LAVAMANOS DE PEDESTAL

Excerpt 5 below is taken from a lesson on the same exercise reported in excerpt 4. As in excerpt 4, this lesson as well focuses on the pre-reading activity prescribed in the textbook. What follows is a partial transcript (See Table 5.8):

Table 5.8: Excerpt 5

Transcript of classroom interactions (Translated from Persian)

Pedagogical stance as mediated by the textbook

Mr. Shayan: Ok, new lesson, Lesson 8. Just to save our time, let’s read aloud pre- reading questions related to the lesson. No need to answer the questions, just translate them. In this section, there are two important vocabularies which are questioned in your examinations. Following which means below here and famous in questions number 1, 4, 5, 6.

Who can give a synonym for the word famous?

Firstly, the teacher aligned the textbook exercise with examination question type (Here, synonym for the new word, in the pre-university activity).

Nader: Well-known .

Mr. Shayan: Very good. To see how they

are asked in your examination, later have a look at your testbook, page 6o. Nader please go on, read the questions and translate them to class.

[Nader reads aloud all questions and immediately translate them one by one. One example of the suggested pre-reading question is: Number 5: Can you name

other famous people? ]

The teacher addressed examination

concerns

Nader: Sir! Is there any great scientist, poet or writer among Afghans?

Nader’s question became a trigger for

critical engagement (going beyond

examination requirements).

Mr. Shayan: Sure, Hakim Sanaei

Ghaznavi, a great Physician and Balkhi, a great poet, and many others whether in the

past or present days. Why do you think so?

The teacher included the contributory role of great Afghans. He also tried to engage the students to touch on stereotypes and social attitudes on Afghan community.

Nader: Because it is known that Afghans are extremists?

The student (Nader) expressed a stereotype and social attitude on Afghan community.

Mr. Shayan: Who says so?

Farid: Media, news, everybody says so,

sir.

The teacher raised the students’ awareness to find sources of the information before making a generalizability or judgment on any social attitudes.

Table 5.8, continued: Excerpt 5

Transcript of classroom interactions (Translated from Persian)

Pedagogical stance as mediated by the textbook

Mr. Shayan: You should not believe in

everything the media says. Afghans are like many other people. Among them, great scientists, writers, and of course some extremists may be living. It is common everywhere. Generally, they are like many like many other people in different parts of the world. Poor Afghans,

they suffered from many civic and international wars in their country. Many

of them migrated to the neighboring counties. Iran helped these refugees a lot. In our city, some of these Afghan refugees lived. Even now, you can find some of them.

The teacher raised the students’ awareness on the intelligent role of media on controlling minds of people.

The teacher expressed his personal thoughts on Afghan situations.

Morteza: Yes, some of them were

workers, builders.

The student (Morteza) made an

intertextual linking and got engaged in the discussion.

Mr. Shayan: How did you find that? The teacher attempted to invite the student to get engaged into the discussion and interrogate the social attitudes towards Afghans.

Morteza: Years before my father decided

to make a new house. He asked one of his friends who was a builder to do it. For my father’s friend some Afghans worked. My father always says that these Afghans were

hardworking and Halal. One of these

Afghans’ son became my elder brother’s friend later. He was very studious. I heard that he is an engineer now sir.

The student (Morteza) made an intertextual linking through sharing his family experience with the class. In his

example, the student even became

sympathetic with the Afghan society as well. He also brought a counter-example to negate the stereotype and social attitude.

Ss: [Start talking]

The two excerpts, excerpts 4 and 5, provide a sharp contrast. Whereas excerpt4 was clearly guided by the examination-type practice, excerpt 5 portrayed a class which exercised greater discourse latitude where the discussion clearly veered beyond the requirements of the examination.

Nader’s somewhat provocative question (“Sir is there any great scientist, poet or

writer among Afghans?”) became a trigger for a consideration of “Great Afghan men and women”. It is not clear why Nader chose to focus on Afghans and not locals or

other nationalities. Within the Iranian context, Afghans are refugees who settled in Iran as a consequence of the conflicts in their home country.

Mr. Shayan’s response to this question in classroom B was distinctly different from his response or stance in classroom A. Whereas he was openly dismissive of non- examination concerns in the mainstream classroom, here in the private classroom, he appeared to be more accommodating. He even contributed the names of “Great

Afghans” (as seen in “Hakim Sanaei Ghaznavi, a great Physician and Balkhi, a great poet, and many others whether in the past or present days.”) and also expressed his

personal thoughts on the Afghan situation (“poor Afghans, they suffered from many

civic and international wars in their country”). We note, of course, that Mr. Shayan

started this lesson on a similar note as in excerpt 4 focusing on translation and synonyms (as seen in “Just to save our time, let’s read aloud pre-reading questions

related to the lesson. No need to answer the questions, just translate them”). However,

Nader’s question led the teacher to depart from that pedagogical stance in Classroom A to move towards a more inclusive, more discursive and exploratory (see, for example, Teeples and Wichman, 1997 ) approach in classroom B. In classroom B, social attitudes towards the Afghans were interrogated. Students weighed Nader’s response (“Afghans

are extremists”) with Morteza’s sympathetic response (“My father always says that these Afghans were hardworking and Halal”). Clearly, there was attempt to relate the

text under discussion with the world beyond the classroom, touching on stereotypes and social attitudes towards a specific community.

In this setting, we observe that the teacher, not only focuses on linguistic knowledge in the textbook but also he moves to critical engagement with the content.

Although the teacher aligns the textbook exercises with examination question types in the parts of the lesson, his stance in classroom B is framed so that his pedagogy is developed to include the non-examination content besides examination relevant content. In effect, the teacher, Mr. Shayan attempts to link even those non-examination exercises with the students’ and his own real life experiences.

Mr. Shayan and his students in classroom B intermittently shifted between two approaches or stances: one, focused on their immediate concern i.e. success in the examination; the other, focused on real-life, out-of-class “learning”. As Pennington (2002) argues, in such a context, Mr. Shayan makes himself part of the community to which his students belong. This is certainly a different “Mr. Shayan” from the one portrayed or enacted in the mainstream classroom of excerpt 4.