 I'm Julie and I'm a teacher here at UCC Language Centre and I'm going to talk to you about some research that I did on my MA as well and it's based around the statement they won't talk and it's really aiming to look at creating inclusive ethos institutionally in all educational places. So to start with the inspiration from this research really stems from a three year teaching experience that I had in Beijing and it was throughout the three year teaching experience I started to really kind of reflect on how I thought of students who identify themselves as Chinese and I started to question how maybe back home back in London in the different institutions I worked in that maybe they would be misunderstood and very much misrepresented so I really started to reflect on the issue that they won't talk and this led to the aim of my project my dissertation project because I wanted to kind of investigate the issue and to look at the root of the problem and see okay a lot of teachers back home and me previously I went to Beijing had quite a lot of frustrations if I had large numbers of Chinese students that they wouldn't talk in the classroom and when I started to have more contact with higher education teachers they were also saying why won't they talk they won't talk and I thought okay I want to investigate what this issue actually is and I wanted to investigate the roots of it so I wanted to investigate the perceptions of Chinese students engagement and active participation in the classroom and I interviewed students who identified themselves as Chinese as well as lecturers surrounding the topic of talking in the classroom so I started with looking at the statement they won't talk and it was something that I heard as I said and I would engage in this kind of discourse before I went to Beijing and before do my MA and I kept thinking to myself I keep hearing this statement they won't talk they won't they're like this and they were very seen as problematic and I kept thinking to myself it doesn't it's not moved forward over the years that I've been teaching this statement is still circling and I know that many teachers including myself we try so much to you know get students to interact and get students to talk so there must be another way to maybe look at this so in the evidence the first bit that really stood out to me oh sorry sorry sorry context I've jumped forward there so the context of where this research really fits in is for me engagement and active participation for students to be able to really engage in active and actively participate in their learning they really need to feel a sense of belonging and for them to really feel that sense of belonging the institution really needs to adopt and ensure that there is inclusive ethos surrounding all learners um so what does that mean inclusive ethos um for me the key aspect of this first part of the project is the type of discourse that surrounds certain groups of learners and in this case it's Chinese learners so the first area in the interviews that really stood out was the self-belief that the students were coming into this new community with quite complex challenges and had quite um a lot of issues with their self-belief um so one student felt that if others in the classroom and their teachers understood their cultural attributes more then they could be tolerated and I thought they were tolerated there was quite a negative word and they perceived themselves quite negatively another student felt that his variety of English was actually useless so seeing that that his variety of English was very much useless again was quite a negative deficit view of self and then another student saying that because he was educated in China he felt a loser compared to other students who had and and and often referred to European students and seeing them in some ways as a bit more superior as well and and that really came across a little bit of division of kind of them and us and feeling very much very different but the main problem really was so these students are coming into this new community with very much complex challenges and then the institution had this discourse surrounding this group of learners that they're passive learners so what we're seeing is very much a deficit view of self plus oh they're passive learners they're uncritical learners or their education oh it's all about copying it's just memorisation it's just regurgitation and what it really does actually the especially the education it really masks the individual diverse education experience they may have because in the interview six of the students only one of them was actually educated in mainland China the rest had one had been educated for 10 years in Brussels and one had done A levels in a British system in Hong Kong but so these kind of statements their education you're really masking that kind of individual diverse experience and on top of that any kind of statements where you're referring to a group of people as they is really an essentialist type way of thinking where you're grouping them all together and you're really masking that individual diverse personality and it's known as essentialism which is really ultimately stereotyping and can lead to quite prejudice views and then also seeing their education system as copying and memorisation whereas here we're very critical it's quite an ethnocentric view in many ways it's making out that the education the context of your in is superior to where they're coming from and this is known as the reduced other view so we've got students coming in with a deficit view of themselves and some of the discourse that can surround certain groups of students is seeing them actually as a reduced other as well which puts up huge barriers and can create quite a lack of sense of belonging for them and this is something I've just added in because I now started to introduce this in my classroom and especially in the first week of knowing students this is a TED talk that really highlights the danger of a single story and it's fantastic because it really tackles the in the concepts of essentialism and ethnocentric views and it's by Chimanda and she gives very simple examples of how we have simple single stories for whole groups of people and how damaging that single story can be and so I now in the first week of my classes introduce the terms essentialism and ethnocentric views with students and get them to discuss their single stories about certain countries that they have and and to allow them to discuss that and it really is criticising the kind of essentialist views that we we normalise so often about certain groups and national groups so this led to the self-reflection aspect and I just want you to sit for just just a few seconds to think about how can you or do you adopt an inclusive ethos in your context to avoid essentialist and ethnocentric views so if you just sit there in silence just for 20 seconds or so now just moving on to the second part of the research was the direct comments about talking in the classroom one student felt that she understood the teaching style of getting students to talk but that she herself did prefer to be a more more a listener and that's how she preferred learning and throughout the interview she kept saying I know I'm weird I'm a weirdo because I don't talk in the classroom and I thought that's that that's a real exclusive environment that they're in if they feel that they're weird because they're not conforming to talking in the classroom um this student here felt that she wouldn't be remembered because she wasn't like other european students who did talk in a classroom so again starting to see that divide between them and us um as well so that those comments really resonated with me and I started to consider that when we talk about active participation and the lecturers in the interviews active participation was immediately connected with talking and I thought that active listening is such an active and crucial um learning skill that maybe we needed to value that in the term active participation and then that also led me on to start thinking about how I looked at silence in the classroom and how I valued silence so then I started to reflect on actually when I was in Beijing I was the one that getting frustrated because I wasn't getting anything back and it was my frustrations the students were happily learning happily developing and would gradually talk when they were ready to talk so I started questioning being of quite a talkative impulsive person that it's maybe my fear and my tolerance of silence I started to think as well that they have a right to be silenced if a person's not ready to talk or for whatever reason they have a right to be silent as well and I think we can definitely underestimate the time for people that people need to process information my head of department back in London actually called would see herself as an introverted learner and she found it very difficult in meetings and this is in her own language her first language she found it very difficult in meetings to have an opinion because everybody just jumped in so quickly and there was no time given or space where she needed that little bit more time so if we're thinking of learners that have got an additional complex challenge of the language it's really how much time are we giving for them to process that information if we want students come up with ideas are we allowing space for them to actually come up with ideas and also I think many of us may know that when you join a new community whether it's a work community or whatever that community is that it really takes time to be able to voice your opinions you've got to feel like in a legitimate member you've got to feel like you're an equal to feel that confidence to start giving your opinion so it may take students that time to feel like they are a legitimate member if they do ever get to that stage and silence I think is a real big part of the person's identity two of my students I asked the other week about silence and for one of them they feared it they were always kept busy they didn't want their minds to kind of think about silence because they would think about things they didn't want to and the other student said it was her complete comfort zone and it's where she felt most comfortable and they sat next to each other in the classroom so it's quite interesting to hear what silence actually means to each person as well when they are in the community of a classroom so this really led on to the last self reflection aspect and that's really about using silence and maybe revaluing silence in the classroom as a very effective learning tool so I just again like you to for 20 seconds or so just to reflect on this last quote and then just to finish off highlighting the problems surrounding terms like they are passive learners when we're talking about groups of different learners or they won't talk the problems in those kind of statements and thinking about how we can actually adopt an inclusive an inclusive discourse that does avoid those essentialist and ethnic centric views that are so such a normalized part of talking about different national groups and to also look at how maybe we can rebalance and revalue silence in learning so that those that maybe do prefer to learn in silence or are more listeners so they feel that the way they learn is equally valued to those who are maybe more talkative in the classroom. Thank you.