1. Introduction
In his systematic overview of the motivational dimension of language teaching, Lamb (Reference Lamb2017) argues that it is ‘responsiveness’, a capacity founded on empathy, and developed over years of practice, that is characteristic for teachers who are successful motivators (p. 312). However, as Mercer (Reference Mercer2018) notes, little attention has been given to the roles teachers play in creating environments and activities that trigger positive responses from students. In line with calls for L2 motivation research that focuses on the classroom as a context of learning, and for studies that adopt a relational approach (Ushioda, Reference Ushioda, Dörnyei and Ushioda2009; Mercer, Reference Mercer2018), my colleagues and I conducted a program of ethnographic research in the classrooms of teachers of English who we had identified as successful motivators. Through our work in the Motivational Teaching in Swedish Secondary English (MoTiSSE) project (see e.g. Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2018a, Reference Henry and Thorsen2018b, Reference Henry and Thorsen2019; Henry, Sundqvist, & Thorsen, Reference Henry, Sundqvist and Thorsen2019), we came to understand how positive responses to learning could be traced to connections emanating from practices founded on ‘responsiveness’ (Lamb, Reference Lamb2017, p. 312). As well as connections forged in interpersonal interactions, the teachers we observed drew on knowledge and understanding of the young people in their classrooms in ways that enabled students to work with meaningful content, and with activities promoting social interaction, creativity, and self-expression.
Drawing on these insights, and using the concept of connective instruction (Martin & Dowson, Reference Martin and Dowson2009) as an organizing framework, in this article I describe three types of motivational connection that lend themselves to exploration in classroom-based research. For each connection I sketch out research tasks that take an ethnographic approach, and which aim to shed light on teachers' relational practices and the influences on students' motivation and engagement. For each of these tasks I identify a specific research objective, and outline the steps needed to carry it out. I begin, however, by looking at the concept of engagement, its relation to motivation, and how motivation and engagement can be investigated through ethnographic inquiry.
1.1 Engagement
In mainstream education, motivation research with a classroom focus involves examining what teachers and students do, and how various types of interaction influence the student's approach to learning (Martin & Collie, Reference Martin, Collie, Wentzel and Ramani2016). While in L2 motivation research it is widely acknowledged that social interactions in language classrooms shape students' learning behaviors (Ushioda, Reference Ushioda, Dörnyei and Ushioda2009), conceptualizations of these situated influences are lacking. Noting that the quality of the classroom learning experience is often the strongest predictor of motivated behavior, Dörnyei (Reference Dörnyei2019) has described the L2 learning experience as ‘the Cinderella’ of the L2 motivational self system. In a step aimed at linking the situated motivational processes of the L2 learning experience to the system's self-guides (the ideal and ought-to L2 selves), Dörnyei argues that student engagement is a construct that provides ‘a well-defined and sufficiently specific conceptual area that can be customized for use in L2 motivation research’ (p. 26).
Although it has been suggested that in learning sequences motivation and engagement are cyclically interrelated, it is generally agreed that motivation underpins engagement (Reeve, Reference Reeve, Christenson, Reschly and Wylie2012; Martin, Ginns, & Papworth, Reference Martin, Ginns and Papworth2017). As Reeve (Reference Reeve, Christenson, Reschly and Wylie2012) makes clear, while motivation involves ‘private, unobservable, psychological, neural, and biological’ phenomena, engagement constitutes ‘publicly observable behavior’ (p. 151). It is also recognized that motivational factors often interact, and that a student's motivation rarely derives from a single source. Equally, motivation does not flow unhindered into action, but is mediated by situational factors. For these reasons, motivation may be best understood as the ‘underlying sources of energy, purpose, and durability’ that generate and sustain learning behavior (Skinner & Pitzer, Reference Skinner, Pitzer, Christenson, Reschly and Wylie2012, p. 22). Engagement, which is evidenced in constructive, focused, and enthusiastic working, can be understood as a consequence of motivation and the ‘visible manifestation’ of these driving forces (Skinner & Pitzer, Reference Skinner, Pitzer, Christenson, Reschly and Wylie2012). In language classrooms, where motivation can derive as much from situated interactions as from longer-term goal-setting and the desire to achieve a future (idealized) state, engagement can usefully be understood as the behavioral outworkings of various and sometimes intersecting motivational sources (Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2018c, Reference Henry and Thorsen2019; Dörnyei, Reference Dörnyei2019; Mercer & Dörnyei, Reference Mercer and Dörnyei2020).
While conceptual links between engagement and major theories of motivated behavior are well established (see Martin et al., Reference Martin, Ginns and Papworth2017 for a review), in the social context of L2 classrooms, Self Determination Theory (SDT) (Deci & Ryan, Reference Deci and Ryan1985) provides a framework that usefully facilitates understanding of the motivation–engagement relationship. In SDT, optimal functioning depends on the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. When these needs are fulfilled, positive learning behaviors are generated (Ryan & Deci, Reference Ryan and Deci2017). While the contributions to students' on-task engagement made by perceptions of competence and autonomy are well established, it is more recently that the importance of relatedness – the need to feel connected to and cared for by significant others – has become recognized as affecting engagement (Martin & Dowson, Reference Martin and Dowson2009; Reeve, Reference Reeve, Christenson, Reschly and Wylie2012). From research focusing on the effects of interpersonal relationships in schools, findings suggest that satisfaction of the need for relatedness is particularly important in creating a positive emotional disposition to learning (Martin & Dowson, Reference Martin and Dowson2009). In circumstances where energy is derived from classroom relationships, a significant pathway toward engagement in learning activities can arise, a proposition which has also received support in an L2 context (Joe, Hiver, & Al-Hoorie, Reference Joe, Hiver and Al-Hoorie2017).
