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‘It’s kind of like a middle ground’ : students’ strategic management of silence in multicultural group work
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Zhang, Lyu (2023) ‘It’s kind of like a middle ground’ : students’ strategic management of silence in multicultural group work. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3979736
Abstract
Silence among students has been widely observed and frequently highlighted as a challenge in multicultural group work (MGW) and in educational contexts more generally. Moreover, the students’ silences in classrooms are often stereotypically associated with a negative attitude, a lack of initiative and unwillingness to participate. To date, research that explores silence in classrooms tends to focus on students’ experience of and attitudes to silence by examining selfreports rather than the practice of silence itself. Apart from looking at ‘why’ they are silent, there is also a need to examine the nature of silence in interaction in order to understand ‘how’ silences work and how they are managed in the conversation. Although cultural and linguistic factors have been concluded as two predominant explanations for students’ silence, what seems to be overlooked by research is that silences can be different and need to be interpreted in a more localised and sophisticated way. Therefore, it is important to look at silence at a microlevel of the interaction between students. To investigate both students’ practices of and perspectives on silence in multicultural group work, the study collected recordings of student interaction in online groups and had the participants reflect upon the recorded interaction in stimulated-recall style interviews. Following a conversation analytic approach, the thesis presents turn-by-turn analysis of instances of interaction where silences occur, focusing on silences at different sequential contexts including silences after first-pair parts (FPPs) and second-pair parts (SPPs). In addition, the thesis also discusses three themes related to silence emerging from the students’ perspectives in interviews. Findings of the study show that silence in multicultural group work is related to local events in interaction rather than a generic manifestation of non-participation. A range of contextual factors related to the local organisation of turn-taking and sequences may be at play on top of culture and language. Furthermore, the students were capable of enacting agency in performing and withholding action through the practice of silence. The thesis sheds some new light on the practices around silence in classroom interaction and it concludes with theoretical and methodological contributions of the study as well as recommendations for future research.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | L Education > LC Special aspects of education P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Group work in education, Silence, Multiculturalism, Interaction analysis in education, Electronic discussion groups, Conversation analysis | ||||
Official Date: | May 2023 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Centre for Applied Linguistics | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Liddicoat, Anthony, 1962- | ||||
Format of File: | |||||
Extent: | 233 pages : illustrations | ||||
Language: | eng |
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