What Makes a Teacher

What Makes a Teacher: Identity and Classroom talk

To begin with, this research starts by pointing out its main purpose, which is to comprehend teacher´s identities based on the language classroom and interaction. The writer focuses on identity in the language classroom by going through different authors and special topics such as power, language choice, turn taking, roles, and some more. Furthermore, he states that the idea of the research is not to get into a conclusion but to leave a door open to continue doing research on this topic. The literature review focuses first on an overview of identity throughout history. He expresses that there are different authors, definitions and field like sociology, philosophy and psychology that are interested on the topic. In addition, he cite some definitions of identity itself and also, teacher’s identity from different authors with very different views such as “part of a reflexive, learning process by which values, attitudes, behavior, roles and identities are accumulated over time” (Cooley’s, 1902; cited in Day.,et. al. 2006). The differentiation between situated and substantial identity, where the situated is defined by specific situations and how the people interact; for example, in a school and the substantial that includes how a person think about him or herself (Ball, 1972). On the other hand, teacher identity not only include assessment or classroom management, but it is the social, cultural and personal everyday experiences of the teacher (Sleegers & Kelchtermnas, 1999). After citing definitions, he conclude that teachers’ identity is not only about teachers’ role but it is related with teachers ‘emotions, perspectives and experiences. He gives a twist and continues the discussion with a talk and identity item, which is more focused on identity and discourse analysis since Benwell ans Stokoe (2006), states that identity “is a public phenomenon, a performance or construction that is interpreted by other people. This construction takes place in discourse and other social and embodied conduct”. The research author expresses that discourse and social actions are interrelated in the way that it reveals not only what we say or talk, but also who we are and what we mean. Further on, he focuses on the distinction between ordinary and institutional settings. The first one is how people interact in everyday scenarios with no pre-stablished tasks to accomplish, while the second one is how people interact within a specific scenario an institution such as an office, hospital, or school where they need to use certain language and accomplish some tasks. In the case of the language classroom, the teacher is the one who leads the discussions, takes control of the turns to speak, and asks questions; that puts the teacher on a dominant relationship. Regarding the methodology, the study used conversation analysis (CA) as the data collection method. This instrument focuses on analyzing not only spoken language, but also gestures, body language and facial expressions. The data was collected from a Spanish monolingual context by recording a two hours lesson and transcribe it so it can be analyzed trough CA. The research does not have a specific question due to its desire to analyze the interaction phenomena. The discourse setting consisted of 20 students from 20 to 50 years old that seem to be learning for personal purposes, the teacher has good methodology and the environment of the class was pleasant. Moreover, the teacher was relaxed, with a good tone of voice and with a good classroom management, what led students to feel comfortable, engaged and motivated to participate on the class. The author starts to analyze the transcription of a part of the lesson where a friendly atmosphere, teacher’s feedback and evaluation could be identified. Additionally, it was evidenced that the teacher was the one with the power since she/he was in charge of asking questions, monitoring and leading the organization of the classroom talk. Further on, the discussion turned into the organization of turn-taking where naturally, in the language classroom, it starts with the teacher and then it is organized to give students the turn. Finally, how interactants dealt with communication problems, was another case of research. In this part, both teacher and students can correct the mistake made in terms of morphology, syntax, pronunciation, among others. As a matter of conclusion, the author expressed that teachers are generally the ones with the power, the ones that make questions, and lead discussions and that it is rare to find students to appropriate of that role. He ended by saying that the teachers’ identity can be also studied in different contexts different from the classroom such as conversations with colleagues and parents. He left the door open for further research.