1.2 Relatedness and students' learning behaviors
Recognizing the importance of relatedness in understanding students' learning behaviors, and prefaced on the idea that teachers ‘who frame practice in relational terms are more likely to foster motivated, engaged, and achieving students’ (p. 344), Martin and Dowson (Reference Martin and Dowson2009) developed the concept of connective instruction. Part of a larger, integrated model, where achievement, motivation, and educational practice are seen as relationally conditioned, connective instruction recognizes but moves beyond the immediate interpersonal relationship between teacher and student. It suggests that a teacher's interpersonal qualities, relational strategies, and interactive practices can combine in ways that create classroom conditions where students feel motivated, demonstrate engagement, and can reap positive academic rewards (Martin & Dowson, Reference Martin and Dowson2009; Martin & Collie, Reference Martin, Collie, Wentzel and Ramani2016, Reference Martin and Collie2018). Connective instruction invokes the ‘who’, the ‘what’, and the ‘how’ of teacher–student interaction. It suggests that students are likely to have greater motivation, and be more actively engaged in classroom work, when they can connect with the teacher as a person, when they can connect with what the teacher is asking them to do, and when they can connect with the teacher's motives and aims in setting up classroom working practices.
In the social environments of L2 classrooms, where target language (TL) communication is the centerpiece of language developing activities, and where relationships are built ‘situation by situation’ (Oxford, Reference Oxford, MacIntyre, Gregersen and Mercer2016, p. 18; see also Mercer, Reference Mercer, MacIntyre, Gregersen and Mercer2016), the quality of these connections will be greatly conditioned by the teacher's capacity for empathy. Empathy is the cornerstone upon which interpersonal relationships are built. Not limited to the capacity to experience compassion or concern for others, empathy also involves the ability to adopt the psychological point of view of other people in day-to-day interactions. This takes place spontaneously through the exercise of perspective-taking (Davis, Reference Davis1994; Warren, Reference Warren2018). In the context of language teaching – where use of the language is the means through which communication skills are developed – teachers' perspective-taking capacities develop through processes of iteration. Gaining knowledge about students as individual people and relational partners, teachers with empathic capacity are able to use these emerging insights to guide interpersonal interactions, to support choices about content, and to set up meaningful and rewarding ways of working. In classrooms where teachers seek to actively facilitate students' L2 interactions and to generate engagement with learning, perspective-taking translates pragmatically into instructional and interactional practices (Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2019). Underpinning teaching routines, it is in and through these practices that the motivational connections highlighted in the connective instruction model are forged.
1.3 Investigating motivation and engagement in L2 classrooms through ethnographic inquiry
In line with Ushioda's (Reference Ushioda, Dörnyei and Ushioda2009) encouragement of a person-in-context approach in the study of L2 motivation, and Martin and Collie's (Reference Martin, Collie, Wentzel and Ramani2016) call for person-centered research into relational influences on students' engagement, I make proposals for research tasks that seek to develop understandings of how relationally forged connections influence motivation and engagement. Viewing student engagement as socially situated within particular events and experiences (Dörnyei, Reference Dörnyei2019), and as influenced by teachers' instructional and interactional perspective-taking practices (Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2019), the tasks I propose take the form of ‘locally grounded evidence-based analyses of how teachers work with and enhance their students' motivation’ (Ushioda, Reference Ushioda2016, p. 567). The aim of the tasks is not to quantify teachers' relational moves and aspects of students' engagement with the aim of generating propositions about the efficacy of a particular relational strategy or practice (see Durksen et al., Reference Durksen, Way, Bobis, Anderson, Skilling and Martin2017 for an example in the context of mathematics). Rather, taking an ethnographic approach (Kubanyiova, Reference Kubanyiova2015), and through in-depth inquiry, the objective is to develop situated understandings of the ways in which the relational practices of the teacher or teachers in focus influence the manner in which students approach and work with classroom activities. Like Ushioda (Reference Ushioda2016), I argue that the situated study of particular teachers' relational practices, and the ways in which these practices influence students' engagement, can have wider resonance, and can ‘contribute to informing theory and practice at a broader level’ (p. 574).
2. Exploring interpersonal connections, and influences on students' engagement
Important work is now being carried out into language teachers' socio-emotional competences and relational capacities (e.g. Gkonou & Mercer, Reference Gkonou and Mercer2017). Less, however, is known about teachers' relational practices, and the influences on students' motivation and engagement. Recognizing this, one of the aspects of motivational practice that we focused on in the MoTiSSE project was the ways in which teachers developed positive interpersonal relationships (Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2018a). Here, we drew on work carried out by researchers at the Department of Education at Utrecht University.
