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(1)Reshaping Attitudes and Perceptions Towards ELL in Ninth Graders by Including Subcultures in the Classroom. Viviana Ávila Moreno 20132062001. Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas School of Science and Education MA in Applied Linguistics to TEFL Bogotá, Colombia – 2016.

(2) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS Reshaping Attitudes and Perceptions Towards ELL in Ninth Graders by Including Subcultures in the Classroom. Viviana Ávila Moreno 20132062001. ADVISOR Prof. Alejandro McNeil F. amcneilf@udistrital.edu.co. A thesis submitted as a requirement to obtain the degree of M.A. in Applied Linguistics to Teaching English as a Foreign Language.. Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas School of Science and Education Bogotá, Colombia. - 2016. 2.

(3) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS. 3. Note of acceptance This study is entitled “Reshaping Attitudes and Perceptions Towards ELL in Ninth Graders by Including Subcultures in the Classroom”, prepared by Viviana Avila Moreno, has been approved and accepted as a partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master in Applied Linguistics to TEFL.. Alejandro McNeil F. Director. Diego Fernando Ubaque Casallas M.A. Juror. Edgar Aguire M.A. Juror. Bogotá, 2016.

(4) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS. 4. I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this research work. I authorize Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas to lend this monographic work to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research.. Viviana Ávila Moreno. “La universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas no será responsable por las ideas expuestas en este trabajo” (Acuerdo 19 de 1988, Artículo 177).

(5) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS. 5. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: RESEARCH PROBLEM Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 9 Funds of Knowledge ................................................................................................................. 10 Needs Analysis for Diagnostic Purposes................................................................................. 11 Teacher Observation .......................................................................................................... 12 Survey ................................................................................................................................ 13 Questionnaire ..................................................................................................................... 15 Description of the Problem ...................................................................................................... 17 Statement of the Problem ........................................................................................................ 19 Research Question .................................................................................................................... 19 Research Objectives ................................................................................................................. 19 Rationale ................................................................................................................................... 20 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW Human Learning ...................................................................................................................... 22 Language ................................................................................................................................... 26 Language Learning .................................................................................................................. 27 Language as a Social Phenomenon ......................................................................................... 28 Culture....................................................................................................................................... 29 Sub-culture ................................................................................................................................ 32 Music as a Cultural Manifestation ......................................................................................... 36 Perceptions and Attitudes Towards Learning and Intercultural Awareness ..................... 38 CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH DESIGN Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 42 Type of Study ............................................................................................................................ 42 Research Type .......................................................................................................................... 44 Description of the Context ....................................................................................................... 45 The Participants ....................................................................................................................... 45 The Researcher’s Role ............................................................................................................. 47 Data Collection Procedures ..................................................................................................... 48 Audio-visual Materials ....................................................................................................... 49 Field Notes ......................................................................................................................... 49 Artifacts .............................................................................................................................. 50 Piloting....................................................................................................................................... 51 CHAPTER FOUR: INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN Vision of Curriculum ............................................................................................................... 53 Vision of Learning .................................................................................................................... 55 Vision of Language ................................................................................................................... 57 Vision of the Classroom ........................................................................................................... 58.

(6) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS. 6. Pedagogical Intervention ......................................................................................................... 60 CHAPTER FIVE: DATA ANALYSIS Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 64 Open Coding ............................................................................................................................. 65 Axial Coding ............................................................................................................................. 69 Selective Coding........................................................................................................................ 73 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSIONS AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS..................... 78 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... 82 APPENDICES Appendix 1 ............................................................................................................................. 91 Appendix 2 ............................................................................................................................. 93 Appendix 3 ............................................................................................................................. 93 Appendix 4 ............................................................................................................................. 94 Appendix 5 ............................................................................................................................. 96 Appendix 6 ........................................................................................................................... 107 Appendix 7 ........................................................................................................................... 113 Appendix 8 ........................................................................................................................... 114 Appendix 9 ........................................................................................................................... 116 Appendix 10 ......................................................................................................................... 118 Appendix 11 ......................................................................................................................... 119 Appendix 12 ......................................................................................................................... 120 Appendix 13 ......................................................................................................................... 121 Appendix 14 ......................................................................................................................... 122 Appendix 15 ......................................................................................................................... 123 Appendix 16 ......................................................................................................................... 125.

(7) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS. 7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude and acknowledge the help of the following people for making this thesis a reality: My loving family; specially my parents, for providing me with moral support and believing that I could do this. To Gregorio Portilla Ph.D., for his unconditional support and advice. To my professors, for their guidance through this process. Thanks to their support, I could become a more reflective person about my teaching practice..

(8) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS. 8. ABSTRACT This research depicts the results of an action research developed with the students of 9th grade from a public school in Bogotá. The aim of this research was to find out the different subcultures or trends students followed and how they could be included in the contents in order to reshape students’ attitudes and perceptions towards the English class. Surveys and questionnaires were applied to students in order to identify the perceptions and attitudes they had towards the ELL. After these subcultures were identified, a series of activities were implemented in the classroom in order to analyze if they were effective to reshape students’ attitudes towards the foreign language learning. These results were proved through classroom observation based on video recordings where students showed their attitudes towards the foreign language class and how their perceptions and attitudes were gradually reshaped through the implementation of those activities. With the implementation of activities related to subcultures (music specifically), a change in attitudes and perceptions in students towards the foreign language learning became noticeable in the way they performed these activities, and it could be identified in the class observations based on video recordings.. Keywords: Human learning, language learning, culture, subcultures, music, attitudes and perceptions..

(9) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS. 9. Chapter I Research problem Introduction Language teaching and learning in Colombia, especially in public schools, has become quite challenging because students have just three hours a week for classroom work; whereas private schools and bilingual schools have five or more hours per week. This clearly shows that public schools are at disadvantage compared to private schools, in terms of number of hours with the L2 to develop proficiency. Besides this, something that worsens the situation is the fact that teachers have to devote a considerable amount of time to developing course contents or doing extra project work assigned at the school. Additionally, due to the need to participate in a number of extra-curricular activities, at times, students miss their English classes. Another issue that makes worse the whole picture is the fact that students in the research setting (a public school in Bogotá, Colombia), do not appear to be actively involved in their own learning processes. Their main priority is to pass the course they are taking and get good grades without taking into account how relevant the learning process may be for their future lives. All the aspects described above, provide a picture of the perceptions and attitudes students have towards their learning process. They see their learning process as something they have to do, something imposed to pass to the next year, instead of an opportunity for intellectual growing. In this chapter, relevant aspects about the community where the school is located, the characteristics of the participants, and the attitudes students have towards learning a foreign.

