c4-revised project final

Teacher Beliefs about Group Work Lina Shehuand the Implementation of Group Work in the Classroom

Research Report:

Teacher Beliefs about Group Work

and the Implementation of Group Work in the Classroom

Lina Shehu

Monterey Institute of International Studies

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Abstract

In the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), the social nature of

learning has been supported by extensive research (Canale & Swain, 1980;

Donato, 1994; Swain, 2000; Vygotsky, 1978). As one of the ways to promote

social interaction, group work is considered an important part of a teacher’s

pedagogy. The way a teacher feels about group work has implications for the

way the classroom is run, as teachers’ beliefs are a crucial influence in

classroom practice (Borg, 2011). This study investigated teachers’

pedagogical beliefs about group work, the influence of teacher training and

education on beliefs, and whether these teachers assigned group work in

their classrooms, along with the reasons given for assigning group work.

Participants were four ESL instructors in Monterey. Roughly 640 minutes of

non-participant classroom observation were conducted. Questionnaire

responses suggested that participants agreed with positive statements about

group work and disagreed with negative ones. Group work accounted for

30% of total time observed in these teachers’ classes. Follow-up interviews

revealed that the primary reason participants did not assign group work was

due to concern regarding varied levels of students’ language proficiency.

Results suggested that classroom context, more than pedagogical beliefs,

influenced the decision to assign group work. Two participants reported that

teacher training and education have positively influenced beliefs about group

work, another credited education with overcomplicating the idea of group

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work, whereas the fourth expressed no change on beliefs regarding group

work due to teacher training.

As both a graduate student and English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, I have

witnessed the numerous benefits of group work: thought-provoking contributions by a

peer that might not have been offered in front of the whole group, increased student

control and learner autonomy (Kumaravadivelu, 2003), as well as the collaborative power

of distributed help (Donato, 1994) (capitalizing on individual knowledge and strengths,

learners are able to help each other achieve the desired outcome). As a language learner, I

have also experienced increased ownership of the learning process in group work as

“learners have to show more initiative if the activity is to work” (original emphasis, Stotz,

1991, p. 132), which suggests that group work promotes not only learner autonomy but

also peer collaboration. And finally, during group work, one is afforded more opportunities

for turn taking (Stotz, 1991), and simply produces more language.

There is considerable research in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) that

supports the efficacy of group work in a foreign language (FL) classroom. Group work not

only gives students a structured opportunity to produce the target language (TL) in the

classroom, but also engages them in negotiation for meaning (Donato, 1994), which means

that students co-construct meaning during classroom interaction and provide scaffolding

similar to that of expert-to-novice.

Incorporating group work into the classroom has its challenges including

determining what type of group work activities help with language acquisition, figuring out

how to implement group work into a lesson, and determining how to assess outcomes.

Group work can be vaguely defined and, depending on the teacher, it could mean anything

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from students discussing a reading to a group presentation to the class. This paper will thus

define group work and explicitly state what was counted as group work in the classroom.

Furthermore, since it is teachers who plan, assign, and oversee group work, this paper will

also explore their beliefs about its importance for language acquisition, how their beliefs

align with teaching practices and how teacher training and education have influenced

teachers’ pedagogical beliefs.

Literature Review

Benefits of Group Work

The field of SLA, influenced by the rediscovery of Vygotsky’s (1978) Zone of

Proximal Development (ZPD), has taken a social turn (Block, 2003). The ZPD, defined as the

gap between the things a learner can do only with social support, and those he/she will

soon master enough to perform autonomously, illustrates the fundamentally social nature

of learning. Group work in the classroom allows students to provide each other with

“guided support,” which is “analogous to expert scaffolding” (Donato, 1994, p. 51). Group

work gives students the opportunity to practice the TL with one another and work

collaboratively towards language production, whether that is performing a role-play or

completing an information-gap activity. Tsui (1996) wrote, “when students produce the

language that they are studying they are testing out the hypothesis which they have formed

about the language” (p. 146). Donato (1994) argued that students test hypotheses about

the TL and co-construct language during group work. This theory is exemplified by

Donato’s study of the collaborative output between a group of French language learners

whose negotiations of the target form resulted in “the idealized solution to the [language]

problem” (p. 52) they could not have achieved on their own. Donato detailed the

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interaction between three French language learners’ attempts to construct the French past

compound tense of the reflexive verb “to remember.” Each learner possessed only a part of

the desired construction: one of the learners produced the correct past participle but also

produced the incorrect auxiliary verb, whereas another was able to supply the appropriate

auxiliary, but was unable to produce the correct reflexive verb. Eventually and only by

synthesizing their knowledge the three learners were able to achieve the correct

construction.