Trusting relationships between teachers and students take time to build. In developing a theory of teacher–student contact, researchers in the Utrecht group have examined situations in classrooms where teachers and students experience moments of close connection (Korthagen, Attema–Noordewier, & Zwart, Reference Korthagen, Attema–Noordewier and Zwart2014; Claessens et al., Reference Claessens, van Tartwijk, van der Want, Pennings, Verloop, den Brok and Wubbels2016; Pennings et al., Reference Pennings, Brekelmans, Sadler, Claessens, van der Want and van Tartwijk2018). Because each moment of positive contact between a teacher and a student contributes to the development of the interpersonal relationship, moments when teachers and students connect can be understood as the ‘building blocks’ from which teacher–student relationships are constructed (Wubbels, Brekelmans, Mainhard, den Brok, & van Tartwijk, Reference Wubbels, Brekelmans, Mainhard, den Brok, van Tartwijk, Wentzel and Ramani2016). Moments of contact can also have immediate effects on a student's engagement. Alongside an external connection – manifested in a here-and-now encounter by a smile, eye-contact, or a friendly nod – teacher and student can additionally experience the shared sense of an internal connection, each becoming aware of the other's emotions and desires. For the teacher, a moment of positive contact involves showing the student that they are being seen, that they are being understood, and that they are being ‘accepted in their thinking, feeling, and wanting’ (Korthagen et al., Reference Korthagen, Attema–Noordewier and Zwart2014, p. 30). For the student, a momentary experience of connection with a teacher can have the effect that psychological energy increases. Often, this energy will be manifested in observable forms of enhanced focus (for example, more time spent working on task, and more frequent returns to the task), and increased engagement (visible as enthusiasm, joy, concentration, and calmness) (Korthagen et al., Reference Korthagen, Attema–Noordewier and Zwart2014).
Research task 1
Among the most important contributions to language learning psychology is the understanding of the function of positive emotions (MacIntyre & Mercer, Reference MacIntyre and Mercer2014; MacIntyre, Gregersen, & Mercer, Reference MacIntyre, Gregersen and Mercer2019). Positive emotions are conceptualized as having distinct effects on behavior and cognition. Positive emotions broaden the individual's field of attention, and generate tendencies that favor creativity. These processes build resources that can be utilized in future activities (Fredrickson, Reference Fredrickson2001). Unlike negative emotions, which tend to be narrowly channeled, the effects of positive emotions develop cumulatively, and can contribute to the emergence of positively focused dispositions. In group-level research, findings show how the frequency with which students experience a positive relationship with a teacher can predict positive attitudes and greater school engagement (Martin & Collie, Reference Martin and Collie2018).
However, as I have indicated, in addition to influences that accumulate over time, a moment of positive contact with a teacher can also have a more immediate effect on learning behavior. In fine-grained studies examining the features of teacher–student contact, Korthagen et al. (Reference Korthagen, Attema–Noordewier and Zwart2014) could observe how, following a moment of positive contact, students' behaviors demonstrated increased engagement. These researchers also observed how students' reactions indicated momentary increases in self-assurance and autonomy.
Investigate how moments of close personal contact can generate positive responses
Given the importance of interpersonal connections for language learning, ethnographic methods could be used to examine the circumstances surrounding moments of positive contact, and the influences that a positive interaction with a teacher might have on a student's engagement. In such investigations, the aim initially would be to identify positive interactions. Here, one of the research questions listed by Barcelos and Coelho (Reference Barcelos, Coelho, MacIntyre, Gregersen and Mercer2016, p. 149), ‘What micro-moments of positivity resonance are there in the language classroom?’ would provide an excellent starting point. Thereafter, the characteristics of contact moments could be identified, and students' downstream behaviors could be examined. Here the research question that guided the work by Korthagen et al. (Reference Korthagen, Attema–Noordewier and Zwart2014, p. 24), ‘How does good teacher–student contact influence the student?’ could usefully direct analyses of the data (see also Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2018a).
Using the methodology developed by Korthagen's team, this research task would be carried out in a five-step process. The first step would involve finding teachers skilled in creating connections. This could be done in various ways, ranging from specifically focused surveys (as in the MoTiSSE project), to asking teachers to identify colleagues recognized to be skilled in forging relationships and motivating their students. In a second step, video-recordings would be made in these teachers' classrooms. Reviewing filmed events, in a third step a number of positive interactions would be identified. The fourth step would involve using the video-recording as a stimulated recall tool. In separate interviews, the teacher – and to the extent that it is possible also the students – would be asked to describe their emotions around the time of identified moments of contact. Finally, in a structured analytical stage, the video and interview data would be used to develop situated understandings of the ways in which contact moments influence students' learning behaviors in positive ways.
