IASCE Forum - The Right to Pass

Editor’s Note: Previously, the IASCE Forum presented accounts of the development of CL in a wide range of countries. While the Forum will continue to play that role, discussion of issues in CL is also welcome, as we see from the exchange presented here between two English as a Second Language teachers, one from the U.S. and the other from Japan, on whether students in CL groups should have the right to pass. The Japanese teacher is also a doctoral student in an English-medium program in Japan and a member of JASCE (Japan Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education). Final remarks are provided by Forum editor and IASCE Board member Yael Sharan.  

US Teacher: To me, when we are doing group activities, my students have the RIGHT to ask questions, get extra help, give their opinions about something, etc. I don't think they have the right to pass. To me, that is something they EARN as opposed to having the right. 

Japan Teacher: I disagree. Denying the right to pass absolutely presents the teacher's point of view. Of course, as a teacher, I want my students to ask questions, come to me for help, and express their opinions. I would be disappointed if my students did not respond to my questions. However, my experience as a student tells me that students should have the right to pass. From the outside, passing may imply passivity and laziness. However, we cannot tell why students want to pass on certain questions. Not giving answers or some other kind of response does not necessarily mean that students are not thinking. They may need more time to formulate their ideas. They may be trying to say something, but may be unable to do so, especially students using a second language. The students may want to accumulate more knowledge by listening attentively before speaking. Therefore, it seems to me that you have forgotten the students’ point of view. There are students who don't make an effort; however, because we cannot always distinguish them from those who are actually thinking hard about the topic, we mustn't jump to conclusions and impose a rule that students don't have the right to pass.

US Teacher: Students who do not have an answer ready can respond in other ways; they can ask questions, provide affective responses, give impressions, emphasize points, state their understanding of what the question is asking, respond to someone else’s response. I’m not saying that students should never be allowed to say “I pass.” I’m just saying that there is a great deal of middle ground between answering and passing. Furthermore, it ignores reality to try to ban passing, as despite everything teachers and groupmates do to encourage maximum participation by all, it is often the case that some group members participate only a little or not at all.

Japan Teacher: Referring to my own experience as a student. I'm not a very shy person, nor are many of the other Japanese people in my doctoral cohort. However, when we first started our doctoral studies, we were very quiet.

US Teacher: Quiet in talking to the teacher or in talking to each other? Wouldn’t peer discussion at this point be useful? Let’s dispel the idea that only those who have learned first have anything useful to say. This leaves out that: (1) all students come to class with knowledge, and (2) dialogue helps to build knowledge. No need to formulate a great answer before speaking. No need to fear the voicing of immature thoughts. Seen historically, everyone’s thoughts are immature, because when people look back at today 100 years from now, many of our current ideas will probably seem very outdated.

Japan Teacher: Were my fellow Japanese doctoral students and I not motivated? Of course, we were very motivated learners. Did we have no opinions? Yes, we often did. Were we not thinking? Yes, we were thinking seriously. However, we wanted to understand more about what was taught before being asked to present our opinions. We wanted to have more time to formulate our thoughts before we actually spoke up.

US Teacher: What’s wrong with using dialogue as a device for formulating thoughts? Doesn’t research, theory, and personal experience suggest that this is one good way to clarify and develop our thinking?

Japan Teacher: We wanted to be sure that what our emergent ideas were not irrelevant.

US Teacher: If they are your ideas, and you’re a student in the course, your ideas are automatically relevant.

Japan Teacher: Yes, you are right. But at that time, we did not feel that way. We did not know when was the right time to voice our opinions. We wanted to ask questions, but we were not sure if the questions were right to ask. Of course, you could say that there's no right or wrong question, to which I agree. But, in reality, we hesitated to speak up, checking not only the content of what we wanted to say but also our English.

US Teacher: That’s one of the advantages of group activities compared to whole-class discussion – less time pressure and more chance to think out what to say and how to say it. Therefore, we often add a Write or Think step to CL activities

Japan Teacher: In fact, in our doctoral courses, the English native speakers did most of the talking, including asking most of the questions, even though the Japanese students outnumbered native speakers. This was also despite that fact that we Japanese students knew quite well what the preferred participation style in class was. Maybe from a Western point of view, many of us must have looked very passive. But, I don't consider us to have been passive. We were very busy in our minds. We were learning how to participate in academic discussions. Actually, we learned from observing the way those native speaker students and Japanese students more accustomed to American teaching style behaved. And little by little, we started to ask questions, then to state our own opinions, and finally to challenge the professors and even classmates. By the time our coursework finished, most of the Japanese students were quite eloquent and did not hesitate to ask questions and challenge other students and the professors. Don't you think this is a form of legitimate peripheral participation (http://derrel.net/readings/SituatedLearning.htm)? Students at the university where I teach here in Japan are different from us, but I still think I can apply this idea to them. Superficially passive students are not as passive as they appear.

US Teacher: I agree that often it takes time to familiarize students with CL. That’s why it’s often best to start with very easy group tasks, just to help students grow accustomed to CL

Japan Teacher: So, I think it is dangerous to jump to the conclusion that passive learners are not learning. This is just a surface view. One of my professors, Dwight Atkinson, introduced the idea of "connected knowing" as opposed to "critical thinking" (for more on this, see http://webhost.bridgew.edu/adirks/ald/papers/constr.htm). I'm not saying that passive learners can achieve fluency in a second language without saying anything at all. What I would like to emphasize is that students need more time to learn how to participate in an English learning community (classroom) where the instructional style includes CL and is very different from the traditional Japanese classrooms in high schools or universities. I think teachers should give students more time to become members of such communities and get more comfortable with the communication style in Western culture. If teachers do not understand this, they too hastily deprive students of opportunities to learn. And it's one of teachers’ most important jobs to help students join this community of more outspoken learners. To do this, teachers need to be patient.

In CL, teachers should allow quieter students to observe peers who are more used to working in learning communities; we should not push those seemingly passive students too hard to overtly participate in group work from the beginning. Some students need more time than others to learn how to interact with peers on learning tasks. Thus, legitimate peripheral participation should be acknowledged. 

Yael Sharan: The development of this exchange reflects what may often happen in a classroom: as people voice their ideas and opinions, they elicit more from the others taking part in the discussion, and slowly but surely all relevant issues come to the fore. It is a true picture of what may happen when there's time for a discussion to evolve, without pressure to "perform" or speak right away. Often, reasons for opinions or for behaviors turn out to be quite different from what teachers or students assumed in the first stages of the discussion.

One small point - I think that teachers' patience with shy or retiring or "passive" students grows with experience. At first, teachers are eager to have everyone participate, as the CL books promise. But there are many reasons for the fact that some students don't participate as often or as much as others. Teachers' patience and support go a long way to giving such students a chance to find their own pace and comfort zone. As was said, some just prefer not to talk.  When teachers are comfortable with it, so will the students be. And the sensitive teacher will take the trouble to find out why a particular student consistently refrains from participating. If it's only a question of English, then there are gambits and such to help out.