During group work students are also able to assist each other in meaning-making,

by thinking critically about language, evaluating the forms they use for an activity, and

deciding how to best express an idea (Donato, 1994). Larsen-Freeman (2003) argued that

“language acquisition takes place through some sort of interaction” (p. 87) and, while

interaction also happens during whole-class discussion and between a teacher and student,

group work makes students interact more regularly. As Maloof (2000) pointed out,

students in groups are afforded more opportunities to talk than they would be in solitary

or whole-class work. Group work also allows for languaging, which defined by Swain

(2006) as “the process of making meaning and shaping knowledge and experience through

language” (p. 89), is a key component in the internalization process; i.e. by talking to each

other about language, learners’ inner thoughts about the target language transform into

internal cognitive activity.

Other researchers have pointed out the many benefits to group work. Long and

Porter (1985) listed five pedagogical arguments for using group work in the language

classroom: group work (1) increases language practice opportunities, (2) improves the

quality of student talk, (3) helps individualize instruction, (4) promotes a positive affective

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climate, and (5) motivates learners (pp. 207-212). Furthermore, Swain (2000) stated that,

in peer work, “jointly constructed performance” is better than “individual competencies”

(p. 111), because the results of collaboration are greater than individual skills. Hall and

Verplaetse (2000) noted that group work affords “multiple opportunities for language

learners to use and extend their knowledge of the target language” (p. 288). Group work is

effective in many ways and there are many reasons to believe in its importance for

language acquisition.

Teacher Beliefs and Implementation of Group Work

While much research supports group work, it is possible that some classroom

teachers are either unaware of such research or have otherwise developed their own

beliefs about group work based on their own experience. Yet another thing to consider

regarding teacher beliefs is how classroom context interferes with pedagogical beliefs. As

Razfar (2012) noted, teacher education programs assume that “beliefs are supposed to be

consistent, conscious, and teachers should maintain fidelity to them across different

situations” (p. 63). This assumption leads one to think that if a teacher believes in the

importance of group work for language acquisition, he/she undoubtedly assigns group

work on a regular basis. A teacher’s classroom practice, however, is often influenced by the

context in which he/she teaches, the school’s pedagogical practices and the student

population. As Phipps and Borg (2009) noted, “contextual factors, such as a prescribed

curriculum, time constraints, and high-stakes examinations, mediate the extent to which

teachers can act in accordance with their beliefs” (p. 381).

Other factors may interfere with implementation of group work even if a teacher

believes in its usefulness. According to Granger (2013), even cultural stereotypes could

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influence the decision to implement group work; for example, a teacher may believe that

students from Asian backgrounds do not feel comfortable speaking up in class or

participating fully during group work. Other impediments to group work abound: Granger

warned that teachers’ classroom practice “informed by curricular requirements and […] by

educators’ conscious or unconscious beliefs and biases, can marginalize and even silence

learners” (p. 2). It is thus possible that a teacher may not assign group work because

he/she believes that students from certain backgrounds are less likely to participate in

group-discussion. Also, Brown (2007) cited a teacher’s fear of losing control of the

classroom or the fear that students’ errors will be reinforced in a group as possible reasons

for not assigning group work.

Barcelos and Kalaja (2013) suggested that teacher beliefs may not align with

classroom practice “because of clashing interests or ambiguities in the context, including

large group sizes, low student motivation or proficiency” (p. 2). Many language classes have

students of mixed proficiencies and grouping students in such a classroom is challenging.