Research task 2
Observing the practice of the successful motivators in the MoTiSSE project, we could see how moments of positive contact varied enormously. While some were fleeting, others could last for several minutes. As well as individual-to-individual interactions – for example when a teacher provided guidance on text composition – contact moments could also form parts of complex interactions taking place in small-group, or whole-class settings. Contact moments also seemed to differ depending on the type of activity; contact in a writing-focused activity could differ from an activity directed to oral interaction. We found also that contact moments could be highly idiosyncratic; often, the characteristics of a contact moment would be specific to the particular teacher–student relationship in which it was embedded. In a dedicated study of teacher–student relationships (Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2018a), we found that differences in the nature of contact moments appeared to depend on the maturity of the relationship. In the context of emerging relationships, the teacher we focused on was more openly demonstrative in her close interpersonal interactions. However, in classes where she and her students had long-standing relationships, moments of contact tended to be less uniform, more subtle, and more generally personalized. In a similar way, the Utrecht researchers were able to identify distinctive patterns of teacher–student interactions in particular classrooms, and in relation to particular activities (Pennings et al., Reference Pennings, Brekelmans, Sadler, Claessens, van der Want and van Tartwijk2018).
Recognizing that there will always be a degree of variation in the close interactions between teachers and students in different settings, an important research task would be to investigate the interactional practices of individual teachers as they move between classrooms, between activities, and between styles of teaching. Following the call by Pennings et al. (Reference Pennings, Brekelmans, Sadler, Claessens, van der Want and van Tartwijk2018) for research that explores positive teacher–student interactions in relation to (1) varying types of teaching (i.e. focused on different activity types), (2) varying interactional approaches (for example, working with small-group or whole-class teaching), and (3) varying teaching styles (e.g. mediating or facilitating), the aim of this task would be to explore variations characteristic of L2 teaching in particular investigated settings.
Investigate variation in teacher–student interactions in relation to activity types
Although contact is an idiosyncratic phenomenon (Korthagen et al., Reference Korthagen, Attema–Noordewier and Zwart2014), in studying the practice of relationally skilled language teachers there can be value in investigating variations in interpersonal interaction in relation to different activity types. Here the focus would be on teacher–student interaction in activities targeting varying language skills. In one version of this task, contact moments in an activity with a focus on writing could, for example, be compared with contact moments in an activity designed to promote oral interaction. Following the five-step approach previously described, the aim would be to identify features of contact moments and students' responses that might be more generally characteristic of particular types of activity. Variations on this task could involve combinations of different activity types, as well as a focus on the relational dynamics when shifts from one activity type to another take place.
Investigate variation in teacher–student interactions in relation to teacher roles
Using the same design, another task would be to examine the characteristics of contact moments and their influences in relation to different roles that the teacher adopts (for example, being a mediator of knowledge, or a facilitator of learning), and the things that happen when role-shifts takes place. Here, analyses of video recordings would focus on features of interactions characteristic of situations involving a particular pedagogical approach, and how the quality of contact moments can differ depending on the role the teacher adopts. Here too a dynamical focus would be appropriate when investigating role shifts within and between lessons.
Investigate variation in teacher–student interactions in relation to group size
Finally, and again employing the same procedure, this research task would examine the characteristics and influences of contact moments in relation to group size. Here, the aim would be to identify features of interactions characteristic of situations where, for example, teachers work one-on-one, with student pairs, with smaller groups, and in whole-class settings. Selecting lessons where it is known that shifts between working practices are likely to take place, focus could be directed to the ways in which the dynamics of teacher–student interaction pattern within the lesson.
Research task 3
Studying the work of the MoTiSSE teachers, we were often struck by how they enjoyed the things they did with the young people in their classrooms. Like other human relationships, those constructed between teachers and students are characterized by interactional reciprocity. Because the responses of students have a continual influence on a teacher's practice, the creation of connections can be understood as a ‘bidirectional process that is mutually beneficial and enhancing to both teacher and student’ (Martin & Dowson, Reference Martin and Dowson2009, p. 345). In a moment of contact, the positive reaction the teacher perceives in the student can also positively influence the teacher. Echoing Fredrickson's (Reference Fredrickson2003, Reference Fredrickson2013) theories of positivity in human relationships, Korthagen et al. (Reference Korthagen, Attema–Noordewier and Zwart2014, p. 29) point to the reciprocal nature of moments of positivity resonance, arguing that ‘in moments of good contact the process is self-reinforcing, as positive notions, feelings, and behavior in the student trigger positive notions, feelings, and behavior in the teacher, and in turn this triggers positive notions, feelings, and behavior in the student’.
Investigate the effects on teachers of positive interactions with students
The well-being and motivation of teachers is linked to the well-being and motivation of students. Pointing to the importance of processes of contagion – where emotions and motivation can spread ripple-like between individuals – Mercer (Reference Mercer2018) highlights the importance of investigating psychological transfer in teacher–student relationships. This third task focuses on bidirectional influences associated with positive interpersonal interactions, and the ways in which the teacher can be affected by positive contact. To carry out this task, the researcher would observe teacher–student interactions over a number of lessons. In each lesson, situations where a positive interaction occurred – evidenced for example in the parties' body language, facial expressions and concentration – would be recorded in fieldnotes. In order to gain insight into the teacher's emotional and motivational response as close as possible to a focal situation, field conversations would be carried out immediately after the lesson. More flexible, and situationally more immediate than interviews, these conversations would ideally be audio-recorded. To gain a rounded picture of these interpersonal dynamics, focus could also be directed to interactions that develop in negative ways, or interactions where transitions between positive and negative responses occur.