(10) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 10 language are discussed. Following this, the statement of the problem is described based on the results of the needs analysis carried out during the week of October 24th, 2014 (see appendix 1). Finally, research questions and research objectives, which oriented the research process, are stated. Funds of Knowledge The school is located in a middle-class neighborhood called La Fragua (See appendix 2). Some of the students’ parents have education background. Some of them have attended a university, which means that they should be good providers for their children. Although most of these parents can afford private education for their children, they choose to send them to a public school because some of these are well ranked in the “Localidad Antonio Nariño” for their academic quality. This is the case of the school that served as research setting for this project. However, surprisingly enough, it is also common to find students who had been studying in well-known private schools and have ended up in public schools as punishment for not performing well in these schools or due to disciplinary reasons. The neighborhood offers a number of facilities to the community in general. There is a small park and a sports center near the school where sometimes students are taken either to play or to do other sorts of activities. Most of the students in this school live nearby, although there are many others who live in other “localidades”. These students prefer attending this school because their parents consider it has a very good academic quality and a special focus on human values. The neighborhood is strongly influenced by youth cultures (see picture 3 in appendix 4), particularly that of hip hop as a sub-culture. Most typical social practices, ways and.

(11) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 11 manners of current trends can be found around the neighborhood and students reflect their adherence to one or more of these by the way they speak, dress and even in the way they interact with peers. Students show the youth cultures they belong to with confidence; and they take pride in themselves for belonging to them. The community may be considered a safe environment to a certain extent (see appendix 3). It is a quiet place where its inhabitants usually own the houses they live in, and this may account for the possible reasons why there is a sense of belonging and an apparent network of support, which configures the sense of safety, alluded to above. Apparently, because most of the students live near the school, they blend well in the area. The participants (ninth graders), who were one of the groups I was assigned to teach this year, are relatively disciplined, and most of them are respectful in class. Needs Analysis According to Nunan (1988), needs analysis is a family of procedures for gathering information about learners and communication tasks. For Brown (1995), it is a systematic collection and analysis of all subjective and objective information necessary to define and validate defensible curriculum processes that meet the language learning requirements of students within the context of specific institutions that influence the learning and teaching situation. In order to carry out a needs analysis, three instruments (teacher observation, survey and questionnaire) were designed and administered to ninth grade students in the research setting. Twenty boys and twenty girls from ninth grade composed the target population for data collection with diagnostic purpose..

(12) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 12 Thirty-seven students out of the forty answered the survey and the questionnaire designed for diagnostic purpose. (See detailed analysis of the data collected for diagnostic purposes in appendix 5). Teacher Observation Teacher observations were carried out by means of “Note-taking/Note-making” techniques (see appendix 1). According to Frank(1999), teacher observations are used to help teachers understand both his and her own personal perspective, as an insider; and those of the students. Newman (1989), states that it is important to use one’s own active vocabulary in notetaking, because it helps to ensure that one gets a reasonable grasp of the meaning of the information collected. Likewise, it might assist in laying down a better memory trace in the brain; and, when the notes are reread and synthesized, the personal active vocabulary is more easily comprehensible and recognizable. Basically, note-taking refers to descriptions, whereas notemaking refers to interpretations and cultural judgments and assumptions. (Frank, 1999) The observations were carried out in two sessions in order to get enough information about the perceptions and attitudes students had towards the English class. The students were observed during two of the regular English classes, so it could be possible to see their normal behavior during the classes. In the note-taking process, the classroom setting was described; that is, the way the students were sitting, how they worked on the activities, the way they behaved when interacting with their peers, the way they felt more comfortable when doing tasks in the classroom and how they behaved when correcting the activity assigned..

(13) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 13 In the note-making, the students’ behavior was interpreted; that is, the attitude students had towards the activity assigned, the perceptions the teacher had towards the group of students, the way students addressed the teacher when they had any doubts about the activity or any other topic, how they felt when going to the front to write the answer on the board, and their peers reactions when they corrected each other or were corrected by the teacher. The note-taking and note-making activity was useful to determine that students had their own routines in class. This observation showed that students worked in class but just to make sure they were going to get good grades in order to pass the course. When performing a task, students tried to finish it as soon as possible and presented it to the teacher and asked for a grade, they did not see the relevance of knowing if the activity they presented was right or wrong and the reasons. Students did not really seem to be aware of their language learning process. Their main concern was to do the activities correctly in order to get good grades instead of realizing if they had really learnt something related to the foreign language. Survey A survey is a systematic method for gathering information from (a sample of) entities for the purpose of constructing quantitative descriptors of the attributes of the larger population of which the entities are members. (Groves et al. 2004, p.4) The survey designed for diagnostic purposes was administered to the target population in order to identify the perceptions and attitudes students had towards the English class, the preferences they had, and their interests towards the English class. Twenty questions were asked, and the students answered by choosing from five options; where option one was that of they disagreed the most and option five was the one they agreed the most (see appendix 5)..

(14) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 14 According to the information retrieved from the survey, it could be noticed that most of the students liked the English class, and it could be noticed during the observation because the students had an attentive attitude and participated in an active way. Besides, some of them considered the English language important for their future professional lives. Although students expressed in the survey that they had not seen a significant improvement in their English language learning, they appeared to be interested in the learning of a foreign language. In relation to their interests, most of the students answered that they did not like watching movies in English with subtitles in Spanish, but they liked watching movies dubbed into Spanish. Moreover, they answered that they liked listening to music in English, which can provide an interesting insight related to students preferences according to the contact they could have with the English language, which means it was not appealing to them in all contexts but rather in certain ones. Most of the students consider that being proficient in the foreign language may be useful for their professional development. Nevertheless, there was a considerable number of students who answered that they studied the language because this subject is part of the subjects that are mandatory in the school, which is one of the aspects concerning this research. Although most of the students did not perform extra-class activities related to the English language learning, there was a significant amount of students who were curious about the language. They answered that they made an effort to identify words or expressions in the foreign language because they tried to do it in those contexts different from the ones in the classroom..