Slavin (2006) asserted that a mixed-level group allows students to support one another,

but perhaps some teachers worry that in a mixed-level group higher proficiency students

may take over the group while the lower proficiency students remain silent. Indeed there

are countless reasons why a teacher may not assign group work even if he/she believes

that group work supports language acquisition, an issue that clearly needs further

investigation.

As part of the Practicum class at MIIS, teachers-in-training develop and expand upon

their practice by observing videos of their teaching and submitting them for peer and

instructor scrutiny. During this process I was struck by the possibility of a gap between

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teacher beliefs about the importance of group work for language acquisition and whether

group work was assigned in the classroom.

Focus on Teachers

As teacher planning and intentional decision-making helps ensure that students are

“relaxed, comfortable, unstressed, interested and motivated” (Wajnryb, 1992, p. 58), a

teacher’s pedagogical beliefs are surely important. Teachers are in charge of assigning,

modeling and implementing group work. Obviously, students’ beliefs toward group work

are important as well, but it is the teacher that is largely responsible for its eventual

outcome. As Allwright and Bailey (1991) wrote, “it is considered to be a teacher’s job […] to

plan a sequence of lessons and bring them to life effectively in the classroom” (p. 22). This

study, therefore, investigates (1) teachers’ beliefs about the importance of group work for

language acquisition, (2) how much group work these teachers assigned in the classroom,

(3) the reasons why teachers assigned or did not assign group work, and (4) how teacher

training and education have influenced teacher beliefs about group work.

Research Questions

RQ 1: What are participants’ beliefs about the importance of group work for

language acquisition?

RQ 2: In two classroom observations of the same teacher, how much group work

does he/she assign?

RQ 3: What are the reasons, teachers give for using or not using group work?

RQ 4: How have teacher training and education influenced teachers’ beliefs about

the importance of group work for language acquisition?

Methods

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This study does not offer generalizations on teacher beliefs or the importance of

group work en masse; instead it is an opportunity to look at beliefs and practices side-by-

side and to note potential misalignments. Any patterns suggested by the findings for the

four research questions are only suggested here and would need further research to

substantiate.

For the purposes of this research, group work will be operationalized as a

collaborative effort between two or more students working together to discuss an assigned

reading, answer questions about an assigned reading, complete an activity, or prepare and

present a role-play. Group work as it is understood in this paper must involve some kind of

student output, ranging from a discussion to a presentation.

Borg (2011) defines beliefs as “propositions individuals consider to be true and

which are often tacit, have a strong evaluative and affective component, [and] provide a

basis for action” (pp. 370-371). I have decided to use Borg’s definition of beliefs because it

most closely mirrors my participants’ understanding of teacher beliefs. All four participants

reported that their beliefs influenced their actions in the classroom, and that beliefs have

an evaluative and affective component. Indeed, as Borg (2001) wrote, “[b]eliefs play an

important role in many aspects of teaching” (p. 186) with each participant in this research

reporting that what they believe to be sound pedagogy is very important in their

professional development.

Participants

Participants in this study are three pre-service teachers and current MATESOL

students at MIIS who have yet to enter the professional field of teaching, and a recent MIIS

MATESOL graduate in-service teacher who is, at the time of this research, an adjunct

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instructor for the MIIS Intensive ESL program. The other three pre-service teachers are ESL

instructors at the Peace Resource Center, a community outreach program, in Seaside,

California. Participants’ names have been changed in order to preserve anonymity. My

participant selection aligns with “purposeful sampling” model defined by Duff (2008) as

“random sampling from an accessible population” (pg. 115). However, accessibility was not

the only reason for my participant selection but also because I wanted to see how the

teacher training and education at MIIS may have influenced teacher beliefs about the

importance of group work for language acquisition. As Barcelos and Kalaja (2013) wrote,

“[t]he discussion of changes in teacher beliefs about language learning and teaching is

related to two processes: changes that pre-service teachers go through in teacher

education and changes made in their practice by in-service teachers” (p. 3). This research

offers a glimpse into teachers’ beliefs about group work in both pre-service and in-service

contexts.