3. Exploring connections with content, and influences on students' engagement
In language education, scholars have long emphasized the importance of meaningfulness. While Stevick (Reference Stevick1980) spoke of the need for learners to experience relevance in engagement with the L2, Thorne and Reinhardt (Reference Thorne and Reinhardt2008) have highlighted the value of bridging between L2 experiences in and beyond the classroom. With a focus on English in a globalizing world, Ushioda (Reference Ushioda and Ushioda2013) and Henry (Reference Henry and Ushioda2013) have drawn attention to the negative effects on motivation when students experience a dissonance between the rich and often identity-relevant L2 experiences they have outside school, and the more mundane interactions characteristic of many classrooms.
However, while the importance of tapping into L2 experiences beyond the classroom is well recognized, the influences on engagement and motivation that are associated with bridging practices (Thorne & Reinhardt, Reference Thorne and Reinhardt2008) are only beginning to be explored. In our work in the MoTiSSE project, we used the concept of funds of knowledge to help understand how connections with L2 encounters beyond the classroom can generate engagement (Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2019). A central concept in culturally responsive pedagogies, funds of knowledge refer to the cultural frames and linguistic resources that young people bring to school classrooms (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, Reference Moll, Amanti, Neff and Gonzalez1992; Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, Reference Gonzalez, Moll and Amanti2005). Research shows that when teachers are responsive to students' lives outside school, and when experiences from home, community, and social contexts are activated in learning, the points of contact created can support the development of targeted skills, and can function in ways that increase engagement and motivation. As Moje and Hinchman (Reference Moje, Hinchman, Jetton and Dole2004, p. 326) explain, when intersections between ways of knowing in and outside of school arise, points of interchange function ‘as a way of helping students to connect more effectively to new ideas [and] as a way of engaging and motivating students’.
Research task 4
Popular culture is central in young people's lives. When teachers are responsive to the cultural experiences students gain beyond the classroom, and when they design activities that recognize, legitimize, and utilize students' popular cultural knowledge, points of contact can positively influence engagement. With a focus on connections between academic knowledge and young people's popular culture funds of knowledge (Petrone, Reference Petrone2013), research in mainstream education has begun to investigate how intersections between institutional and informal ways of knowing can foster engagement and enhance academic achievement (Hall, Burns, & Edwards, Reference Hall, Burns and Edwards2011; Petrone, Reference Petrone2013). As this research suggests, when students have opportunities to draw on popular culture funds of knowledge in learning activities, and when popular culture experiences become a resource in developing academic skills, learning can be perceived as inherently meaningful and intrinsically rewarding.
Identify and investigate bridging affordances in activity designs
For young people growing up today, and particularly so for many of the students in the Swedish context where our research took place, English is a part of everyday life. Because rich and meaningful interactions occur in online environments, classroom learning will often take place parallel with L2 encounters in networked spaces (Sockett, Reference Sockett2014). When, as in Sweden, the L2 is omnipresent in popular culture, an important aspect of teachers' motivational practice will involve developing ways of integrating popular culture experiences into classroom-based learning. Because teachers' motivational practices are highly contextualized, and because the nature of students' popular culture funds of knowledge will vary between as well as within classes, it is important that research is carried out in different classrooms.
Case studies conducted in the classrooms of teachers who are attuned to young people's lives and interests outside school can provide revealing insights into the ways that popular culture can be integrated into activities. They can reveal how popular culture is used as a resource in learning, and how working with or within a genre of popular culture can influence engagement. Focusing on teachers' perspective-taking skills, in this task the questions ‘How do teachers integrate popular culture into learning?’ and ‘How does this influence engagement?’ would guide the research. The research would be carried out in four steps. First, interviews with the teacher would be conducted. Here, focus would be on the aims for a lesson/lessons, and the rationale underpinning design choices. The researcher would also collect lesson plans and activity designs. In the second step, the aim would be to identify design features that can enable bridging between contexts of experience to take place. Having identified these bridging affordances, the next step would be to examine the ways in which students attune to them. Here, classroom observations would be directed to behavior that indicates energy and involvement. Concurrent with instances of observed engagement, informal field conversations with students would also be conducted. Here, the objective would be to understand how and why aspects of an activity trigger a positive response.
Research task 5
In our work in the MoTiSSE project, we framed the use of popular culture in activity designs as an example of teachers' instructional perspective taking (Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2019). While we saw an abundance of examples of explicit bridging between experiences in and beyond the classroom, other types of bridging also occurred. Often, we were able to see how teachers were receptive to students' initiatives, and were able to create spaces where students could draw on frames of reference relating to their own particular cultural experiences. Reading the literature on popular cultural funds of knowledge (Petrone, Reference Petrone2013; Warren, Reference Warren2018), we came across work by the educational ethnographer Dyson (Reference Dyson1993, Reference Dyson2003), and her ideas about what she calls a ‘permeable curriculum’. Unlike learning activities designed with the explicit aim of creating spaces where connections between cultural and academic experiences can take place, in a permeable curriculum connections occur organically. That is, connections are not part of the teacher's initial learning design. Rather, they are created ‘in the moment’ as interactions unfold, and through the teacher's sensitivity to emerging opportunities for bridging to occur. As Dyson (Reference Dyson1993) explains, a permeable curriculum assumes and exploits students' ‘susceptibility to the appeal of meaningful activity’, and supports their active manipulation of the dynamic relationship between experiences in and beyond school (p. 217).
