A Broader View on Expert-novice Dichotomy

When sociocultural theories were reviewed in Chapter 2, key metaphorical concepts of experts and novices were discussed. Through the observation of the students’ and teacher’s discourses in the classroom, it seems that their identities were not fixed as an ‘expert-novice’ dichotomy. Rather, their interaction during the presentation and discussion was dynamic and negotiable. On the one hand, in terms of language learning, the teacher represented a legitimizing identity. That is, the

teacher’s discourse was situated in her social role as a teacher, so she maintained her authority as a power-holder, especially when it was necessary to re-direct and guide the flow of the oral presentation (e.g., changing subject, joking, limiting time, etc.).

On the other hand, in terms of content knowledge, the teacher’s role was in conflict with her traditionally recognized role in the educational arena because of her limited medical content knowledge. Therefore, in this case, the distribution of expertise (i.e., expert-novice relationship) in oral presentations was dynamic, unfolding different relationships among participants who had varying knowledge, perspectives, experiences, and expertise.

From the data, it seems that the instructor is constrained by her limited content knowledge so she becomes a silent audience when students are undergoing their collaboration to construct a medically themed interaction. An in-class interaction example (in which Peter as a presenter talking about how cancer leads to death) can be given to explain this characteristic (rf. next page).

Example (Class dated Dec. 30

)

(A: the instructor, P: Peter, FS: fellow students)

P: They (i.e., cancer cells) not controlled by the body and they do nothing but consume nutrient. When time passes, there are more and more cancer cells so the normal cells not to get enough nutrients and then die. Then, the cancer cells will cause the body cannot function normally. The more cancer cells, the weaker the body is. In the end, there are not enough normal cells to support the body and that is why people die of cancer. However, cancer cells do not appear like magic show; they come from normal cells. Can you provide any idea to say, urn…how it does come? ((Then he looked around his classmates)).

FS1 (Nicole¹¹): Uhm…Maybe related to what the patient eats in his daily life.

FS 2(John) : Sleeping and exercising. remove some factors that may cause cancers.

A : ((Nodding her head.)) OK.

FS 4 (Ben) : If children get sick tumor suppressor genes from parents, they have high risk to get cancer, for example P53 gene.

A : What is it again?

11 The fellow students’ names in this interaction example are all pseudonyms.

12 Classroom interaction is sometimes done in L1. Given the fact that the teacher in this class is not a medical professional, in some occasions, Chinese was utilized as a tool to achieve a better understanding. In particular, several times, when the instructor and students encountered technical (medical) terms, they used their native language to achieve a consensus of mutual understanding. At this point, the instructor ignored the requirement of speaking English in class; rather, all participants used L1 as a communication vehicle to learn content knowledge that may be challenging for the instructor as well.

This interaction example shows that the language teacher in the class is a professional in terms of English study, but is not a professional in medical content knowledge. Since the discussed issues in the class are medically-related, it is very possible that the participants, being medicine majors, constitute an equivalent professional status than their language teacher. In other words, the typically perceived dichotomy between novice-expert in education scenarios seems not applicable in the researched context.

Furthermore, given that the course was constructed with the goal of providing students’ sufficient oral practice in class, most of the time, the instructor offered ample opportunities for learners to practice how to take part in a discussion. That is, instead of using a direct utterance to explain thoughts, the instructor did not interrupt learners’ dialogue unless it was deemed necessary to do so. Therefore, the “speaking right” was yielded to student audiences who have to construct a process of negotiation by sharing life experiences or personal opinions so as to form a basis for presenters to continue the discussion, particularly during the Q & A session. Yet, this privilege, which fostered more speaking and thinking, seems not to be the case for ESL students, as has been shown in many studies which have discussed ESL students’ marginal status and reticence in class participation (Lee, 2009; Morita, 2004; Kim, 2006).

In this case also, communication of knowledge in oral presentations was not a simple unidirectional transmission from the instructor to students or the presenter to the audience. Rather, all the participants in the oral presentations had various levels of experience and expertise in different domains of knowledge, hence, the interaction which took place in class was represented as a dynamic, complicated, and shifting construction between experts and novices during the negotiation process.

Obviously, communication of knowledge in oral presentations was not a simple unidirectional transmission from the presenter to the audience. For example, all

participants employed different strategies to reach mutual understandings or personal goals and interests, e.g., Ben used his life story to elicit more discussions and responses from the audience. Furthermore, by incorporating multiple viewpoints in the practice of oral presentations, all members made new connections or raised new ideas to collaboratively contribute to their own learning and development in the situated academic community. The data show that participants’ process of interaction demonstrated the fact that the interaction among the instructor, presenters, and student audience was not deterministic, but changing and transforming dependent upon different moments and discussed content.

To conclude, the findings from this theme-based classroom seem to suggest that academic discourse socialization is not an overwhelmingly oppressive, unidirectional process of knowledge transmission from the expert to the novice (i.e., from the instructor to students), but rather a complex, locally situated process that involves dynamic negotiations of expertise among all participants. This finding concurs with the views of context-sensitive approaches such as the Vygotskian sociocultural and activity theory (e.g., Lantolf, 2000), and language socialization (e.g., Duff, 1995, 2002; Morita, 2000, 2004), for their central spirit looks into the value and influence from social collaboration among all members in the community. However, the current study goes one step forward to suggest that the social collaboration is not a one-directional transmission pattern from expert to novice. Instead, it could be a relationship occurring among novices, which adds a new dimension to expert-novice dichotomy in sociocultural theories.