(15) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 15 Another interesting insight that this survey provided was that students wanted to learn the language in a more dynamic way instead of the regular classes they had(see appendix 5, question 13). What is most interesting is that students answered that they were not interested in learning English by means of watching movies or reading comics; they felt more interested in learning the language by listening to music. Finally, even though students answered that they carried out the activities assigned for the English class, and that they had a marked interest on having a certain level of proficiency so that they could be able to understand and be understood in the foreign language, it was noticed that there was concern about the grades they could get in the course, instead of being aware of their learning process per se. This means that they did not realize if they had internalized some of the foreign language aspects they had been taught during their high school; they simply wanted to get the minimum grade required to pass the course, hence, to the next year. Questionnaire According to Oppenheim (1992), a questionnaire is simply a tool for collecting and recording information about a particular issue of interest. It is mainly made up of a list of questions, but should also include clear instructions and space for answers or administrative details. Questionnaires should always have a definite purpose that is related to the objectives of the research, and it needs to be clear from the outset how the findings will be used. Respondents also need to be made aware of the purpose of the research wherever possible, and should be told how and when they will receive feedback on the findings. The purpose of the questionnaire administered to students was to identify the attitudes and perceptions students have towards the English class and possible language background they.

(16) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 16 might have besides the one they take from school. Ten questions were asked related to students’ ages, time in the institution and preferences towards their hobbies and academic development. (See appendix 6) According to the information retrieved from the questionnaire, it could be noticed that most of students had studied for a long time in the institution and most of them had taken a course in English as a foreign language since they were in primary school. Although they had studied the language from an early age, they admitted that they easily forgot what they had learnt in previous grades, or if they remembered some things, they are only related to basic vocabulary. It was also noticed that many of the students considered English learning as something important for a future professional development or that it was important simply because they were learning a different language. Some others just stated that they liked the subject but did not explain why. In relation to the language background, it could be noticed that most of the students had a relative who spoke English. Although these students had someone in the family with a certain level of proficiency in the English language, this did not appear to affect them either positively or negatively, since they easily forgot what they had learnt in previous grades; or did not felt motivated by their relatives to practice the language with them. When asked about their preferences, most of the students answered that they liked music. Based on the results of the analysis of data collected via survey, one could conclude that several music genres such as rock, hip hop, pop, metal, electronic music, and so on were preferred by the participants. Besides, their hobbies were also related to listening to music. Most of them answered that they liked to listen to music in their spare time, which provided an interesting.

(17) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 17 insight for this research, because it dealt with the subcultures students felt identified with and music is a representative part of them. Finally, although some students answered that they were learning English because they wanted to. Some others answered that it was important for them to get good grades and move on to the next grade, which is one of the aspects taken into account for the description of the problem. Description of the Problem Teachers’ main goal is to help students develop their ability to communicate in everyday life, and teachers should also be aware of the difficulties students may experience. Students should have more contact with the target culture and be able to observe situations in real-life contexts. (Mahmudova, 2010) Besides, it is important for students to be involved in a learning environment, which is different from that of the regular classroom setting. It is necessary to take into account the context in which teaching and learning are to be conducted. Since culture is inseparable from language, it can have an effect in students’ attitudes towards their learning process. (Tudor, 2001) Today, urban youth culture is the dominating force in the life of most young people and this is true throughout the world (Taylor, 2008). It is present in fashion trends, automotive design, movies and television programming, video games and sports, magazine publications and advertising and, last but not least; in music. Thus, it is important to acknowledge the voices of our students; to understand their challenges and needs in order to help them become active agents in their learning process, instead of being just passive students who just attend the class and expect to pass to the next year..

(18) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 18 Doganay & Yergaliyeva (2013) state that without the use of culture-based tasks and activities, teaching a foreign language is inaccurate and incomplete. They also suggest that learning a foreign language means a lot more than just acquiring grammatical structure and vocabulary. They also remark that culture influences language teaching in two ways: linguistically and pedagogically. Linguistically, it affects the semantic, pragmatic, and discourse levels of the language. Pedagogically, it influences the choice of the language materials because cultural content of the language and the cultural basis of the teaching methodology are to be taken into consideration while deciding upon the language teaching/learning materials to use. For these authors, it is necessary to get students into cultural contexts to help them learn the language in a more natural and enriched way instead of learning a set of rules like a mathematical formula. According to the information retrieved from the needs analysis, it became evident that students did not perceive any significant improvement in their language learning process; and, as stated above, they studied the foreign language just because it was mandatory and they wanted to get good grades and pass to the next grade. Based on the information gathered from the needs analysis, it was necessary to improve students’ learning process in a way that they no longer saw it as a requirement for passing to the next grade, but rather as an opportunity to get involved in a more conscious way in their learning process. This is why the youth cultures students belong to, can provide useful insights about students’ challenges and needs. By relating class contents and representative subculture manifestations such as music, students could be more aware of their learning process by connecting the knowledge they acquired to an activity of their interest..

(19) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 19 Statement of the Problem In order to find out if subcultures’ influence might help to reshape students attitudes and perceptions, it was important to identify, first of all, the subcultures or trends students felt identified with the most, in order to assess the relevance of these youth cultures may be used for pedagogical purposes in the classroom. Once these youth cultures were identified, it was necessary to get students involved in their learning process through the implementation of activities addressing subcultures, which resort to features of specific subcultures, the students felt identified with. Having said this, the research question and research objectives I intended to address were: Research question •. How may customized course contents and activities to address subcultures reshape students’ perceptions and attitudes towards ELL?. Research objectives. •. To describe the ways customized course contents and methodology to address subcultures may reshape students’ perceptions and attitudes towards ELL.. •. To describe students’ attitudes and perceptions towards ELL when including course contents related to subcultures..

