TEACHING WITH POWER IN LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS
A. Dzo’ul Milal
Institut Agama Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel Surabaya
Abstract: This paper attempts to reveal some strategies performed by teacher which indicate that s/he is exercising power in managing and conducting language teaching and learning process. Power is defined as the practice by which one party dominates interaction over another. Such domination may be manifested in terms of the frequency of directives or of the holding of control over the interaction process. Despite the fact that exercising power seems to impair justice, democracy, and humanity because it implies inequality, in a pedagogical context, however, especially in a language teaching and learning process, such a practice may still be beneficial and justifiable. Therefore, by the end of the paper, among the benefits of the exercise of power are enumerated.
Keywords: power, indicators of exercising power, benefits of practicing power
Abstrak: Tulisan ini mencoba untuk mengungkapkan beberapa strategi yang digunakan oleh guru dan menunjukkan bahwa ia menjalankan kekuasaan dalam mengelola dan melaksanakan pengajaran bahasa dan proses belajar. Kekuasaan didefinisikan sebagai praktek dimana satu pihak mendominasi interaksi atas yang lain. Dominasi tersebut dapat diwujudkan dalam hal frekuensi arahan atau memegang kontrol atas proses interaksi. Terlepas dari kenyataan bahwa penggunaan kekuasaan tampaknya merusak keadilan, demokrasi, dan kemanusiaan karena mengimplikasikan ketidaksetaraan dalam konteks pedagogis, namun, terutama dalam pengajaran bahasa dan proses belajar, praktek semacam ini mungkin masih bermanfaat dan dibenarkan. Oleh karena itu, pada akhir karya ilmiah ini, duraikan diantara manfaat dari pelaksanaan kekuasaan dalam konteks pedagogis.
Kata kunci: kekuasaan, indikator penggunaan kekuasaan, manfaat dari penerapan kekuasaan
INTRODUCTION
Classroom process can be viewed from two different perspectives, as a pedagogical effort and as a communicative event. Any activities conducted in the classrooms are basically intended to serve educational purposes. In language classes, the objectives of teaching and learning activities are, at least, to improve the Ls’ ability (skills) in using the target language, to promote positive attitude towards the language, and to develop knowledge of the language systems. To achieve those goals, interaction or communication takes place among participants, i.e. teacher (T) and learners (Ls). Therefore, it can be said that teaching and learning process in the classroom is basically a pedagogical communication.
In such an institutional communication, the relationship between T and Ls is asymmetrical (Stubbs, 1983:43). It is the T who has power, authority, and control over Ls. T plays significant roles as a planner and manager of activities, as a model to imitate (Brown, 1987; Ellis, 1986), and as a source of invaluable input (Krashen, 1985) which is required to promote language acquisition.
This paper presents the strategies of the practice of power as reflected in the classroom discourse. Before going further, it is important to refer back to what is meant by the practice of power. Power refer(s) to the control that the addressor imposes on the addressee, manifested in terms of teachers’ keeping hold of the conversation, dominating the classroom, exhibiting undemocratic behavior, or giving arbitrary commands without opening a chance for negotiations.
Following Halliday’s (1985:69) suggestion of the giving or demanding of goods-and-services or information, the writer analyzes the practice of power in the classroom discourse. He asserts that in the process of interaction there are two types of commodities exchanged and two roles in the exchange. The commodities are goods or services and information, whereas the roles are giving and demanding. In regards to this point, namely the exercise of power, attention is paid to the roles in the exchange, especially the second role, i.e. demanding.
Power is inherent in demand, in the sense that the more demand is performed indicates that the demander is more powerful. In other words, when an addressor demands more frequently, it implies that s/he wields greater power. Demanding either goods and services or information is classified as directive. Therefore, the performer of the directives must practice greater power. In the context of classroom interaction, for example, the teacher imposes numerous demands by asking questions, ordering learners to do tasks, eliciting, and prompting expressions. That implies that the teacher holds control over the class, and hence exercises greater power.
Using that framework of thought, the writer tries to present some indicators of the practice of power, such as the amount of speech, the frequency of directive acts, and the initiative of interaction. Then, he discusses some benefits of the exercise of power for pedagogical purposes.
The data are obtained from an English language class of adult learners. They are collected by audio-visual recording and observation. The results of the recording are transcribed so that it is easier to prepare data fragments of teacher-learner interaction. Observation is done by the researcher’s sitting at the back of the classroom taking field notes (Spradley, 1980:59). This facilitates getting comprehensive understanding of the corpus and its context which is useful in the process of transcribing and analyzing.
The data are, then, analyzed using the techniques proposed by Miles and Huberman (1992:18), namely data reduction, data display, conclusion drawing and interpretation. Parts of the transcript and the notes which are not directly related to the wielding of power are set aside; thus, the remaining data are organized and manageable. The relevant data are, then, displayed in order for the researcher to be able to enumerate points, draw conclusions, and make interpretations.
FINDINGS
Some Indicators of the Practice of Power
Stubbs (1983) claims there is an asymmetrical relationship between teacher and learners. This implies power is institutionally inherent in the role of the teacher in the classroom. In other words teacher has the right to practice power over the learners and amongst his/her power is the option to use various strategies to minimize that practice. Following are the indicators of teacher’s practice of power over the learners during classroom interaction.
Table 1 Indicators of the Practice of Power
No. | Indicators of the Practice of Power | Examples of Linguistic Realizations |
(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) | The amount of speech The frequency of directive acts The initiative of interaction The control of topic The teacher being questioner The use of closed questions The teacher’s use of modeled extraction Teacher’s answering own questions | Proportion of the T-L interaction Proportion of commands/orders What else? Did you remember? How about children? What is given up smoking? Family planning used by? Life sta…? …, and then? Middle-aged people,…. |
Amount of Speech
When communication is taking place between two parties, the amount of utterances produced reflects the domination of one over the other. The speaker who produces more utterances is likely dominating the interaction. Such domination is underlain by the power of the dominant over the dominee.