Investigate how teachers' accommodations of students' interests, and support of agency can be motivational
In our project, we observed the work of teachers who were interested in their students as young individuals, and who were receptive to their cultural experiences. Many of these teachers had a professional practice characterized by interactional perspective-taking (Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2019), and worked in ways that corresponded with Dyson's (Reference Dyson1993) notion of permeability. They were receptive to genres of knowledge and cultural practices familiar to students (but often unknown to themselves), they were accommodating of the personal experiences students brought to learning, and they were sensitive to opportunities to support students' agency (Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2019; Henry et al., Reference Henry, Sundqvist and Thorsen2019). Based on these insights, and in recognition of the importance of perspective-taking in the teaching of languages, this research task focuses on the ways in which responsive teachers (1) build scope for agency into activity designs, (2) craft activities in ways that accommodate the interests and concerns of students as unique individuals, and (3) make flexible accommodations that support personal preferences and enable authentic self-expression.
To explore responsiveness of this sort, a two-step process can be adopted. In a first stage, observations in the classrooms of teachers identified as supportive of students' agency would be carried out. Then, at the end of each lesson, the teacher would be asked about situations where he/she experienced being receptive to students' initiatives, and if and how attempts were made to encourage or support a student's personal interpretation of an activity. Here, the focus would be on the teacher's reasoning about how and why accommodations were made, and perceptions of students' responses.
Another approach would involve carrying out a case study of an activity or a project that offered scope for individual interpretation. Here, in addition to the procedures previously described, the researcher would also collect students' outputs (i.e. the texts and performances they create), and examine the feedback and support provided by the teacher. Taking this approach, the aim would be to identify (1) how students may differently interpret an activity, (2) how different interpretations might be informed or supported by knowledge from a particular genre of popular culture, and (3) how personalized adaptations of the activity are supported by the teacher.
4. Exploring connections with working approaches, and influences on students' engagement
In Sweden, as in many other settings today, young people grow up in a world of Internet-mediated communication. From an early age, interactions with popular culture and peer communication are facilitated by mobile devices. When young people's social lives become saturated by digital communication, school can constitute an anomaly in that social practices and interpersonal interactions are not digitally mediated in a similar way. Exploring differences in communication modalities in and out of school, we found recent use of the funds of knowledge concept in the context of digital literacies to be very useful (Subero, Vujasinović, & Esteban-Guitart, Reference Subero, Vujasinović and Esteban-Guitart2017). This perspective helped us to understand how the integration of online interaction modes – for example, use of social media and cross-platform messaging – into activity designs could generate positive responses.
As I have suggested before, the divide between young people's digitally-mediated social interaction and the communication practices of school can be important in understanding students' motivation (Henry, Reference Henry and Ushioda2013). In a recent systematic review of CALL (computer assisted language learning) studies reporting influences on students' learning behaviors, Martin Lamb and I were able to see how enhanced opportunities for collaboration and authentic social interaction could make technology use motivational (Henry & Lamb, Reference Henry, Lamb, Lamb, Csizér, Henry and Ryan2020). Similarly, in a survey carried out as part of the MoTiSSE project where we asked teachers to describe activities that motivated students, the positive influence of technology emerged as an important factor (Henry, Korp, Sundqvist, & Thorsen, Reference Henry, Korp, Sundqvist and Thorsen2018). In a content analysis of the descriptions provided by the teachers in this study, we found that a sizeable proportion involved the use of digital technologies in ways which replicated modes of use common in everyday social interactions. Speculating about the motivational properties of digital technologies in L2 learning, we suggested that the use of commonplace technologies can help students experience ‘a closer fit between the social and communicative practices in classroom and leisure-time discourse arenas’, and that mobile devices can ‘open up a performative space’ where students can experience flexibility, immediacy, and autonomy (p. 267).
Research task 6
As in other aspects of the MoTiSSE research, we gained help in understanding engagement from ethnographies of young people's digital literacy practices. In trying to understand influences related to technology use, we drew on work by the cultural anthropologist Mizuko Ito (Ito et al., Reference Ito, Baumer, Bittanti, Boyd, Cody, Herr and Tripp2010, Reference Ito, Gutiérrez, Livingstone, Penuel, Rhodes, Salen and Watkins2013). Exploring the ways in which new media can support achievement in schools, Ito and her colleagues developed the concept of connected learning. Like the recent use of the funds of knowledge concept (Subero et al., Reference Subero, Vujasinović and Esteban-Guitart2017), connected learning addresses the gap between learning in and outside school in a digital age, and ‘taps the opportunities provided by digital media to more easily link home, school, community and peer contexts of learning’ (Ito et al., Reference Ito, Gutiérrez, Livingstone, Penuel, Rhodes, Salen and Watkins2013, p. 4). As Ito and colleagues explain, when activities in school involve collaboration around the production of media in openly networked infrastructures – for example, when students work together to create a blog or contribute to online discussions – modes of interaction resonate with communication practices characteristic of peer and social networks. Creating media in networked forms can be highly engaging. This, as Ito et al. (Reference Ito, Gutiérrez, Livingstone, Penuel, Rhodes, Salen and Watkins2013) explain, is because conditions important for successful learning become knitted together. In peer-supported interaction students contribute, share, and exchange knowledge in familiar ways, while through interest-powered involvement they can engage around topics that can have meaning and relevance. Most importantly, because activities take place within an academic orientation, interests become part of a route to achievement and opportunity.