Materials and Procedures

Materials used for observations in the four participants’ classes included an

observation tool adapted for observing and quantifying group work (Appendix A). The

observation scheme is a modified version of one from Nunan and Bailey (2009) and

requires that a tally is kept of the frequency of group work during class. I decided not to

include all teacher directions given while setting up a group work activity into the total

time devoted to group work. Modeling is certainly a crucial component of setting up group

work; however, since there was great variation in the time that different teachers took to

set up activities, including frequent interruptions by students during group work asking for

further clarification, I decided that only interaction between students should count as

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group work. Group work included only in-class activities where students were either

paired or put in groups of two or more to complete an activity. A wide breadth of activities

was covered under this type of classification and perhaps future studies can focus on

specific group work activities.

I observed classes as a non-participant observer. According to Nunan and Bailey

(2009) “classroom observation [is] a family of related procedures for gathering data during

actual language lessons or tutorial sessions, primarily by watching, listening, and

recording” (p. 258). During observation I took hand-written notes and was the proverbial

‘fly on the wall.’ Students populating the classrooms of the selected teachers were indirect

participants in the research: no information or participation was asked of them. In order to

prevent the teacher from altering his/her class in any way based on the questionnaire, I

observed two classes of each participant before the questionnaire soliciting beliefs on

group work was distributed.

The questionnaire (Appendix B) was distributed to participants in person.

Statements of the questionnaire were designed to represent a range of aspects regarding

group work, thus eliciting responses that would suggest a global picture of teacher beliefs

about group work and its perceived importance for language acquisition. The

questionnaire contains 18 controlled-response items, each with a five point Likert scale,

with 1 corresponding to “disagree completely” and 5 corresponding to “agree completely.”

Finally, a follow-up semi-structured interview (Appendix C) consisting of five questions

was conducted in person once observations concluded and the questionnaire was finished.

I conducted interviews shortly after I had observed the second class for each teacher, so

that the events that transpired in the classroom were still fresh in the teacher’s mind.

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Inspired by Richards (2009), I used a semi-structured interview that “has a clear picture of

the topics that need to be covered […] but is prepared to allow the interview to develop in

unexpected directions” (p. 186).

Analysis

Data from questionnaire responses were compiled in a Microsoft Word spreadsheet

(Appendix D). Data were grouped according to whether the statement represented group

work positively (statements 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18) or negatively (statements 5, 7,

9, 10, 11, 13, 16). The likert scale values were then averaged to determine an overall

agreement with positive and negative statements. Total minutes allocated to group work

were summed and divided by the total class time observed to give an impression of the

overall proportion of time devoted to group work. Due to the small sample size of

participants it was possible to compute the data using Excel.

Participant responses from the follow-up interviews were tabulated (see Appendix

E), with key terms bolded summarizing responses to the five interview questions. Each

interview lasted between 25 to 30 minutes; responses were transcribed using a computer.

The transcripts were then analyzed in order to retrieve key terms that give an overall

impression of participants’ responses. I did not have a priori hypotheses regarding

expected outcomes of responses because as Silverman (2011) stated, “[in qualitative

research] hypotheses are often generated from the analysis rather than stated at the

outset” (part 1, table 1.2). Based on three out of four participant responses, one emerging

hypothesis was students’ varied levels of language proficiency as reason for these

participants to not assign group work in their classrooms (see Appendix E). Another

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hypothesis was that for three participants, classroom context influenced the decision to

assign or not assign group work more so than beliefs.

My approach for interpreting the data was through thematic coding as a form of

analysis in qualitative research (Attride-Stirling, 2001). I followed several procedural steps

similar to those suggested by Attride-Stirling (1) reduced data into manageable chunks, i.e.

drew out salient features from the whole text, (2) identified common themes, (3) re-

arranged common themes around larger organizing themes, and lastly (4) interpreted the

emerging themes and patterns pertaining to the research questions.

Results

RQ 1: What are language teacher beliefs about the importance of group work for

language acquisition as revealed by a self-report questionnaire?

Positive statements about group work were largely agreed with by participants; the

average of positive statements about group work was 3.54 out of 5 for total agreement.

With 3 being “neutral” and 5 being “strongly agree,” these answers suggest a fairly

consistent level of agreement with statements positively evaluating group work. These

results are further supported by the fact that the average for negative statements regarding

group work was 2.35. While this is only .65 points below neutral, it does suggest that the

participants disagreed with negative statements about group work (Table 1 below presents

responses).