(20) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 20 Rationale Taking into account the importance of re-evaluating my teaching practice, and the need to hear students’ voice about the attitudes and perceptions they had towards the English class and their interests in subcultures, this research intended to include the subcultures students belonged to in the English classroom in order to reshape the attitudes and perceptions they had towards the foreign language learning. This research is justified on the need to solve a particular problem, which is reshaping students’ attitudes and perceptions towards the English class. This also could be useful to help students become more aware of their learning process and be more engaged on it. This study provided relevant insights to my teaching practice in the sense of giving more relevance to students’ voice about their preferences, which were mostly influenced by the subcultures they belonged to; and knowing more about students opinions, beliefs, perceptions and understandings of their own contexts. I consider that it is important to have a conscious knowledge about the kind of students we are teaching everyday, in order to improve not only the way we teach them, but the means of helping them to reach their goals. This research can be useful for other teachers in the school I work, by providing them knowledge about students’ attitudes and perceptions about all the classes they attend and how the subcultures they belong to might help reshape not only students’ attitudes but also teachers’ attitudes towards their own practice..

(21) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 21 Additionally, this study is relevant for the adjustments that are done every year to the class syllabus. The subcultures students belonged to are about to be included as part of the contents, so students can see contents closer to their preferences and their own contexts..

(22) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 22 Chapter II Literature review Considering the fact that this research project aimed at determining the ways urban cultures could reshape students’ perceptions and attitudes towards learning a foreign language; it is important to discuss and determine the specific, critical perspectives from which the key concepts for this project were addressed. The key concepts are human learning, language learning, culture, subcultures and music; in order to understand how these relate to the subcultures students follow and how these, in turn, when included in the language teaching activities might help to reshape their attitudes towards the foreign language learning. Human learning David Ausubel (1968) contends that learning takes place in the human organism through a meaningful learning process of relating new events or items to already existing cognitive concepts or propositions, hanging new items on existing cognitive pegs. Contrasting rote and meaningful learning may help us to better understand the cognitive theory of learning as put forth by Ausubel. He described rote learning as the process of acquiring material as "discrete and relatively isolated entities that are relatable to cognitive structure only in an arbitrary and verbatim fashion, not permitting the establishment of meaningful relationships" (p. 108). That is, rote learning involves the mental storage of items having little or no association with existing cognitive structure. Meaningful learning, on the other hand, may be described as a process of relating and anchoring new material to relevant established entities in cognitive structure. If we think of.

(23) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 23 cognitive structure as a system of building blocks, then rote learning is the process of acquiring isolated blocks with no particular in the building of structure, and therefore with no relationship to other blocks. Meaningful learning is the process whereby blocks become an integral part of already established categories or systematic clusters of blocks. From this perspective, any learning situation can be meaningful if learners have a meaningful learning set, that is, a disposition to relate the new learning task to what they already know. The learning task itself is potentially meaningful to the learners, that is, relatable to the learners' structure of knowledge. William James, (1890) described meaningful learning: In mental terms, the more other facts are associated with in the mind, the better possession of it our memory retains. Each of its associates becomes a hook to which it hangs, a means to fish it up by when sunk beneath the surface. Together, they form a network of attachments by which it is woven into the entire issue of our thought (p.662). The "secret of good memory" is thus the secret of forming diverse and multiple associations with every fact we care to retain. Briefly, then, of two men with the same outward experiences and the same amount of mere native tenacity, the one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relation with each other, will be the one with the best memory. Ausubel (1968) also provides a plausible explanation for the universal nature of forgetting. Since learned by repetition, materials do not interact with cognitive structure in substantive fashion. They are learned in conformity with the laws of association, and primarily the interfering effects of similar rote materials influence their retention learned immediately before or after the learning task (commonly referred to as proactive and retroactive inhibition). In the case of meaningfully learned material, retention is influenced primarily by the properties of "relevant and cumulatively established ideational systems in cognitive.

(24) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 24 structure with which the learning task interacts" (p. 108). The second stage of subsumption that operates through what it is called "cognitive pruning" procedures (Brown, 1972). Pruning is the elimination of unnecessary clutter and a clearing of the way for more material to enter the cognitive field, in the same way that pruning a tree ultimately allows greater and fuller growth. An important aspect of the pruning stage of learning is that subsumptive forgetting, or pruning, is not haphazard or chance, it is systematic. Hence, forgetting is a systematic process. The perspectives about human learning retrieved from the authors mentioned above, were useful to understand the learning process that takes place in people’s mind, in this case, ninth graders. It was important to understand how the learning process occurred in students, if their process was purely related to rote learning, in which they just learn through separate blocks, and what strategies were useful in order to reshape that rote learning into meaningful learning, so students could relate what they have learnt to what they have already known; which is the cornerstone when learning a foreign language, students should not learn chunks of the language, but how to put into context what they have learnt and how to interact with the language they learnt. Social learning theories help us to understand how people learn in social contexts (learn from one another). They inform us on how we, as teachers, construct active learning communities. Having studied the ways our social environments influence the learning process, Vygotsky (1962) concluded that we learn through our interactions and communications with others. He suggested that learning takes place through the interactions students have with their peers, teachers, and others. Thus, we as teachers can create a learning environment that.

(25) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 25 maximizes the students' abilities to interact with one another through discussion, collaboration, and feedback. Moreover, Vygotsky also argued that culture is the primary determining factor for knowledge construction. We learn through this cultural lens by interacting with others and following the rules, skills, and abilities shaped by our culture. To sum up, Vygotsky recognizes that learning always occurs and cannot be separated from a social context. Hence, instructional strategies that promote the study of expert knowledge should be organized around activities in which students work together collaboratively to conduct research, share their results, and perform or produce a final project. In short, this means that they have the possibility of creating a collaborative community of learners. Knowledge construction occurs within Vygotsky's social context, which involves student-student and expert-student collaboration in solving real world problems, or tasks that build on each person's language, skills, and experience shaped by each individual's culture. (Vygotsky, 1978) The term learning means different things to different people and it is used somewhat differently in a number of theories. As theories of learning evolved over the past half-century, definitions of learning shifted from changes that occur in the mind or behavior of an individual to changes in the ways people participated in ongoing activities with other individuals to changes in a person's identity within a group (e.g., a change from being a follower to being a leader). However, most definitions of learning involve a change in an individual's knowledge, ability to perform a skill, or participate in an activity with other individuals. There is considerable variation among the theories about the nature of this change. (Shuell, 2013).

