Discussions

This section discusses findings of this study in comparison with existing literature and the author’s personal assumptions. It first discusses how the study findings respond to ZPD (Vygotsky, 1978) and scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, & Rose, 1976) which pointed out the importance of teacher’s role in assisting students’ second language learning, in general. It then emphasizes to discuss about two expected findings of this study: 1) similar scaffolding strategies for enhancing students’ cognitive engagement were recognized in previous studies and present study; 2) teachers’ beliefs played an important role in their use of scaffolding strategies.

Finally, unexpected or interesting findings discussed in this chapter include:: 1) one teacher in the present study believed that cognitive engagement was a sequential concept; 2) the two teachers in the present study showed different perceptions of the role of EFL teacher in initiating students’ critical thinking; 3) the two teachers in the present study were not aware that students could be active listeners or learners in class;

4) the two teachers in the present study put more emphasis on students’ memory of vocabulary and sentences than on critical thinking.

The present study discovered that the one of the two elementary English teachers, Amy, perceived that students’ cognitive engagement may need teachers’

assistance to elevate. This finding responds to ZPD (Vygotsky, 1978) and scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, & Rose, 1976) which pointed out the importance of teacher’s role in assisting students’ second language learning. Moreover, Amy also believed that students’ critical thinking need teachers’ assistance. This finding corresponds with Lightbown and Spada (1999) who claimed that students achieve to higher order thinking with more knowledgeable people’s assistance (e.g., teachers). Moreover, Ellis (2003) and Gallimore and Tharp (1990) had the same finding that teachers’

assistance (e.g., give feedback, modeling, questioning) can help students’ language

learning and elevate students’ performances.

In addition, the other case of the study suggested the importance of scaffolding in English teaching. Emily, one elementary English teacher in the present study, believed that teachers only had to provide a period of time for students and then they had the ability to think critically. However, she reported that some of the students spent the brainstorming time chatting with each other rather than thinking critically.

Her report hinted that those students might need teachers’ guidance, or that they could not think critically by themselves. Emily’s case suggested that the teacher’s assistances might still need to be provided to assist students’ critical thinking. It can be useful to further explore how second language teachers provide teachers’ assistance for students’ critical thinking in class in future research.

Anticipated findings

The anticipated findings of this study showed that several scaffolding strategies had been recognized for students’ cognitive engagement in the previous and present studies. Moreover, another anticipated finding displayed that teachers’ belief had a great impact on their use of scaffolding strategies. The following section will discuss these two anticipated findings.

As anticipated, the result of the present study reported that elementary school EFL teachers in Taiwan used similar strategies to achieve their teaching purpose, as indicated in previous studies. Some tasks were used to trigger and sustain students’

attention; open-ended questions were used to initiate students’ critical thinking in the previous and the present studies. For example, the results of this study showed that Emily used some tasks (e.g., code switch, beat the words) to trigger and sustain students’ attention in class. This finding is similar to Dornyei (1994)’s research. With regard to attention, Dornyei (1994) explored that teachers could call students’

attention and arise their metacognitve awareness by presenting speaking tasks (e.g., story telling or topic discussion). That is, teachers’ purpose of using tasks (e.g., story telling, topic discussion, code switch) was to call students’ attention in both Dornyei’s and the present study. Moreover, the results of this study indicated that in order to initiate students’ critical thinking, Amy employed open-ended questions in class. The previous studies had the same results that open-ended questions were used to promote knowledge integration and assist students’ thinking (e.g., Scardamalia et al, 1984). In addition, Gallimore and Tharp (1990) discovered that questions, especially open-ended questions, explicitly call for an active linguistic and cognitive response.

Therefore, if elementary school EFL teachers in Taiwan intend to call or sustain students’ attention, using tasks could be a choice for them; if elementary school EFL teachers in Taiwan intend to initiate students’ critical thinking, asking open-ended questions could be another choice.

Besides the findings of using similar strategies for cognitive engagement, there was another anticipated finding. That is, teachers’ beliefs played an important role in their use of scaffolding strategies. For example, Amy believed in behaviorism which refers to the fact that drills and practices are necessary for language acquisition (Brown, 2000). She perceived that mindless repetition helped build students’

familiarity of vocabulary. Based on this belief, Amy provided opportunities for students to reciting vocabulary repeatedly by giving variety with visual aids in class, aiming at familiarizing students with vocabulary. Recent studies have discovered that there is a link between teachers’ beliefs or intentions and their teaching practices (Almarza, 1996; Ertmer, et al., 1999; Johnson, 1992; Lin, 2001; Smith 1996; Wang, 2000). In other words, teachers’ teaching philosophy or beliefs play an important role in teachers’ different use of strategies. It is meaningful and interesting to investigate teacher’s beliefs behind their strategies use rather than to examine solely the strategies

they adopt/employ.

However, it is important to note that teaching practices could also be influenced by the real context. For example, Emily had the experience of initiating students’

critical thinking by providing extra time. However, she discovered that some students spent time chatting rather than thinking about the words they had learned in class.