Investigate the ways in which working in networked environments can generate engagement
As we discovered in our research, there was great variation in the ways in which teachers made use of digital technologies, and attuned to various educational and motivational affordances. In this task, the research would take place in classrooms where digital communication constitutes a part of the learning infrastructure, and where activities involve some form of networked interaction. With the aim of understanding how the use of technologies common in everyday communication can influence approaches to classroom learning, a useful research question might be ‘How do networked connections stimulate engagement?’ Here, like several of the research tasks previously described, classroom-based inquiry could be combined with digital ethnographies (Varis, Reference Varis, Georgakopoulou and Spilioti2016). Focus could be directed to students' working practices, their online interactions, and the crafting of digital artefacts. This would allow analysis of the texts and multimodal assemblages (e.g. text, images, embedded film, hyperlinks) that students create online, as well as the ways in which discourse is produced. To carry out this task, a first step would be to identify classrooms where learning takes place in networked forms, and where students demonstrate engagement. Then, in a second step, classroom and digital ethnographies could be carried out. Ideally this would involve following the work process of a group or groups of students. In these ethnographies, focus would be directed to patterns of interaction and collaboration. Based on observations of interactions in the classroom and in digital spaces, and zooming-in on situations where engagement is apparent – such as when students put particular effort into producing a text, or where a digital artefact is particularly elaborate – focus group interviews would be carried out. Here, the aim would be to gain insights into the origins of students' engagement, and how engaged behavior might be understood as an individual, as well as a collective phenomenon.
Research task 7
Online environments offer accessible opportunities for self-expression and creative self-presentation. With access to sometimes limitless resources, young people who engage in digital media production become ‘participants, makers, and doers engaged in active and self-directed inquiry’ (Ito et al., Reference Ito, Gutiérrez, Livingstone, Penuel, Rhodes, Salen and Watkins2013, p. 6). In language learning, opportunities for creativity and authentic self-expression can be particularly important for motivation. Digital technologies can provide unrivaled opportunities to engage with learning in innovative and identity-congruent ways (Henry & Lamb, Reference Henry, Lamb, Lamb, Csizér, Henry and Ryan2020). To gain insight into the motivational affordances of the creative working practices we had observed in many of the MoTiSSE classrooms, we again drew inspiration from ideas developed by Ito et al. (Reference Ito, Baumer, Bittanti, Boyd, Cody, Herr and Tripp2010, Reference Ito, Gutiérrez, Livingstone, Penuel, Rhodes, Salen and Watkins2013). These researchers identify three properties of new media that facilitate creativity and self-expression. First, because of the ready availability of free-to-use, high-quality digital production tools, opportunities for multimodal self-expression are easily accessed. Second, because digital content is always open to appropriation, young people develop digital literacy skills that enable them to work creatively with new media, and to reframe, sample, remix, and curate the media content they meet online. Finally, because the digital media young people create can be easily distributed and shared within social networks, the opportunity to gain feedback and recognition from networked peers and online audiences can provide an important impetus for sustained engagement in creating artefacts with aesthetic appeal.
Investigate the ways in which the creation of online media can be motivational
In the MoTiSSE project we were able to closely examine activities where students made use of everyday digital tools and commonplace digital literacy skills to create artefacts which they shared with immediate peers and wider online audiences. Because the production process took place in digital arenas that were often open to view, students could follow the work of other groups in the class, and in this way gain ideas and inspiration for their own productions. For example, in a project focusing on poetry, students created a dedicated Facebook group where they shared work in progress, and received peer feedback (Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2019). In a project where students blogged about an imaginary journey to an English-speaking country on openly accessible websites, students monitored each others' work (Henry, Reference Henry2019). When, for example, one group decided to include a video containing bloopers alongside an ‘official’ vlog, several other groups followed suit.
For this research task, focus is directed to ways in which work involving the production of digital media and which draws on students' digital literacy skills, can provide opportunities for creativity and the expression of identities. Exploring these affordances, central research questions would be ‘How do students respond to activities that provide opportunities to be creative, and spaces for personal expression?’ and ‘What makes working with digital media motivational?’ As before, this task would involve a combination of classroom and digital ethnographies. Here too the researcher would focus on a particular group or groups of students. Following their work in the classroom, the researcher would also examine the digital artefacts and online narratives that students create. The focus would be on the ways in which, in the assemblage of a digital artefact, students might draw on knowledge and practices associated with particular media genres. Because for many young people online media production involves identity expression, and because this can be highly motivational, analyses could usefully focus on the ways in which students attune to opportunities for self-expression. To access these attunements, frameworks developed to uncover aspects of identity revealed in discourse – for example, Zimmerman's (Reference Zimmerman, Antaki and Widdicombe1998) model of discourse and social identities (described by Ushioda, Reference Ushioda, Murray, Gao and Lamb2011) and Tracy's (Reference Tracy2002) model of identities in discourse (described by Henry & Thorsen, Reference Henry and Thorsen2018b) – would provide valuable tools.