Table 1Summary of Survey ResponsesParticipant Mean response on Positive

StatementsMean Response on Negative Statements

Buffy 3.909 2.428

Faith 3.909 2.285

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Cordelia 2.909 2.142

Anya 3.454 2.571

RQ 2: In two classroom observations of the same teacher, how much group work

does he/she assign?

Overall, out of 640 minutes of class time observed, 192 minutes were dedicated to

group work, thus 30% of the time was spent doing group work. The IESL instructor, Buffy,

dedicated 60 minutes to group work out of the total 160 minutes between two classes. The

PRC instructor, Faith, dedicated 72 minutes to group work out of the total 240 minutes

between two classes observed. The other two PRC instructors, Cordelia and Anya each

dedicated 60 minutes to group work out of a total of 240 minutes between two classes.

(Results are presented in Table 2 below).

Table 2Percentage of Class Time Devoted to Group WorkParticipant % of time Buffy 37.5%

Faith 30%

Cordelia 25%

Anya 25%

At 60 minutes devoted to group work out of a total 160, Buffy dedicated the highest

percentage of time to group work followed by Faith, Cordelia and Anya. With only two

classes per instructor observed it is impossible to offer a comprehensive picture of how

much these teachers value group work by how much time they dedicate to group work

throughout the semester. It must be noted though that although the mean of positive

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statements about group work for both Buffy and Faith was at 3.9, Buffy assigned 25% more

of her total class time to group work than Faith. Still, we cannot assume that Buffy values

group work more than the other three participants. Furthermore, there is no general

consensus in research for what percentage of class time should be spent on group work

and this study did not aim to find the ideal time spent doing group work.

RQ 3: What are the reasons, as revealed by a follow-up interview for teachers to use

or not use group work?

Reasons for not assigning group work

Buffy reported that she does not assign group work for lessons and activities during

which she intended to focus on students’ accuracy, whereas Faith, Cordelia and Anya cited

concern over students’ mixed language proficiency (see Appendix E). As PRC instructors,

they have classes with students of varying language levels, and I personally witnessed

some of the disparities behind these teachers’ concerns. Faith hesitated to assign group

work because “a higher proficiency student tends to take over group discussion.” In the two

observations of her class, I witnessed this phenomenon, which led the lower-level students

to respond only in their L1, during group work discussion. Cordelia expressed the same

concern about assigning group work at the PRC. Anya reported the need to first gauge how

well students interact with each other before assigning them in groups; with the semester

at the PRC in only its second week, Anya may have still felt uncertain about classroom

dynamics.

Reasons for assigning group work

Buffy assigned group work because “group work creates community” and because,

during group discussion, students “practice circumlocution,” which, as Buffy reported, is an

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important strategy for language learners. Faith believed that group work allows for

languaging (Swain, 2006, 2010), which Faith defined as “talking about language,” whereas

both Cordelia and Anya reported to use group work when students’ language proficiency

was similar (see Appendix E).

RQ 4: How have teacher training and education influenced teacher’s beliefs about the

importance of group work for language acquisition as revealed by the interview?

With the exception of Cordelia, all participants credited their teacher training at

MIIS for either positively or negatively influencing beliefs about group work (see Appendix

E). As a veteran teacher, Cordelia referenced experience and intuition regarding the class

and level of students for deciding to assign or to not assign group work. Faith reported that

her education at MIIS has overcomplicated her beliefs about group work. She reported

assigning group work less because she was worried that unless it was properly

implemented according to “rules laid down by some theoretical principle,” it would not

support language acquisition. Anya reported that her teacher-training program has

positively influenced her beliefs about group work in the classroom. She also credited her

education for deepening her understanding of what constitutes group work beyond

something more than “some fake task like, make two people read a dialogue.” Buffy

expressed frustration over having to do so much group work as a learning teacher, but she

realized that her training was leading by example, using group-work heavy classes to

illustrate the uses of group work. Buffy reported assigning group work regularly and

credited her teacher training for positively influencing her beliefs about group work.