Thus, she decided not to spend time on students’ critical thinking in class. Emily’s case suggested the researcher that contextual impact was important too while investigating teachers’ strategies use. Therefore, when researchers investigate teachers’ strategies, both teachers’ beliefs and the contextual impact should be taken into consideration.

Unanticipated and interesting findings

Apart from the findings that correspond to the previous studies and the researcher’s assumptions, four findings are interesting and beyond the anticipation of the researcher.

First, the researcher found that one of the two teachers in the study perceived that cognitive engagement is a sequential concept. The present study discovered that the two teachers believed cognitive engagement was classified into three categories which include attention, memory, and critical thinking. The finding of the three categories of cognitive engagement is interesting. It is in relation to Vygotsky’s idea about mental process which included “attention, voluntary memory, rational thought, planning, problem solving, and meaning-making activity” (cited in Lantofl & Thorne, 2006, p 198). Vygotsky had pointed out the categories of mental process, but he did not prioritize the importance of each category. However, in the present study, one of elementary English teachers, Amy, perceived that the categories of cognitive engagement should be addressed in a fixed order. For Amy, attention was the basic

level for cognitive engagement, followed by memory, and critical thinking was the highest level of cognitive engagement. However, for Emily, the relationship among attention, memory, and critical thinking was not that sequential. She did not view attention as a condition for enhancing students’ memory. The present study discovered that the two teachers had divergent perceptions of students’ cognitive engagement.

This finding suggests that the future research should take elementary English teachers’ perceptions of cognitive engagement into account, as a basis of understanding their ways of scaffolding students’ cognitive engagement.

Second, cases in this study showed different perceptions of an EFL teacher’s role in initiating students’ critical thinking. The researcher anticipated that the two teachers would initiate students’ critical thinking by asking questions (e.g., wh-questions), as previous studies have reported, (e.g., Gallimore and Tharp, 1990;

Hsu, 2001; Pin and Swe, 2004). However, the results of the present showed that Emily did not use this strategy in her class because she had different perception of the definition of critical thinking. She defined critical thinking as reflective thinking which referred to the students’ ability to recall the words or sentences they had learned in class (Dewey, 1993). Thus, she believed that the teacher only had to provide a considerable length of time for students and then they could reflect actively on the class materials they had learned rather than being guided by the teacher. Based on this belief, Emily had tried to provide time for students’ critical thinking in class before, but she observed that this was not appropriate for some students and then she decided not to spend time on students’ critical thinking in class. This was the reason why the researcher did not observe any use of strategy to initiate students’ critical thinking in Emily’s class. The present study suggested that one of the English teachers in Taiwan, Emily, believed that other elements, such as time, are more important than open-ended questions in initiating students’ critical thinking. Moreover, for Emily,

critical thinking was innate. As a side bar, when investigating teachers’ scaffolding strategies for initiating students’ critical thinking, both the reasons and teachers’

beliefs should be of consideration, or we might misinterpret teachers’ actions. For example, if we did not examine the two teachers’ beliefs of students’ critical thinking, we might assume that Emily did not use any strategy to initiate students’ critical thinking because she thought that critical thinking was not necessary for English learning. Therefore, in the future study, besides teachers’ actions, teachers’ beliefs and reasons should be taken into account in investigations.

Third, the researcher discovered that the two teachers might not be aware that students could be active listeners or learners in class. It seems that most teachers usually supposed that most students were passive to pay attention to the teacher. The previous studies discovered that teachers usually use different strategies (e.g., provide handouts, story telling, topic discussion) to call students’ attention (e.g., Cavalier &

Klein, 1998; Dornyei, 1994; Klein & Pridemore, 1994; Oliver & Hannafin, 2000), showing that most teachers believe teaching strategies must be employed to trigger students’ attention. However, it is possible that students would listen to the teacher actively in class without those external forces. In Amy’s case, the researcher observed that some students paid attention to the teacher actively even when Amy did not use any strategies. For example, some students did not need the teacher’s call to concentrate at the beginning of the class. However, it seems that Amy was not aware of the students’ behavior of becoming an active listener in class. Through this interesting finding, we know that the role of students could be active rather than passive during English learning. This interesting finding suggests that future research can investigate students’ reactions to teachers’ use of strategies, with a goal of helping elementary English teachers reflect on the appropriateness of their use of strategies.

Fourth, the researcher discovered that that the two teachers emphasized more on

students’ memory of vocabulary and sentences than on critical thinking is different from the researcher’s expectation that the two teachers may use more strategies to guide students’ critical thinking in class, based on her review of empirical studies.

According to the empirical studies, asking questions and giving feedback are the most common strategies used for getting students’ cognitive response. In other words, students are encouraged to think critically when these two strategies are employed.

However, the results of the present study showed that these two strategies were seldom used in the two teachers’ class. The two teachers used more strategies to enhance students’ memory of vocabulary and sentences than to guide critical thinking.

