A Modest Research Proposal

Today I meet with Dr. Rajendra Chetty, Dean of Research at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Within an hour meeting, we had designed a study that we will coauthor. I will be able to observe a Xhosa language science classroom right across the street from where I'm living. I am having a hard time accpeting that this has happened so quickly. We have follow up meeting on Wednesday to talk more about the project. This evening, after meeting this morning I sent the following one page description.

Why do teachers change their language of instruction in the middle of a lesson?

A project proposal by James R. King and Rajendra Chetty

The linguistic diversity in South African classrooms presents a unique opportunity to learn about teachers’ uses of linguistic affordances in their daily instruction. Often called “code-switching” (Yao, 2011; Wildsmith-Cromarty, 2009), the impetuses for teachers’ choices to switch their language of instruction are relatively unknown. Even the term “code-switching” must represent a set of strategic accommodations that are deployed by teachers in order to scaffold their struggling students. Seen from these perspectives, language shifting by teachers during their instruction is constructed in a productive light. Such has not always been the case.

Part of the complexity of surrounding the negative construal of code-switching comes from another time, when indigenous languages may have had politically motivated lower valuing. In general, the use of indigenous languages during instruction would then be understood as lower quality instruction. Specifically, switching into lower prestige languages (for whatever reason) would also be seen as lower quality instruction. More recently, similar arguments have been made regarding the use of English only. Teachers with limited English and perhaps limited content knowledge (say, science) would conceivably offer both “bad science” and “bad English” (Brock-Utne, 2005; Crouch & Lewin, 2000). Indeed, such beliefs and practices live on through the palimpsestic instantiations of rote language policy.

The proposed project intends to develop insider understanding of a teacher’s repertoire with a category of behavior called “code-switching.” Operationalized as a teacher’s language change during direct, whole class instruction, code-switching will be observed and recorded on digital audio. To these ends, a single, volunteer teacher will host a visiting scholar’s (see vita) observations and audio recordings of language variation during normal instructional sessions. It is estimated that the project will last a total of five weeks. The density of the classroom visits will be negotiated with the teacher, mindful of interruptions, teacher responsibility, and saturation of the information collected. It is also planned to hold infrequent interviews with the teacher. During the interviews, transcribed segments of the teacher’s classroom talk will be presented in a stimulated recall format (Calderhead, 1981; Gass & Mackey, 2000; Lingred, 2002) to elicit the teacher’s recall and understanding of their own actions and talk.

Since the project is focused on the teacher’s discourse, no underage actors will be involved. Further, the use of stimulated recall allows the teacher member-checking ownership of the emerging information. Finally, any outcomes from this project will be shared with the teacher.

The outcomes from this short project are intended to be a taxonomy of one teacher’s language code-switching repertoire. The educational value of this proposed taxonomy is a clearer understanding of strategic code-switching.

References

Brock-Utne, B. (2005). Language-in-education policies with a special focus on Tanzania and South Africa – insights from research in progress. In A.Ling & P. Martin (Eds.), Decolonialization and globalization: language-in-education policy and practice (pp. 173-201). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, Ltd.

Calderhead, J. (1981). Stimulated recall: a method for research on teaching. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 51, 211-217.

Gass, S. & Mackey, A. (2000). Stimulated recall methodology in second language research. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Lingred, E. (2002). The effects of stimulated recall on 14-year-olds L1 Swedish and EFL writing and revision. Language Teaching Research, 6, 267-268.

Wildsmith-Cromarty, R. (2009). Multilingualism in South African schools. In M. Torres-Guzman & J. Gomez (Eds.), Global perspectives on multilingualism: unity in diversity (pp. 36-53). New York:  Teachers College Press.