Richard Kiely: Language classrooms as social spaces

Richard talked about his (research) interest in the craft of language teaching, i.e. its social, affective and cultural dimensions. Teaching, to him, is more than just facilitating learning – it’s very much about continuous learning on the part of the teacher, too.

He identified five components (facets) of the craft of teaching:
- analytic, cognitive activity
- awareness of own/students’ learning
- social, affective and cultural factors (e.g. friendship, respect and mutuality in the social space of the classroom)
- classroom continuity (e.g. dynamics of group development)
- curriculum policy context

Richard took up the classification of identities (Richards 2006) elaborated on by Ema Ushioda (cf. my report on her talk) and talked about the importance of teachers developing a transportable identity – based on the social world beyond the classroom. This teacher identity can be introduced into the classroom discourse to add a dimension to the situated (i.e. teacher as a professional) identity and thus alter the character of classroom talk. Teachers, therefore, can decide to bring not only their technical, but also their social selves to add another layer to the quality of classroom talk.

Richard asserted that teaching is not only about designing lesson plans but also about the way students and teachers interact and the skills teachers need to develop to make these interactions possible, supporting his claims by the findings of his research into the social events that take place in the EL classroom.