Teachers and school-aged learners: do they inhabit the same classroom world?

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on research in secondary schools in Brunei to investigate how teachers and learners view the English language learning classroom. The paper reviews the literature on learner perceptions, and comparisons with those of teachers, and argues that a ‘researcher's agenda’ frequently imposes limitations on data gathered. A research design utilising personal construct repertory grids was therefore developed to allow respondents to ‘speak for themselves’. Respondents were asked to build repertory grids in respect of task types from their classroom, in order to establish the constructs they draw on when thinking about their language lessons. Findings show that the teachers and learners have very different views, with evidence that the learners view the classroom as a ‘social event’ in direct contrast to the teachers, who view the classroom as ‘a pedagogic event’. The significance of this is that the learners are unlikely to be oriented towards achievement in language learning, and that the teachers will therefore find it difficult to keep learners focussed on the learning objectives. The paper concludes that only by involving learners in establishing aims and objectives, and in determining ways of working, will teachers and learners be brought to ‘inhabit the same classroom world’.

KEYWORDS:

• Language teaching
• learner perceptions
• teacher perceptions
• personal construct theory
• repertory grids

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Universiti Brunei Darussalam, the Ministry of Education Brunei Darussalam, and the schools that allowed us to collect data, and especially our invaluable research assistant, Muhammad Najib Noorashid, for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by Universiti Brunei Darussalam [grant number UBD/RSCH/1.7/FIVBF(b)/2019/011].