The Language Teacher

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Hidden Power of Judgments

Most of us would probably prefer to hear the words "exciting," "spectacular," and "terrific" rather than "dull," "silly," and "terrible," during a post-observation conference with a person who had visited our classes. However, these words with a positive connotation carry with them the same potential danger as the words "dull," "silly," and "terrible," which to most have a negative connotation. The fact that positive judgments such as "exciting," "spectacular," and terrific" might at first sound more palatable than negative judgments like "dull," "silly," and "terrible," tend to mask the potential danger of any judgments we make, whether intended to be positive and encouraging or negative and discouraging.

Judgments, whether positive or negative, tend to be one-dimensional, black and white, absolute: they therefore limit the range of activities that we are willing to try in our classes. Thinking our present teaching is "exciting," or our students are "terrific," or our textbook is "spectacular," is as likely to keep us from changing anything we do as any Ministry of Education guideline, university examination, or other external pressure established to control our teaching.

The idea that the words we use to discuss our teaching might limit the range of activities that we are willing to try in our classes might seem astonishing to some. But why would comments about our teaching be less related to our actions than comments about any other aspect of our lives? Those who advocate conserving electricity or gasoline use in their cars try in their conversations to translate their words into action. Those who criticize the use of tax dollars to pay for food for those who do not work try to translate their words into laws that in fact prevent their tax dollars from being used for purposes they do not support. In short, the words we use to discuss what we do can affect the actions we and others take.

Hidden Meanings in Conversations

The fact that judgments we use to discuss our teaching and textbooks can limit the range of our teaching activities is only one way that judgments, whether positive or negative, can have a limiting effect on our teaching. Another limitation is that the support of our judgments tends to turn into power play between those who are trying to either support or attack judgments that are made. If a visitor tells me that my students are heavenly, and I question the judgment, indicating that I think that some of them are monsters, both of us will bring out specific incidents that we observed that support our individual, disparate judgments. Said another way, a hidden purpose of most conversations, whether about our teaching or about how we squeeze the toothpaste tube, is about the relationships between the participants. Who is in charge? Who knows more?

At faculty meetings, in post-observation conversations, and even in casual conversations, there is usually some underlying power play between the participants. On one level, a grandmother's comments to her daughter about her granddaughter's behavior might appear to be mainly out of concern. On another level, the conversation is about who is in control, who is in charge, and who is right--who knows more about the right way to raise children. All conversations are both about the topic of the conversation--the lesson, the textbook, the students, the raising of children, the way to squeeze toothpaste from a tube--and about the power plays between the participants in the conversations. The issue of what the participants are doing to each other is as central as the topic that the participants are discussing.

To many, the idea that an analysis of what people are doing to each other in conversation is as important, or even more important than the topic of the conversation, might seem outrageous. However, there is a long tradition of conversational analysis outside of post-observation conferences and the critiquing of textbooks to support this. As Gadamer (1997) claimed, when we speak, we do not lead the conversation; it leads us.

Activities

One common way to consider post-observation conversations about lessons we observe is to determine whether we want to be collaborative, passive, or adversarial (Gebhard, l984; Waite, l993). But these three psychological stances are based on an assumption that we are aware of what we are doing when we discuss lessons we have observed. And further, they are based on the idea that we are in control of what we say during our post-observation conversations. The fact that we are often startled when we first hear tape recordings of conversations we have had, reminds us that our conversations are not as controlled as we might like to think, "Did I really say that?" is a frequent question heard as people listen to recordings of their conversations for the first time. The field of discourse analysis has revealed a number of discourse patterns in conversations that further supports the idea that when we speak we are not always in control of what we say any more than we are in control of how we speak. Some patterns of discourse in our conversations about our teaching are just as automatic and said out of consciousness as are patterns of grammar, such as singular and plural agreement.

In an attempt to move beyond the rules of discourse that control how we usually discuss our teaching and our textbooks, Fanselow (l987, l988, 1992) and others (Edge & Richards, 1993; Wallace, l996), have developed various activities. A common key initial activity is to tape record and then transcribe our conversations about our lessons. Subsequent activities include generating antonyms for all the initial judgments discovered in the transcribed conversations. For example, if the statement, "The class was heavenly," was transcribed, it is changed to "The class was hellish."

A short excerpt of a videotape or audiotape of a "heavenly" class is then observed to discover some behaviors or activities that we think are heavenly, as well as hellish. Other judgments made in the initial post-observation conference are then extracted and dealt with in the same way. As participants find examples to support both their initial judgments and judgments that are the exact opposite of their initial judgments, new features of student and teacher exchanges are usually discovered. As we look at what is happening, the limitations of our one-dimensional, black and white, absolute statements become more and more apparent. When we see that some students in the "heavenly" class were writing notes that were unrelated to the topic, that some of the students who seemed most "heavenly" were in fact not doing anything, we realize that our initial judgments have simplified the events and blinded us to much of what was going on.

Of course, realizing that our judgments are not accurate--that our diagnoses were limited, if not incorrect, does not lead to change, even though such a realization might make us more aware of how our initial judgments have masked much of what we do. Each new diagnosis needs to be followed with a plan of action. Thus, a critical step in our analysis is a plan to use activities with the same class in a subsequent lesson that are in some way different.

Comparisons of activities done in the initial class and then changed and done in a subsequent class show how our initial judgments tend to limit the range and variety of our activities. And by generating opposite activities, the control that our usual judgments have on our teaching is eased. With no need for either participant to prove the judgment that was made but rather the need for each to see exceptions to the initial judgment, each is freed to suggest totally different activities. By searching for antonyms and generating activities based on the concept of opposites, we decrease the usual power play that is so much a part of many post-observation conferences, in which each participant tries to prove the initial judgment that has been made.

Post-observation conferences tend to be filled with judgments and tension provoking activities in which neither the teacher nor the observer, whether supervisor or friend, are having much fun! One key purpose of the post-observation conference is to play with the language we use to judge our teaching and textbooks as well as to feel free to play with the activities in which we engage our students.

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Edge, J., & Richards, K. (Eds.). (l993). Teachers develop teacher research. Oxford: Heinemann.

Fanselow, J. F. (l987). Breaking rules: Generating and exploring alternatives in language teaching. White Plains, New York: Longman.

Fanselow, J. F. (1998). "Let's see": Contrasting conversations about teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 22, 113-130.

Fanselow, J. F. (l992). Contrasting conversations. White Plains, New York: Longman.

Gadamer, H. G. (l977). Philosophical hermeneutics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Waite, D. (l993). Teachers in conference: A qualitative study of teacher-supervisor face-to-face interactions. American Educational Research Journal, 30(4), 675-702.

Wallace, M. (l996). Structured reflection: The role of the professional project in training ESOL teachers. In D. Freeman & J. C. Richards (Eds.), Teacher learning in language teaching (pp. 281- 294). New York: Cambridge University Press.