Freeman paper

IIC: Freeman paper | Keith Richards | June 17th, 1999

Hi

I received a valuable email from Julian Brasington (UK group) last week in which he pointed to a paper that isn't mentioned in the IIC file but which he thought would be a useful addition to Unit 2.   Here are the details of the paper:

Donald Freeman, 'Collaboration: constructing shared understandings in a second language classroom' in Nunan, D., 1992, 'Collaborative language learning and teaching.'

In my reply to Julian I admitted that I had read the paper when the book first came out, but the thought of using it never entered my head when writing the unit.   A pity, as you'll see from Julian's comments on the paper:

"It strikes me as being a suitable source to use to exemplify some of the ideas expressed in unit 2 of IIC.   A mixture of transcripts and field notes form the evidence upon which Freeman's observations are based; context is described in a novelistic fashion (see the opening 'The Frame' and also 'The context' op.cit. 56 and 58-59); and the following quotes situate his methodology very succinctly:

'Like many projects which examine how people use language in classrooms, this inquiry started out with one focus and ended up with another.' (op.cit.57)

'Although the researcher and the context are continually present in any study, that fact can be obscured when research is reported in a third person, abstracted voice.   However, collaboration between researcher and subject is neither impersonal nor acontextual; I think it is important to make that fact visible to the reader.   Therefore, throughout this paper I have decided to maintain, and make evident, my first-person voice as writer-researcher and to emphasize the setting and context of our collaborative work.' (op.cit.79)

Nunan also supplies some interesting comments with reference to both Freeman's approach and the book as a whole (see in particular p.12).

In terms of style Freeman's paper is very interesting, but value?   It could be viewed as attempting to concretize, through structured observation and analysis, what is intuitive (and therefore unsayable?) regarding a particular teacher's teaching style.   In presenting this, it seeks (as you put it on p.21 of the module) to engage, rather than persuade the reader.   Perhaps this is the great strength of the way the paper is presented i.e. that in describing a personal encounter, the ideas presented are personalized and therefore more likely to lead to critical interaction from the reader than say an abstract, 'objective' account.    It paints a clear enough picture of an event(s) to allow the reader to imagine such an event (and perhaps to place themselves within it), yet it also withholds enough colour such that it is the reader's own values/ideas which become enacted.   This would seem to be the collaboration that the paper's title aims at."

Having reread the paper, all I can really do is agree with Julian's analysis.   I think the paper is valuable for exactly the reasons he highlights.   It's interesting to note, in the light of Julian's comment about its value, that in terms of presenting research there are technical weaknesses in the paper.   All sorts of questions might be asked about the process of data collection and analysis.   Just in case you'd like to read the paper, think about these for yourself and compare notes with me, I'll offer here some questions that occurred to me:

•  How long did he spend in the field?

•  How did he go about the interviewing?   How did he select the people he interviewed?

•  We have some of the conventions for the recorded lessons but not all.   How was the data collected and on what basis?

•  It's clear that he went through the lesson transcripts with the teacher, but what was the procedure for this?   Did they agree a procedure?

And most serious of all:

•  What procedures did he use for the analysis of his data?  

•  If we don't know the process by which he derived his categories, how can we be sure that he hasn't just plucked out quotations that serve to support claims which just "seem" reasonable to him?

Of course, we have to set these questions against the value of the paper in terms of the aspects that Julian highlights in his second paragraph.   In the end, I think the paper probably works very well as it is, warts and all.

Hope you find this as interesting as I did.   Please get back to the list with any thoughts or ideas you have on this or any other papers.

Best wishes

Keith

 

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