(26) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 26 Language Language is considered to be, first and foremost, a sociocultural resource constituted by ‘a range of possibilities, an open-ended set of options in behavior that are available to the individual in his existence as social man’. (Halliday, 1973) We must acknowledge that a language is essentially a set of items, what Hudson (1996) calls ‘linguistic items,’ such entities as sounds, words, grammatical structures, and so on. Hudson (1996) has described sociolinguistics as ‘the study of language in relation to society,’ whereas the sociology of language is ‘the study of society in relation to language.’ In other words, in sociolinguistics we study language and society in order to find out as much as we can about what kind of thing language is, and in the sociology of language we reverse the direction of our interest. For this study, it is important to mention the relationship between language and society, due to the fact that the social context in which the students are involved, affect them and it was taken into account for identifying the subcultures students belonged to. Having in mind this, I considered relevant to include aspects that belong to the field of sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating the relationships between language and society with the goal of attaining a better understanding of the structure of language and of how languages function in communicative situations. Following this vein of thought, sociolinguistics is basically the study of language and society in order to better understand the social nature of language. (Wardhaugh, 2006) The sociology of language examines the interaction between two aspects of human behavior: use of language and the social organization of behavior. It focuses upon the entire gamut of topics related to the social organization of language behavior; including.

(27) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 27 not only language use per se, but also language attitudes, overt behavior toward language and toward language users (Fishman, 1972). Language learning Language is the vehicle required for effective human-to-human interactions and yields a better understanding of one’s own language and culture. Learning another language provides access into a perspective other than one’s own, increases the ability to see connections across content areas, and promotes an interdisciplinary perspective while gaining intercultural understandings. Study of another language allows the individual to communicate effectively and creatively and to participate in real-life situations through the language of the authentic culture itself (Moeller & Catalano 2015) It is important to remark the difference between language acquisition and language learning. According to Krashen (1989), acquisition is a subconscious process that is identical to the process used in first language acquisition in all-important ways. The acquirer is not always aware of the process while it takes place nor aware of the results either. On the other hand, learning is conscious knowledge, or “knowing about” language. In everyday language, when we talk about “grammar” or “rules”, we are referring to learning, not acquisition. The practice of error correction affects learning, not acquisition. When errors are corrected, we rethink and adjust conscious rules. According to this, it can be said that in this case students were in the process of learning the language instead of acquiring it. Students were aware of the process and what they were most aware of was the grades they could get when performing a task than of the results they could get, such as performing much better in one of the language skills that were evaluated..

(28) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 28 One of the purposes of this research project was that of improving the language learning experience. Thus, the researcher resorted to using themes and artifacts which were closer to the learners’ experiences and likes in an effort to help these students engage more actively and willingly in their foreign language learning process. The basic underlying premise for this decision resides in the idea that the way students learn a foreign language by means of sharing their knowledge about the subcultures they are interested in, is more appealing to them than doing tasks and presenting tests to get a grade. Language as a social phenomenon Language is the main channel in which life models are imparted through, in which acting as a member of a “society” is learned – within and through different social groups, the family, the neighborhood and so on – and to adopt their “culture”, their way of thinking and acting, their beliefs and values. This happens through the accumulated experience of numerous small ways. (Halliday 1979) The most common usages of language with parents, siblings, children form the neighborhood, at home, on the street and the park, in the stores, buses, and trains, are the ones useful to transmit to the child the essential qualities of the society and the nature of being social. (Halliday 1979) Culture shapes our behavior patterns and a great part of our behavior is mediated through language; the child learns his or her mother tongue in the context of a behavior framework in which the rules of culture are represented and sketched out to them. The regulation, instruction, and interaction framework is “socialized” in the values system and in the behavior models through the use of language, at the same time it is learned. (Halliday 1979).

(29) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 29 What matters is not only the linguistic surrounding in the sense of what language or dialect the child learns, but the cultural or subcultural surrounding, as it remains enclosed in the language and transmitted through it. (Halliday,1979) According to Halliday, social semiotics is a system of meanings that constitute the “reality” of the culture. This is the higher level system in which language is linked to the semantic system of the language is a realization of the social semiotic. Culture Language is a semiotic system (a system of symbols) that depicts the culture and society that we live in. The relationship between language, culture and society is interrelated; language influences culture and culture influences language. Language as a social semiotic means, “interpreting language within a sociocultural context, in which culture itself is interpreted in semiotic terms.” (Halliday, 1979). According to Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952), culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other, as conditional elements of future action. For Georg Simmel (1950), culture refers to the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms that have been objectified in the course of history..

(30) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 30 Simmel discussed social and cultural phenomena in terms of "forms" and "contents" with a transient relationship; form becoming content, and vice versa, depending on the context. An individual could not directly join a larger social circle but could become involved in it by virtue of membership in a smaller one. The number of different circles in which individuals move, is one of the indices of cultural development. (Simmel, 1950) Halliday (1978), stresses the idea of the “social man”; not the social man in opposition towards the individual, but the individual in his/her social surrounding. Language is the main channel through which life models are imparted, and the child learns to act as a member of a society – in and through the different social groups, the family, the neighborhood, and so on – and adopts the “culture”, the way of thinking and acting, the beliefs and values. It is through experience and the everyday uses of language among relatives, in the neighborhood that the essential qualities of society and the nature of being social, is imparted to the child. For Spencer-Oatey (2008), culture is a fuzzy set of basic assumptions and values, orientations to life, beliefs, policies, procedures and behavioral conventions that are shared by a group of people, and that influence (but do not determine) each member’s behavior and his/her interpretations of the ‘meaning’ of other people’s behavior. Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts. The Center for Advance Research on Language Acquisition goes a step further, defining culture as shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs and understanding that are learned by socialization. Thus, it can be seen as the growth of a group’s identity fostered by social patterns unique to the group (Zimmermann, 2015)..