Discussion

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This research, albeit limited, supports the idea that differences between learning

environments influence how teachers’ beliefs translate into the classroom (Duffy, 1982;

Duffy & Ball, 1986; Lampert, 1985). Ideally, we would find ourselves in a perfect classroom

where each student is at the same language level but experience shows that this is often not

the case. Many teachers find themselves in similar contexts to the PRC, and thus one crucial

part of teacher education should focus on teaching future instructors how to successfully

implement group work in a less-than-ideal classroom. As an instructor at the Intensive

English as a Second Language (IESL) program at MIIS, Buffy, assigned 25% more group

work than the other three participants; also Buffy was the only respondent who did not

mention classroom context as a reason for not assigning group work. Buffy’s students are

high-intermediate to high-advanced. Additionally, they are in their second semester, and

thus already used to participating in classroom discussion and group work. The majority of

the students at the PRC, however, are adult immigrants with little to no literacy and

without formal education in the United States. Many of these students are simply not

accustomed to academic discourse in the US, and are unfamiliar with group work in the

classroom. Thus, these findings suggest that it is crucial to prepare future teachers for

classrooms with students of diverse cultural backgrounds. Indeed if group work is

important for language acquisition, it is equally important to prepare future teachers to

implement group work in challenging classroom situations.

Limitations

Dörnyei and Taguchi (2010) listed many advantages to questionnaires such as cost

effectiveness, and researcher time and effort. They warned, however, that there are many

disadvantages to a questionnaire such as the simplicity and superficiality of answers,

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unmotivated respondents, self-deception and fatigue effects (Dörnyei & Taguchi, 2010, pp.

7-9). Several procedural steps as proposed by Dörnyei and Taguchi were taken in order to

construct a good questionnaire. The length of the questionnaire was considered in order to

circumvent the fatigue effect. At only 18 questions, the survey took at most 15 minutes to

complete, according to participants. The questionnaire has clear instructions, and was

designed to focus solely on eliciting responses on teacher beliefs about group work

resulting in responses, which pertain directly to the research at hand. Obviously even the

best questionnaire has its flaws, and 18 responses on the survey used for this research

cannot adequately sum up teacher beliefs about group work.

For this reason, a follow-up semi-structured interview was conducted in person

with each participant in order to address some possible gaps in the questionnaire.

However, even the interview cannot sum up participants’ beliefs about the importance of

group work in the classroom. For example, two of my participants are completing their last

semester at MIIS, and I know firsthand how taxing and busy the last semester can be. It is

very possible that despite my best attempt to keep the interview short at only five

questions, participants could have rushed through their responses without reflecting

because of time concerns.

This research has other important limitations that must be acknowledged. Despite

the attempt to remain hidden, a researcher’s presence could have influenced class

dynamics, including teachers’ behavior. Wajnryb (1992) warned that not only does the

presence of a visitor affect the classroom dynamics but that “observers need to realize that

the samples of data brought from the classroom are inevitably limited, and that sweeping

generalizations should be avoided” (p. 19). Thus even though I observed two instead of one

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class for each participant, two classes out of an entire semester is too little time to make

overall generalizations about participants’ use or lack of group work in the classroom.

At only four participants, the sample size is too small to make strong generalizations

about the influence of teacher training on participants’ beliefs about group work and

classroom pedagogy. A more extensive investigation, looking at not only current teachers

in training, but also participants that have graduated from the same program during the

last several years is needed.

Conclusion

This study does not present a simple relationship between teacher beliefs about

group work and its implementation in the classroom but it does suggest the need to

prepare future teachers for implementing group work in a mixed-level proficiency

classroom. This research also suggests the need for teacher education programs to prepare

future teachers for classrooms in various contexts, from more academically oriented

English to community outreach programs. Two out of the four participants reported that

teacher education and training have positively influenced beliefs about group work,

whereas another expressed that teacher education has overcomplicated the idea of group

work and made her less likely to assign it even though she believed in its usefulness.

Participants reported that classroom dynamics and interpersonal relationships

between students were influencing factors on whether to assign group work; teachers

reported fear of talkative students taking over group discussion. This finding suggests the

need to also prepare future teachers for various student personalities and appropriate

ways to address them.

