lead student teachers to infer the influence of seating arrangement on learners’ involvement into the lesson and their progress in learning accordingly. Finally, student teachers will plan their future lesson in accordance with learners’ comfort and preferences for seating positions that provides effective classroom management and eventually enhances pupils’ learning progress.
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Learner motivation
5.2.1 Types of motivation
Motivation is an internal drive that encourages somebody to pursue a course of action. If we define the goal and if that goal is sufficiently attractive we will be strongly motivated to do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal. A positive relationship between motivation and second language achievement is arguable among researchers but in general language teachers acknowledge that strongly motivated learners are easier to teach than those who have no such goals.
The best known categorization of motivation in language learning is the distinction between integrative and instrumental motivation. An integrative motivation involves an interest in learning foreign language because of ‘a sincere and personal interest in the people and culture represented by the other language group’ (Gardner 1985:6). The term ‘instrumental’ describes a situation in which students believe that mastery of the language has ‘some practical value and advantages of learning a new language’ (Gardner 1985:10). The language is treated as an instrument in their attainment of such a goal. Learners can, of course, have both integrative and instrumental motivation as it is impossible to separate two kinds of motivation in every situation of the learning process. Muchnick and Wolfe (1982:273) found evidences of both strong integrative and strong instrumental motivation in the same students.
5.2.2 Constituents of motivation
Constituents of integrative motivation
Motivation is ‘subjective experience’ (Good and Brophy 2000:217) that cannot be observed directly, but it can be inferred from students’ physical behaviour. The key dimensions that demonstrate strong motivation are ‘effort’ which learners put into their learning, ‘persistence’ with which learners continue doing their work in a determined way, and ‘activeness’ which is defined as frequency of participation in classroom contexts. But the first two variables demand high inferences from more observable learning behaviours such as working independently on the task for a long time, consulting with the teacher or the peer when uncertain, working at home with additional material, or display of hilarious emotion in response to the teacher’s reward. Although the relationship between frequent participation and second language achievement remains uncertain it clearly indicates interest to foreign language studying.
The choice of tasks according to the difficulty, the level of aspirations, the amount of effort exerted, and the persistence that learners displayed while working on the task reveals one of the variable of learner’s motivation, their sense of efficacy. As Dörney (1998:119) in his review of Bandura’s (1993) article asserts that people with a low sense of self-efficacy tend to dwell on the obstacles they encounter rather than concentrating on how to perform the task. In contrast, people with a strong sense of self-efficacy approach threatening situations with confidence, they are focused on the task rather than ‘self-diagnostic focus during task-involvement’ (Dörney 1998:120). Student teachers can easily infer this variable from overt learner’s cues on their immediate reaction towards the task they face; learners might complain and mumble about the difficulty, or they approach to the task immediately with or without accompanied exclamations about interesting challenge.
Constituents of instrumental motivation
Instrumental motivation variables are in some way more direct, and more observable. Learners’ attitude to teacher’s rewards and feedback make these variables salient. These variables link task performance to the product that students appreciate, and corresponds to the ‘expectancy + value’ theory (Feather, 1982:33) which holds that the effort students are willing to expend on a task is a product of ‘1) the degree to which they expect to be able to perform the task successfully, and 2) the degree to which they value those rewards’ (Good and Brophy 2000:221). Numerous researches confirm that students do not invest much effort in tasks that are not assessed and valued even if they know that they can perform the task successfully. But it must be admitted that rewards are more effective for increasing effort than for improving quality of performance. Moreover, most researchers agree that praise and rewards are motivating with routine work rather than novelty.
Commonly used types of rewards include: 1. material rewards; 2. activity rewards and special privileges (opportunity to play games, use special equipment); 3. grades, awards, and recognition (honour rolls, displaying good papers); 4. praise and social rewards; 5. teacher rewards (special attention, personalized interaction). Williams and Burden (1997:135) in their extensive review of research on the place of rewards in motivating people notice that material rewards gradually decrease interest in the activity. Whereas system of rewards set up as classroom management motivates towards good behaviour and positive changes, informational feedback rather than controlling is likely to increase motivation towards certain tasks as it enables learners ‘to identify specific aspects of their performance that are acceptable and capable of improvement … and helpful to them to move into the zone of next development’ (Williams and Burden 1997:136).
Finally, we should not deny the role of competition which is seen to be the predominant way to encourage learners to strive to improve their performance as the nature of competition with its prizes and rewards drives learners to volunteer an action and actively participate.
5.2.3 Description of the task
The aim of the task (see Appendix 2) is to raise awareness of student teachers about overall role of motivation in the learning process, and the degree of learners’ motivation to the learning process. Another aim is concerned with factors that are likely to exert a significant influence on learner’s willingness to make personal contribution to the task fulfillment and learning process in general.
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