The literature on classrooms’ physical layout demonstrates that although seating arrangement may not seem to be very important, its effect on teaching and learning is massive and therefore should not be belittled (Daniels, 1998; Davis and Fox, 1999; Edwards, 2000; Marx et al, 2000; Benedict and Hoag, 2004; Wannarka and Ruhl, 2008; Fernandes et al, 2011).
Students in schools are mainly seated either in rows and columns where they face their teachers, or in whole/semi-circles where the students are divided up into groups and that members of each group face each another. According to a number of studies mentioned above, teachers’ selection of teaching strategies depends to a large extent on the way their students are seated.
In brief, while the rows and columns arrangement could be more suitable for information dissemination (whereby teachers are seen as knowledge transmitters), whole/semi-circles arrangement lends itself more to student-centeredness. In other words, while the rows and columns’ arrangement is more compatible with traditional method of teaching, it restricts an effective implementation of many teaching activities and/or teaching methods supported by communicative curricula. Whole/semi-circles arrangement, on the other hand, is more in line with communicative curricula where students are expected to actively engage in the class through interacting among themselves and with their teacher (Budge, 2000; Patton et al,2001; Perkins and Wieman, 2005; Kaya and Burgess, 2007;).
With relation to the present study, it was observed during collecting the data that seating arrangement in IDP camp schools’ classes was posing a serious challenge towards proper teaching and learning. In their interviews, teachers confirmed the negative influence of the physical arrangement of their classes through explaining its effect on teaching and learning. In this part of data analysis, an explanation about the physical layout of the classrooms will first be given. Then, the effect of such a challenging layout on teaching and learning will be discussed through the difficulties that teachers faced when conducting group work.
163 | P a g e Concerning the physical layout of the classrooms, students in the camp schools were seated on long bench desks that were fixed to the ground and arranged in two columns on either side of the class. Due to the large number of students inside each class, the walkway between the two columns of bench desks was filled with students sitting on the ground. This was the case in the majority of the classes within the two participating schools. In other words, the only place for the teachers to walk around in the classroom was at the front of the class, between the first two rows (on each side of the class) and the green board (which was placed in front of the students).
Teachers in their interviews pointed out that many teaching activities, especially group work, became useless with such an inappropriate arrangement. To give more details, five of the eight participating teachers (Mr. Khalid, Mr. Muhammed, Mr. Ali Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Jasim) believed that one of the main barriers that teachers face if they are to follow the instruction of the new curriculum is the impractical seating arrangement of the students.
To many teachers, the most prominent difference between the old and the new curriculum is the implementation of group work. For example, when Mr. Abdullah was asked about the main differences between the two curricula, he opened his answer with two words ‘group work’. In fact, the new curriculum, through the teacher’s book, reiterates the need of getting the students to work in groups. That is, according to the new curriculum, a big proportion of the activities (in the activity’s book) that students should perform in the classroom are supposed to be executed in groups. This could be clearly seen in both the activity and the teacher’s book.
However, the new curriculum also asks the teachers to arrange the students in circles so that members of the same group face each other. The teacher’s role, according to the new curriculum, is to make sure that every student (within his/her group) is taking part in the discussion, find out the students’ level or command over the particular skill that the activity revolves around, make sure that all the discussions are going in the right direction and provide help and assistance if
164 | P a g e needed. Clearly, this can only be accomplished if the teacher walks between the different groups, observes and listens to the students while they are engaging in group discussions.
The impractical seating arrangement of the students was one of the main reasons that had an effect on teachers’ beliefs concerning the utility of using group work in their classrooms.
When probed about the importance of getting the students to work in groups, Mr. Khalid first explained his positive point of view about group work activities. He explained that group work is one of the most useful strategies in teaching and learning. He added that he had first hand experienced the benefits of this strategy for two years when he was doing his M. Sc. in Jordan. To him, group work is not only a beneficial strategy for teaching and learning, but it also brings ‘fun to the class’ and increases students’ motivation towards learning the English language. Moreover, he argued that group work ‘kills the boredom’ that usually accompanies and affects teachers and students when a foreign language is taught in traditional ways.
After explaining his stance on using group work as a teaching strategy, Mr. Khalid began to illustrate how classrooms settings in his school ‘forced’ him to abandon this ‘great strategy’:
It is not a great strategy by its own. I mean, it is not that you get your students to work in groups, regardless of the surrounding settings, and then the students will learn better. It is not going this way. There are certain things which should be there in the class to make this strategy great. First, you need to have your students seated in circles, I mean around few tables, and not on benches. Next, you need to move between one table and another, listen to your students, offer assistance and take notes regarding each student’s performance in the discussion. When you can do none of these, what greatness is left in this strategy?
After conducting one classroom observation with Mr. Salah, I noticed that Mr. Salah straightforwardly wrote on the green board the answers for an activity which, according to the curriculum, should be done through group work. Mr. Salah was
165 | P a g e asked, in the post-observation interview, why he did not ask his students to work in group as the curriculum illustrates. He linked the effectiveness of using group work with the teacher ability to move around all over the classroom and reach every student, or group, in the class. He explained that as he could not come near every student (due to the walkway being filled with students sitting on the ground), using group work will lead to chaos:
if I ask students to work in groups, what do you think those who are sitting in the back of the class will talk about? Do you really think that their discussion will be about the activity in question, or about the last joke or story they heard? For me, if I cannot move around the whole classroom, I will not ask the students to work in groups because the outcome of the activity will be just a huge chaos in the class.
To conclude, there was a sharp contradiction between the seating arrangement in IDP camp schools and the new curriculum which stresses the need of having the students seated into circles for the purpose of conducting effective and productive group work activities. Taken together, it can be argued that class size, the very limited time and the inappropriate seating arrangement were posing a serious obstacle towards an appropriate and effective implementation of the new curriculum in IDP camp schools. As Mr. Muhammad argued, there is not much that teachers could do to overcome these three challenges. According to him, the only thing that teachers can do is to implement the new curriculum inappropriately with the presence of these difficulties.