The Invisible Classroom: An Empirical Study in a Pashto Classroom

• Main Author: Anjel Tozcu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages 2020-11-01
• Series: Journal of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages
• Subjects: personality types; classroom dynamics; learning outcomes
• Online Access: https://ncolctl.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/The-Invisible-Classroom.pdf

As groups have “observable…rules and role behavior,” they also have an abstract structure. Groups can be observed in at least two ways. “The visible group is the individual … members, [with] their one-to-one relationships, and … their observable behaviors.” The invisible group is “the covert network of relationships that operate at the group-as-a-whole level through unconscious processes and communications.” As in any group, in educational contexts, the classroom group has an invisible structure, and “the same set of individuals” comprises both the visible group, and the invisible group, which may influence the overt classroom environment (Ehrman & Dörnyei, 1998, p. 77-78). This study compares the classroom dynamics of a class of 12 students in two sections enrolled in the Pashto Basic Course in a military institution in the United States. The study predominantly seeks to explore whether personality types of these students, which comprise class profiles, affect the classroom dynamics. Interviews with teachers, analysis of semester grades, Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) results for reading and listening comprehension, and Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) scores were considered in the analysis of findings. The preliminary findings indicate that the personality dispositions may shape unseen classroom dynamics in ways that can influence the overt classroom environment either positively or negatively.