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There are several ways in which future studies could address the limitations of this

research: at only four participants, the sample size is too small to offer any conclusive data.

A longitudinal study involving more participants would yield much more comprehensive

data. Further research should be done on the ideal amount of time spent on group work in

order to explore the relationship between teacher beliefs about group work and the

amount of group work assigned in the classroom, including the type of group work

activities that are most beneficial for language acquisition. Nevertheless, this research

importantly illustrates that due to logistical considerations regarding implementation of

group work in the classroom, positive beliefs regarding group work do not automatically

translate into its use in the language classroom.

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Appendix A

Observation Tool for the Amount of Group Work in the Classroom

Time Activity Characterized as Group Work as defined in

the Research Proposal

Activity not Constituting Group Work

Notes

Appendix B

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Group Work Survey (online version appears as single page)

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1nHaQC5qrTKbwIa3nph8jNV8C2t-XUzDHBCermY_qDM8/viewform

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https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1nHaQC5qrTKbwIa3nph8jNV8C2t-XUzDHBCermY_qDM8/viewform


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Appendix C

Interview

1. How do you see the role of group work in the classroom?2. Do you believe that group work in the classroom is important for language acquisition? Please elaborate on your answer!3. What are some reasons why you would choose to not assign group work during your class?4. In what ways has your education and training at MIIS influenced your pedagogical beliefs about teaching and learning?5. In what ways has your education and training at MIIS influenced your beliefs about the use of group work in the classroom?

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Appendix D

Questionnaire Responses

Statement Buffy Faith Cordelia Anya1. Positive 5 4 4 42. Positive 4 5 3 43. Positive 3 3 2 34. Positive 4 5 3 35. Negative 3 3 1 26. Positive 3 4 3 37. Negative 2 1 4 38. Positive 4 5 4 49. Negative 2 4 2 2

10. Negative 3 2 2 211. Negative 2 1 1 212. Positive 3 3 1 313. Negative 3 1 1 214. Positive 5 5 4 415. Positive 4 3 2 416. Negative 2 4 4 317. Positive 4 3 3 218. Positive 4 3 3 4

Appendix E

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Qualitative Data

Questions Buffy Faith Cordelia Anya1. How do you see the role of group work in the classroom?

Important because it provides students with a chance to interact. Group work creates community

Necessary, but must be done correctly. Difficult if students not on the same page

It’s fine as long as the level of students is the same

It depends on how you design and implement it

2. Do you believe that group work is important for language acquisition?

Yes, because it provides students with the chance to practice circumlocution to have their meaning understood

Yes, allows for languaging, but also detrimental depending on context

I don’t think it’s necessary but it doesn’t hurt. It works well in a higher level-class

Not necessary for language acquisition but doesn’t hurt. Often students hate doing it

3. What are some of the reasons why you would choose to not assign group work during class?

When I need to focus on accuracy. I don’t think students should interrupt each other to offer corrections

If I believe students are not able to perform the task without aid. Fear that one talkative student will take over

I would not if I thought the level of students is very different. At the PRC for example, a higher level student tends to take over group work completely

I would not assign group work until I get a feel for the classroom and had the chance to observe how students interact with each other

4. In what ways have your education and training at MIIS influenced your pedagogical beliefs about teaching and learning?

It has sparked an interest in content-based teaching

This idea that you must always have a task. Feelings of guilt if students aren’t busy all the time during class

MIIS has definitely made me see the importance of conducting a needs assessment

It’s made me see that textbooks do not need to have a central role in the classroom. And that a classroom should be learner instead of

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teacher centered

5. In what ways have your education and training at MIIS influenced your beliefs about the use of group work in the classroom?

I had to do a lot of group work as a grad student, which was frustrating, but now I see that they were leading by example. Showing us why it’s important

Overcomplicated and

problematized the idea of group

work. Made me cautious to use it

I hasn’t really changed my beliefs about group work. I taught for many years and usually I get a sense of when to assign it based on a particular class

Definitely made me want to use group work more in the classroom. And not some fake task like, make two people read a dialogue and call it group work. I have a much better idea how to design and implement group work because of my education at MIIS

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c4-revised project final

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