The social practice of silence in intercultural classrooms at a UK university

ABSTRACT

The paper offers an examination of the dynamics between silence, agency and power for students and instructors in intercultural classrooms at a UK university. Silent students are often stereotyped as passive learners or incompetent in critical thinking, lacking interest or having insufficient understanding. Despite the devaluation of silence, research reveals its significant role in pedagogy and its foundations in culture. The paper explores second language (L2) postgraduate international students’ classroom experiences and voices behind the silence in comparison with their peers’ and instructors’ perceptions and interpretations of students’ lack of vocal participation. Challenging talk as the privileged form of classroom communication mode, we argue for a better understanding of L2 international students’ participation and call for recognition of the pedagogical merits of silence and legitimate some forms of it as a pattern of participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Silence
• international students
• agency
• power negotiation
• intercultural classrooms

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In this study, we use ‘L2 international students’ to refer to students whose first language is not English and who are domiciled outside the UK.

2. We acknowledge the risks of presenting ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ cultures and classrooms as intrinsically different or as geographical categories. However, patterns of student mobility from the Global South and from Asia to more developed and largely English-language contexts make these useful if crude categories.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council.