5. Conclusion
With an emphasis on authentic communication and meaningful interactions, the contemporary language classroom is a place where students' motivation will be conditioned by the quality of interpersonal connections. As Stevick (Reference Stevick1980) long ago recognized, when interactions in language classrooms draw ‘more widely and more deeply from the here and now’ (p. 26), students become more actively engaged in learning. Recognizing that there is ‘limited understanding of how processes of motivation evolve through day-to-day interactions and events in the classroom’, Ushioda (Reference Ushioda2016) has developed a research agenda for exploring motivation in relation to psycholinguistic processes. Highlighting the importance of investigations of L2 motivation at the micro-level of language acquisition, she calls for research ‘through a small lens’ which explores the ways in which teachers work ‘responsively and adaptively to shape … interactions and events in motivationally constructive ways’ (p. 566). Here, in sketching out research tasks with a relational perspective, I have argued for the use of a wider lens through which the social dimensions of students' motivation and engagement can be brought into focus. Using the concept of connective instruction (Martin & Dowson, Reference Martin and Dowson2009) as an organizing framework, I have outlined tasks that explore influences on students' engagement that stem from three types of connection: connections with the teacher as a person, connections with content that the teacher directs attention to or legitimizes as valid for language learning, and connections with the classroom working practices that the teacher promotes or supports.
Like Ushioda (Reference Ushioda2016), I believe that sharply focused accounts of learners' behaviors can provide insights that have value not only in relation to particular types of teaching practice, the L2 in focus, and the settings in which instruction and learning take place, but also in developing understandings with broader relevance. In this respect, and in an age where language learning takes place across a diversity of settings, approaches where classroom and digital ethnographies are combined may be of particular value. Moreover, because ethnographic research asks the question ‘what is going on here?’ local contexts of experience are always in focus. In times when contexts of learning are diversifying, and when language learning is no longer confined to bounded settings but is distributed across institutional, social, and virtual spaces, study of the interactions, relations, and practices that shape students' engagement can facilitate understandings of L2 motivation in a digitalized world.
In the complex and diverse environments in which language learning takes place, it needs to be recognized that the findings of individual studies are unlikely to be consistent across settings. For example, the scope for individual agency generally afforded to students in secondary school classrooms in Sweden means that the relational practices of the teachers in the MoTiSSE project are likely to differ from those working in other cultural settings, or with different age groups. It is in the context of such diversity – and the recognition that relational practices differ widely across settings – that the value of the connective instruction framework may lie. In providing the researcher with an integrated framework with which to study language teachers' relational practices, it provides a means of structuring the focus of ethnographic research. In using the model to focus on particular types of connection, and by carrying out cross-case comparisons, it becomes possible to develop insights into observable characteristics of relational practice specific to particular contexts of language teaching.
Finally, I would like to end this ‘Research Agenda’ article by reflecting on the potential of the connective instruction framework as a means through which teachers can research and understand the shaping of students' motivation in their own contexts of practice. While the tasks I have proposed assume that research will be conducted by a researcher–observer who comes to the classroom as an outsider, with necessary refinements they can also form the basis for programs of practitioner-led inquiry. When using the framework in an exploratory practice (EP) (Hanks, Reference Hanks2017) context, the objectives of inquiry would need to shift. Rather than investigating the circumstances surrounding students' engagement with a view to identifying and accounting for the sources of observable energy, the purpose would be to understand why and how students become engaged, and how emerging insights can be used to develop the quality of the classroom experience. Shifting focus in this way, so that the methodology could also serve a pedagogical purpose, the classroom and digital ethnographic approaches previously described could be usefully complemented by autoethnographic methods. Indeed, in carrying out EP with a focus on motivational connections created in day-to-day teaching practice, autoethnography would become the central tool for critical inquiry. As the teacher–researcher becomes engaged in reflecting on the ways in which his/her actions and interactions influence students' engagement, focus would extend beyond the self, to the self in relation to others (Pinner, Reference Pinner2019). With the connective instruction model (Martin & Dowson, Reference Martin and Dowson2009) as an analytical framework, the relational determinants of students' engagement can be explored. In this way teachers can become better placed to develop a motivational practice which is systematically constructed around connections, and which is sustainable over time.
Alastair Henry is Professor of Language Education at University West, Sweden. His research focuses on the psychology of language learning and teaching. With Zoltán Dörnyei and Peter MacIntrye, he is the co-editor of Motivational dynamics in language learning (2015, Multilingual Matters), and with Martin Lamb, Kata Csizér, and Stephen Ryan, he co-edited The Palgrave handbook of motivation for language learning (2020, Palgrave MacMillan). He was principal investigator for the MoTiSSE project (2014–2018), which was funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) (Grant 2013785).