The researcher proposed a rationale to explain this finding. Both teachers mentioned that the time of English teaching was not enough for teachers to guide students to think critically. There were only two classes a week for English teaching in elementary schools. In addition, the two teachers had to finish at least four or five units in one semester. Since Amy believed in a hierarchy of cognitive engagement, she demanded the students’ attention and memory of words and sentence patterns before critical thinking. However, due to the limited time, she could only help students achieve the first two levels. In Emily’s case, she believed that time was essential for students’ critical thinking. She stated that a class time was only enough to introduce class material and therefore initiating students’ critical thinking was not manageable. That is, limited time was a problem in English teaching for the two teachers. The problem of teaching time was also proposed by Jiang (2005) who discovered that more than fifty percent elementary English teachers in Taiwan agreed that the time of English teaching was not enough and became a problem for them.

That is, insufficient time of English teaching was a problem for many elementary English teachers in the present and other studies. There is a need to take this problem into account in future study because it can help the researcher know teachers’ beliefs

might not be applicable because of the impact of contextual factors (e.g., insufficient English teaching time).

4.5 Summary

To sum up, this chapter has explored the scaffolding strategies for enhancing EFL students’ cognitive engagement in two elementary EFL teachers’ classes. The processes of using these scaffolding strategies have also been examined. Moreover, teacher’s beliefs of using these scaffolding strategies for cognitive engagement have been discussed. Finally, the anticipated, unanticipated and interesting findings have also been discussed.

The results of the present study showed that the two elementary English teachers believed that cognitive engagement was classified into three categories which include triggering and sustaining attention, enhancing memory, and initiating critical thinking. These two teachers used different scaffolding strategies at different categories of cognitive engagement. For Amy, students’ attention was the most basic condition for cognitive engagement. She used lots of strategies to trigger and sustain students’ attention in English teaching (e.g., walk around, stop talking, stare at students…etc). After catching/getting students’ attentio, Amy began to provide lots of opportunities for students to practice and give explanations in order to enhance students’ familiarity, impression, and comprehension of class materials. Amy increased students’ familiarity by giving variety with visual aids, using tasks, and giving homework. She increased students’ impression by sharing associated experience. She increased students’ comprehension by using L1 and objects as mediated tools to explain class materials. Finally, Amy initiated students’ thinking by asking open-ended questions and using tasks. These two strategies were used at the final stage of English learning because they required the highest level of cognitive

engagement, critical thinking.

Compared with Amy, Emily did not have such a clear framework of cognitive engagement. Although Emily observed that concentration was a considerable element for cognitive engagement, she did not demand students’ attentive learning but attracted students by using tasks or giving rewards because she wanted to provide a relaxing environment for the students to learn English.

In terms of enhancing students’ familiarity, impression, and comprehension of class materials, Emily used some similar strategies to Amy’s. Emily also gave variety with visual aids and gave homework to enhance students’ familiarity of vocabulary.

However, giving variety with visual aids was used for different purposes. Emily used this strategy not only to increase students’ familiarity but also their impression of words or sentences. Moreover, she used L1 and objects as mediated tools while explaining class material in order to increase students’ comprehension as Amy did.

Emily did not use any strategy to initiate students’ critical thinking because of her teaching beliefs and experiences. She had tried to provide time for students’ critical thinking in class before; however, some students used the time to talk with each other rather than to think class materials. Emily had decided not to spend time on students’

critical thinking in class.

In sum, Amy used much more strategies than Emily did for enhancing cognitive engagement. There were sixteen scaffolding strategies in total in Amy’s case; in contrast, in Emily’s class, there were only ten scaffolding strategies in total. The two teachers used scaffolding strategies in different ways to help students achieve different categories of cognitive engagement. The most important finding of the present study is that the two teachers’ different teaching beliefs of cognitive engagement had resulted in different strategies, and students had been guided to achieve different levels of cognitive engagement in class.

At the end of this chapter, the researcher discusses the anticipated, unanticipated, and interesting findings. The present study discovered that the one of the two elementary English teachers perceived that students’ cognitive engagement might need teachers’ assistance to elevate. This finding responds to ZPD (Vygotsky, 1978) and scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, & Rose, 1976) which pointed out teacher’s role in assisting students’ learning. The other teacher, Emily, perceived that teacher did not have to assist students’ critical thinking actively because students had innate ability to think critically by themselves. However, her teaching experience suggested to her that some of the students could not think critically without the teachers’ assistance.

Therefore, teacher assistance plays an important role in assisting students’ cognitive engagement, as suggested in socio-cultural theory.

Moreover, there are other two expected findings of this study: 1) Similar scaffolding strategies for enhancing students’ cognitive engagement were recognized in the previous and present studies, 2) Teachers’ beliefs played an important role in teachers’ use of scaffolding strategies.

Apart from the findings that correspond to the previous studies and the researcher’s assumptions, there are some unpredicted and interesting findings in this study. First, one teacher in the present study believed that cognitive engagement was a sequential concept, in which levels of engagement occur in a specific order. Second, the two teachers in this study showed different perceptions of the teacher’s role for initiating EFL students’ critical thinking. Third, the two teachers in this study were not aware that students could be active listeners or learners in class. Fourth, the two teachers in this study emphasized more on students’ memory of vocabulary and sentences than on critical thinking.