In view of the amount of speech produced during the lesson, as the data are recorded by the research instrument, there are totally 476 utterances. Among that number, 341 are produced by the teacher, 104 are by individual learner, and 31 by choral learners. This is presented in Table 2.
Table 2 Number of Teacher-learners’ Utterances
No. | Speech Producers | Number of Utterances | Percentages |
1. 2. 3. | Teacher Individual learner Choral learners | 341 104 31 | 72% 22% 6% |
Total | 476 | 100% | |
That proportion indicates that during the classroom interaction between the teacher and learners, it is obvious that the teacher produces more speech than the learners. That is, the teacher speaks 72% of the interaction and learners only 28% individually and classically.
However, this does not mean that, in the classroom practice, learners do not have time to practice using the target language. In fact, the teacher provides them with many chances to practice the language, as indicated by the activities conducted during the lesson.
In the guessing game, for instance, it is revealed that there are 34 utterances produced by the learners. In the second stage, grouping competition, learners work in groups classifying the phrases in accordance with the appropriate life stages. For example, wearing nappies belongs to babies, flirting at the opposite sex to teenagers, stopping working and getting grey-haired to retired people. Unfortunately, this grouping activity could not be recorded clearly by the instrument. However, the writer assumes that in doing such an activity, learners produce utterances. That is obvious in the following transcript.
FRAGMENT 1: L’s classifying phrases according to
life stages
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) | T L1 T | So, you do this with your group based on its stages. What is bald? It’s like me (touching his head) (Ss were busy discussing in their groups for about 3.5 minutes) Finish? |
In (4) above, it is said that Ls are busy discussing in their groups for about 3.5 minutes. In conducting the discussion, there must be utterances produced, but, unfortunately, unrecorded due to technical difficulty.
When learners are engaged in working in pairs telling each other about the most important event in their lives, in carrying out this task, learners also produce target language utterances. Unfortunately, the pair-work discussion cannot be caught by the recorder. This is noted in the data transcript as follows.
FRAGMENT 2: Ls’ working in pairs telling each
other’s most important event in life
(1) (2) (3) (4) | T | (T put Ss in pairs). OK, one two. One two. One two. One two So, you can choose which one is the most important event in your life. (Each pair began to be busy involved in doing the task for about 5 minutes. T was moving around the class monitoring and checking one by one. Ls’ pair-work discussion could not be clearly recorded). OK. Thank you. |
After the learners have done the matching activity, they are instructed by the teacher to discuss their answers together with their partners to check if their answers are correct. In carrying out this task, learners also produce speech. But, their utterances are inaudible to the recorder. This is also noted in the following transcript.
FRAGMENT 3: Ls’ discussing the results of matching task
(1) T If you’re finished, discuss with your partner to make sure that your answers are correct.
(2) Discuss with your partner.
(3) (Ss were busy discussing their tasks in pairs. T checked one learner in one of the groups)
Indicated in (3) above, Ls are busy discussing their tasks in pairs. T checks one learner in one of the groups. This also implies the existence of learners’ speech but imperceptible to the recorder.
Relevant with the topic of this study, however, i.e. revealing power relations in the classroom, the analysis is focused on learner-teacher interaction rather than on learner-learner. It can be summed up, as showed by Table 2 above, that in such an interaction teacher dominates the speech implying his greater power over the learners.
Frequency of Directive Acts
Demanding is directive in the sense that the person who demands (the speaker) gets the addressee (the hearer) to do something i.e. to satisfy the demands of goods, services, or information. Demanding implies imposing power by the powerful over the powerless. Therefore, it can be inferred that the party who performs more directive acts must hold greater power. In other words, if the teacher performs more directives, it implies that s/he practices the power.
Having scrutinized the data of classroom discourse, it is obvious that there are 198 directive acts performed during the teaching and learning process. These are performed by both interlocutors, teacher and learners. However, among those 198 acts, 188 are done by the teacher and only 10 are by the learners. This indicates that the teacher has exercised power over the learners. This confirms Stubbs’ (1983) claim that in the classroom interaction between learners and teacher, there is an imbalanced or asymmetrical relationship in the extent that teacher holds powerful control over the learners. That is, the teacher is powerful, whereas the learners are powerless.
This is, by all means, a superficial conclusion. In order to analyze the discourse deeply, it is important to identify what commodities are demanded by the speakers and how they do so. Halliday (1985) states there are two types of commodities exchanged in the process of interaction, i.e. goods or services, and information. Using this framework, the writer reveals what are demanded by the teacher from the learners and the other way around.
Goods refer to concrete objects. Demanding goods means that the speaker asks the hearer to give her/him concrete objects, e.g. “Pass me the salt.” Services refer to actions or activities. Demanding services means that the speaker asks the hearer to do some actions or activities for the sake of the speaker. For example, “Switch on the fan.” Information refers to messages. Demanding information means that the speaker asks the hearer to provide information or a message, e.g. “Where do you live?” By asking this question, the speaker wants the hearer to give information about where the hearer lives.
In relevance with this, the commodities exchanged by the classroom interlocutors, learners and teacher, are services and information. The analyst does not find any data about the demand of goods. The communicative functions to demand services are instructing, nominating, commanding, ordering, requesting, stimulating, calling attention, asking for repetition, drilling, correcting pronunciation, and offering. The acts to demand information, moreover, are eliciting, asking, prompting, checking comprehension, checking knowledge, and asking for confirmation. The list of those demands is presented in Table 3.
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