English Language Teaching in its Social Context

132 MICHAEL P. BREENfor a time ~ different views of what should be happening in a class and what should not.This suggests that, although the nature of interpersonal and intergroup relationships withinthe language classroom may be complex and changing, the researcher needs to uncoverwhat these are if we wish to describe what happens in the class and further interpret thisas it is experienced by those within the class. As researchers in the past, we have tended tobe teacher-centred in our assuming that the major asymmetry in role and identity, and thelikely location of dissonance in perceptions and effects, resides between the teacher andthe rest. We have also perhaps undcrcstimated the possible effects ~ both negative andpositive ~ of asymmetry and dissonance within the classroom upon the language learningprocess.”The culture of the classroom is inherently conservativePerhaps one of the best ways of revealing the establishcd culture of the classroom group isto try to introduce an innovation which the majority neither expects nor defines asappropriate. Most teachers have had direct experience of the effort to be radical in theirapproach with a class (be it through different material, tasks, or procedure, etc.) and havesuffered the experience of at least initial rejection. A genuine culture is one in which itsmembers seek security and relative harmony in a self-satisfactory milieu. As such thingstake time to develop, anything which the group perceives as change will also take time tobe absorbed or it will be resisted as deviant. (This does not mean that harmony willnecessarily reign in the classroom, for even apparent anarchy ~ as long as it is the preferredethos of that group ~ may be quite consistent with a definition of classroom life for someseemingly unsocialiscd collection of learners!). In essence, a classroom group seeks aparticular social and emotional equilibrium just as soon as it can - even one which mayseem to be antithetical to learning. It will subsequently resist any threat to the newlyestablished order.The individual lcarncr risks ostracisation from the group if he does not ~overtly at least ~ conform, and the teacher risks rebellion in various forms if he does nothonour the conventions expected by the collective definition of what a language teachershould be. Although this conservative spirit has its origins in the prior educationalexperiences of the learners, each new classroom group reinvents “the rules of the game”inways which both reflect and form the classroom-culture assumptions of the particularparticipants who are suddenly sharing each others’ company. It has to be said, of course,that a teacher may participate in this conservatism and, indeed, work through it in order tohelp develop group harmony, security and efficient ways of working. And teachers arecertainly familiar with the dilemma of wishing to innovate whilst being cautious ofdisruption. This means that the very presence of a researcher, or even the awareness withinthe group that they are the focus of apparently objective evaluation and study will mobilisechange. Our personal experience of having someone visit our home for the first timc andthen looking at it with them, as if seeing it through their eyes, can remind us of the effectof intrusion. In a sense, the classroom changes in the eyes of those within it and, therefore,will change in certain ways.This is, of course, the truism of observer effect. But there is alsothe observer’s paradox in that the classroom we now sec will be in a state of disequilibrium:it will not be the same classroom as yesterday and we will be investigating a classroom groupwhich is newly adapting in a number of subtle ways. This phenomenon can be either badnews or good news for the researcher. It will render short-term, one-shot investigationsinto classroom language learning largely invalid and unreliable. If, on the other hand, weapproach studies of classroom language learning on a longitudinal basis, then we may beable to explore the process of re-establishment of social and emotional cquilibrium which