Collaborative Leadership in the Language Classroom: Engaging Learners in Leaderful Classroom Practices and Strategies

Conference: The Asian Conference on Language (ACL2022)
Title: Collaborative Leadership in the Language Classroom: Engaging Learners in Leaderful Classroom Practices and Strategies
Stream: Language Learning and Teaching
Presentation Type: Live-Stream Presentation
Authors:
Soyhan Egitim, Toyo University, Japan

Abstract:

The perception of the teacher as the authority in the classroom is deep-rooted in education yet this notion seems to contradict the fundamental values of democratic education. Especially, schools grant teachers an abundance of authority and decision-making power. The pedagogical implications of how teachers use this power in the classroom are not well-understood. Especially in the Japanese context, a majority of English language classes in pre-tertiary institutions are still taught through teacher-centered instruction with an emphasis on the grammar-translation method despite its impeditive effects on learners' communicative language development. Then, the question that warrants further discussion is why language teachers insist on teacher-centered instruction knowing that it is not conducive to developing students' communicative language competence. This study argues that teachers' leadership identity is an influential factor in their pedagogical and class management decisions and thus, this phenomenon warrants further investigation to address students’ struggle with active participation and communicative language competence in the Japanese EFL educational settings. The study employed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to reflect the participants’ lived experiences and how they made sense of those experiences. The findings indicated that the pedagogical and class management strategies fostered through the participants’ collaborative leadership identity proved to be effective in creating an open, democratic, and participatory classroom environment and helped nurture new learning habits in students which appeared to be effective in developing their communicative language competence.

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