(31) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 31 According to Marsh and Millard (2000), the term culture can be taken as an abstract concept that includes the development of ideas and symbolic representations ensuring the distinction between humans and animals. Culture also includes people’s behaviors and actions. Culture refers to the norms values and beliefs of any particular group or society. In addition, Zarei (2011) sees culture as a fixed mode of behavior and perception in an insoluble way bonded with language. Besides, Clark and Flores (2007) state that the term culture has evolved from a traditional ideology, to an elite perspective of artistic representations, to a more contemporary definition. This evolution of the term culture has changed the way of seeing it from a static, limited and degraded standpoint to an expanded definition of culture, configuring a more dynamic perspective. Learning a language is a way of constructing social identities. Culture learning is a process in which language helps to perceive, feel and interpret the world around us and it also helps to create meaning among participants. Culture is an inseparable part of language (Zarei, 2011). To sum up the definitions discussed above, culture is related to the sharing of patterns, ideas, behaviors, beliefs and attitudes among a particular group of individuals, besides the other aspects that the word culture embraces, such as material culture, which is the world of things that people make and things that we purchase or possess, so it is part of our consumer culture (Asa, 2014). Now, it is important to narrow down the concept in order to explain what urban culture or subculture is about, according to several authors as depicted below. The other perspective related to culture is the psychological one. Richard Shweder (1990), defines cultural psychology as the study of the way cultural traditions and social practices.

(32) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 32 regulate, express, and transform the human psyche, resulting less in psychic unity for humankind than in ethnic divergences in mind, self, and emotion. Cultural psychology is the study of the ways subject and object, self and other, psyche and culture, person and context, figure and ground, practitioner and practice, live together, require each other, and dynamically, dialectically, and jointly make each other up. It is important to understand the relationship culture has with this research project. One of the research objectives is to identify the subcultures or urban cultures ninth grade students follow; and to do so, it is necessary to understand what those subcultures are and how they can affect individuals in their sociological and psychological aspects. Sub-culture In order to complement concept of subculture, it is important to take into account aspects such speech community and community of practice. The speech community is not defined by any marked agreement in the use of language elements, so much as by participation in a set of shared norms. These norms may be observed in overt types of evaluative behavior, and by the uniformity of abstract patterns of variation, which are invariant in respect to particular levels of usage. (Labov 1972) The essential criterion for ‘community’ is that some significant dimension of experience has to be shared, and for the ‘speech community’ that the shared dimension be related to ways in which members of the group use, value or interpret language. (Saville-Troike 2003) A community of practice is an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations – in short – practices – emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor. (Eckert &.

(33) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 33 McConnell-Ginet 1992) Communities of practice can develop out of formal or informal enterprises, and members can be either ‘core’ or ‘peripheral’, depending on their levels of integration. Communities of practice can survive changes in membership, they can be small or large, and they can come into existence and go out of existence. In a later empirical study, Eckert (2000) argues that a community of practice is defined simultaneously by its membership and by the shared practices that its members partake in. John Gumperz, (1968), defines speech community any human aggregate characterized by regular and frequent interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregates by significant differences in language usage (p.43). Differences and relations among the speakers who people the sociolinguists' speech communities have been defined in terms of abstracted characteristics - sex, age, socioeconomic class, and ethnicity. And differences in ways of speaking have been interpreted on the basis of speculative hypotheses about the relation between these characteristics and social practice. To explore in some detail just how social practices and individual "place" in the community connect to one another; sociolinguists need some sort of conception of a community that articulates place with practice. For this reason, there is Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger’s (1991) notion of "practice". The community of practice takes us away from the community defined by a location or by a population. Instead, it focuses on a community defined by social engagement - after all, it is this engagement that language serves, not the place and not the people as a bunch of individuals..

(34) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 34 A community of practice is different as a social construct from the traditional notion of community, primarily because it is defined simultaneously by its membership and by the practice in which that membership engages. Indeed, it is the practices of the community and members' differentiated participation in them that structures the community socially. Since a community of practice shares behaviors, beliefs, values and so on; it is related to the concept of subculture because they share or adopt characteristics, norms and all other aspects mentioned before. Through these subcultures students follow, they share also their attitudes and perceptions towards different aspects that take part in their lives, not only their academic ones. Gary Alan Fine and Sherryl Kleinmanargued (1979) argued that a subculture is a group that serves to motivate a potential member to adopt the artifacts, behaviors, norms, and values characteristic of the group. For Ken Gelder (2007), every subculture – every social group, large or small, which can be considered as in some way subcultural – carries a set of narratives about itself, some of which are generated internally while others, usually more visible in and pervasive, are developed and deployed in and by the society around it. Park (1950) argues that culture, itself, was tied to stable, ethnocentric social groups and societies: a point consistent with anthropological views at the time. Migration and mobility, on the other hand, tend to complicate social relations. He also states that the community imposes discipline and restraint upon people: social controls, accepted moral codes, laws, social conventions. Park developed a social-psychological perspective, a micro-sociology that was person-centered and which saw people and place as organically tied together (Jenks 2005). Since culture and subculture are related to the behaviors and beliefs a group of people share, they are strongly connected to cultural sociology and cultural psychology. For this reason,.

(35) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 35 I am presenting the definitions about those concepts and afterwards the relation they have with this research project. Jeffrey C. Alexander (2012) explains that cultural sociology is a kind of social psychoanalysis. Cultural sociology makes collective emotions and ideas central to its methods and theories precisely because it is such subjective and internal feelings that so often seem to rule the world. Socially constructed subjectivity forms the will of collectivities; shapes the rules of organizations; defines the moral substance of law; and provides the meaning and motivation for technologies, economies, and military machines. David Matsumoto (2013) also provided a definition of cultural psychology. For him, it is a unique meaning and information system shared by a group and imparted across generations. This allows the group to meet basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and well-being, and derive meaning from life. Culture results from the interaction between universal biological needs and functions, universal social problems created to address those needs, and the context in which people live. Culture is a solution to the problem of individuals’ adaptations to their contexts to address their social motives and biological needs. Doganay and Yergaliyeva (2013) state that without the use of cultural based tasks and activities; teaching a foreign language is inaccurate and incomplete. Also that learning a foreign language means a lot more than acquiring just grammatical structure and vocabulary. McKay (2003) remarks that culture influences language teaching in two ways: linguistically and pedagogically. Linguistically, it affects the semantic, pragmatic, and discourse levels of the language. Pedagogically, it influences the choice of the language materials because cultural.

(36) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 36 content of the language and the cultural basis of the teaching methodology are to be taken into consideration while deciding upon the language materials to be used. Locally speaking, students tend to be influenced by youth cultures. Subcultures share certain beliefs. These beliefs are originated in students’ experiences, especially in this stage of their lives, which is secondary school. Language teachers could use positive instructional practices and realistic expectations in the classroom. Communication and a positive attitude between the teacher and the students could be the key for successful language learning. (Ariogul, 2009). Music as a cultural manifestation Also, related to the urban cultures, young learners see music as an important aspect, which helps students feel more identified with the specific urban culture they belong to. For example, depending on the subcultures they belong to (hip hop, rock, metal heads, pop, etc.), each one has its representative kind of music. Li and Brand (2009) state that songs are also representations of culture, which help students have contact with a specific culture. They also point out that the language used in songs is similar to that of real speech in the sense that it is conversational. It is the beat that helps students to develop a sort of inner timing that allows learners to read and speak whole sentences instead of single words. This enables students to relate to and understand the lyrics. Songs are also representations of the culture which help student to have contact with a specific culture. These authors also mention that songs, with their repeated lyrics and rhythms, can be used as possible tools for enhancing learning/memory of vocabulary development and other language.

(37) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 37 competencies such as grammatical structures and pronunciation, especially for foreign language students. Cultural-based exercises and activities stimulate students to interact with each other, and carry out language tasks more efficiently. These activities contribute a lot to learning a foreign language if learners are given the chance to practice the target language through its culture in a pleasant and warm atmosphere. Every cultural activity has shown plenty of advantages and effectiveness in ELT in several ways, such as building a fruitful atmosphere in which students develop the four skills by interacting with others; involving learners in task-based activities which require that students do their best in order to compete with one another; and bringing real world contexts into the classroom, and enhancing students’ use of English in communicative ways. (Doganay & Yergaliyeva, 2013) According to Legg (2009), music can be useful for language development related to pronunciation. The author states that there are studies that show that students who have been taught through clapping activities, pitch notation, rhythmic notation, games and singing, improved in reading. The author affirms that musical involvement based on rhyming songs help learners to identify phonemes better than by the use of conventional instruction. Köksala et al. (2013) stress the importance of including music in the classroom and that music and language should be incorporated in teaching. According to the authors, thanks to musical elements, students can encode words in contexts in a better way. This can also help them to develop a more meaningful and realistic environment. In this way, students can develop positive attitudes, self-perceptions, and cultural approval and thereby process new input actively, enabling them to become skillful in inferring the patterns of the target language..

(38) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 38 The effect of music on the brain’s processing mechanism has become a likely method for language teaching. Music and language should be incorporated in language teaching processes because music can transform the classroom environment from non-natural to real experience and making new information meaningful by appealing to students’ interests. Related to what was depicted above, this research project was based on how the representative music of each subculture the students from ninth grade from Atanasio Girardot school belonged to, can influence them and can also help to reshape the students’ attitudes and perceptions towards language learning, so students can become aware of their learning process and can also be interested in learning the language. Perceptions and attitudes towards learning and intercultural awareness Behavior related to language is one of the main aspects that culture and sociology deal with. Students’ behavior is a crucial aspect of this research because it is analyzed all the time according to the subculture certain group of students belongs to and how it affects their language learning process. The term ‘cultural awareness’ (CA) has been used by a number of writers in relation to language teaching, but its best-known formulation is that of Byram (1997). Byram states that critical cultural awareness forms the core of intercultural communicative competence (ICC). ICC is an attempt to expand the view of communicative competence used in language teaching (Canale & Swain 1980) to explicitly recognize the intercultural use to which L2s are placed and the range of skills, knowledge and attitudes associated with this. In ICC, rather than examining the competence needed for successful native-liked communication, the focus is on communication among participants with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Critical.

(39) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 39 cultural awareness is crucial to ICC in providing the foundation for evaluating one’s own and other’s perspectives, practices and products (Byram 1997). Critical cultural awareness and other formulations of cultural awareness are often presented as a key feature of intercultural competence or as a less technical, more holistic synonym of it (Risager 2006). More recently, the notion of ‘intercultural awareness’ (ICA) has been put forward (Baker 2011, 2012a) as an approach that builds on CA but takes a more dynamic intercultural perspective. While CA explores the manner in which national conceptions of culture frame intercultural communication, ICA focuses on the inter or trans cultural dimensions where there is no clear language- culture- nation correlation, particularly in global uses of English. This also involves a move away from cross-cultural comparisons, where cultures are treated as discrete entities that can be compared with each other, e.g. ‘in British culture people do . . . but in Italian culture people do . . . ’. In contrast, an intercultural approach examines communication where cultural differences, at a range of levels, may be relevant to understanding but does not make a priori assumptions about cultural difference. As with CA, awareness in ICA is expanded beyond its everyday usage to include knowledge, skills and attitudes and used as a more holistic alternative to intercultural competence, which avoids the problematic competence-performance distinction. Unlike CA, ICA emphasizes the flexible and context specific nature of the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed. Recommendations for implementing ICA in the classroom include investigating the relationships between culture, language and communication through: exploring local cultures; exploring language learning materials; exploring the media and arts both online and through more ‘traditional’ mediums; making use of cultural informants; and engaging in intercultural communication both face to face and electronically (Baker, 2012a). This list is not.

(40) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 40 exhaustive but rather presents examples of how culture and language can be integrated into ELT classrooms in a non-essentialist manner. A crucial part of each of the areas outlined is that any representations of culture presented are treated critically. Motivation to learn an L2 presents a particularly complex and unique situation even within motivational psychology, due to the multifaceted nature and roles of language itself. Language is at the same time: (a) a communication coding system can be taught as a school subject; (b) an integral part the individual's identity involved in almost all mental activities; and also (c) the most important channel of social organization embedded in the culture of the community where it is used. Therefore, the motivational basis of language attainment is not directly comparable to that of the mastery of other subject matters in that knowing an L2 also involves the development of some sort of 'L2 identity' and the incorporation of elements from the L2 culture (Gardner, 1985); thus, in addition to the environmental and cognitive factors normally associated with learning in current educational psychology, L2 motivation also contains featured personality and social dimensions. According to the concepts mentioned above, it can be concluded that students’ social context play an important part in learning processes. The surroundings affect either positive or negative on the attitudes and perceptions students have towards the foreign language learning. It is important to take into account the environment in which students interact and develop their personalities in order to develop classroom activities appealing to them and that would change the perceptions they might have towards ELL in a way that it could be not only seen as a mandatory subject to pass to the next year but a space where they could share their beliefs, opinions and to express themselves. All the constructs mentioned above, are key elements for the.

(41) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 41 instrumental design of this action research, as well as they are going to be referred through the implementation and the data analysis..

(42) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 42 Chapter III Research design Introduction This chapter provides a description of the framework this research had. The purpose of the process depicted in this chapter is to establish the coherence between the research question and objectives and the type of study and instruments that were applied. This part accounts for the type of study, the research type, the specificities of the research context, the participants, and the instruments used to collect data. Additionally, the reader will find a description of the way the instruments for data gathering were piloted prior to its final use. All of the above was done in order to collect information, which was necessary to address the purpose of my research, which deals with the reshaping of perceptions and attitudes in students towards ELL. Type of Study After having read research-related literature, I concluded that this research exercise should be classified as qualitative. As stated by Denzin & Lincoln (1994), qualitative research makes use of multiple methods of data analysis in order to achieve its goals. Its purpose is to give descriptions of phenomena that occur in natural contexts. In this project, I intended to describe the phenomena that occur in the classroom when students shared their experiences related to the youth cultures they belonged to (hip hop, rock, reggae, pop, etc.). My efforts aimed at finding out which were the most common subcultures students followed. Once these were identified, the next step was to find out how these subcultures influenced students’ behavior, way of speaking and even the way they dressed. Once this influence was identified, I studied it in order to help.

(43) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 43 students reshape their attitudes and perceptions towards ELL. Every participant had his or her own background that provided useful insights for the research. In qualitative research, researchers attempt to unveil the important variables regarding a phenomenon that needs to be understood (Creswell, 2003). This is why qualitative research, as a methodology, was suitable for this process; because it helped the researcher to analyze the natural events that occurred among participants in a more comprehensive way. This approach to research also helped to avoid generalizations. Students bring their own background to the classroom through the subcultures they belong to and these insights started to influence (shape) their learning process. All the aspects that students brought to the classroom related to their own subcultures, could be useful to analyze what was going on among them, and these could be assessed as part of their learning process so as to work towards reshaping their attitudes and perceptions towards their language learning process. According to Crotty (1998), human beings construct meanings as they engage with the world they are interpreting. Humans engage with their world and make sense of it based on their historical and social perspectives— we are all born into a world of meaning given to us by our own culture. In this case, the participants of the research helped each other to construct knowledge by sharing the subcultures they followed, which also helped them become more tolerant towards different likes and points of view. This sharing of experiences demonstrated that generation of meaning is always a social process (Hatch, 2004). Students made presentations about the subcultures they belonged to. There, they shared their experiences and their preferences to their classmates and provided musical samples from each subculture..

(44) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 44 Interaction among individuals, together with the features of the contexts in which people live and work, were taken into account in this research process (Creswell, 2003). In this case, the context I sought to understand is where participants live and study. Since students shared their experiences (how they felt about the youth cultures they belonged to) with their classmates, the researcher sought to understand the context or setting of the participants (Hatch 2004). Research Type According to Nunan, (1992) Action research is classroom-based research conducted by teachers in order to reflect upon their teaching in the hope that their findings will eventually lead them to better practices. It is a systematic, documented inquiry into one aspect of teaching and learning in a specific classroom. The purpose of teacher research is to gain understanding of teaching and learning within one’s classroom and to use that knowledge to increase teaching efficacy/student learning. With the implementation of action research, it might be possible to use the knowledge students share about their youth cultures in order to improve their learning process, because by involving the experiences students have in the English classes, they are better prepared to reflect upon the phenomena occurring in their learning context, which includes aspects of the youth cultures they belong to. That is why I considered this type of research the appropriate one to work with. According to Burns (1999), collaborative action research strengthens the opportunities for teachers to use the results of research on practice and the information derived from these results in his or her educational system to make his or her practice a more tangible and critical one. This type of research encourages teachers to share common problems and to work cooperatively as a research community to examine their existing assumptions, values and beliefs within the.

(45) RESHAPING ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS 45 sociopolitical cultures of the institutions in which they work. This type of action research is more empowering than the individually conducted action research due to the fact that it offers a strong framework for school change in an integral way. Description of the Context The context where this study took place is a public school named Atanasio Girardot I.E.D. It is located in La Fragua neighborhood; with a social stratum number three. This school was awarded as one of the one hundred best public schools in Bogotá in 2014, and it is also well known in the “Localidad Antonio Nariño” for its academic quality. Besides, the level of English students have is good in comparison to other public schools. Students took this year a virtual English course provided by SENA. When monitored and tested from the San Andrés branch, three students from the afternoon shift had the first three places of all the public schools that were tested in Colombia. This suggests that every student in this context has a real chance of attaining the goals set by the school. The participants that took part in this research were thirty-eight students from eighth grade in the afternoon shift. They were twenty-one boys and seventeen girls. The participants were disciplined and most of them were respectful in class. These students used to wear clothes which were representative of the youth cultures they belonged to (hip hop, rock, reggae, pop, etc.). This was precisely what I noticed and what motivated my study. The Participants Due to the fact that the participants of this research were the students I was teaching then at the school I work in; this group of participants were considered as a convenient sample.

Figure

Table 1. Curricular unit.  to the sub-cultures they belonged to.  reading, and at the end there was a short discussions about the  social aspects related to these sub-cultures
Figure 1. Category 1
Figure 3. Subcategory 3
Figure 4. Subcategory 4
+2

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