In April 2016, I traveled to the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) Conference in Birmingham (my first IATEFL conference). I attended about 14 sessions over 3 days, presented my work, and enjoyed several interesting discussions with teachers from the United Kingdom and around the world. In this article, I would like to share some of my thoughts and the questions that arose (both mine and others’) from the discussions in the presentation “Communication Issues in the Multicultural Classroom” by Vivien Gilles, a business English teacher in the United Kingdom with a master’s degree in intercultural communication. For this article, I am relying on memory and my informal notes, and therefore this is not an attempt to reconstruct or summarize the entire presentation.

The presenter first briefly explained some key points of Hall’s (1996) and Hofstede’s (2001) cultural dimensions. Relevant to the topics of this article are the concepts “power distance” (Hofstede, 2001) and “proximity” (Hall, 1966). While she also touched on several other issues, such as clothing (e.g., Are bare arms for a female teacher okay?) and the deferential versus the overassertive student, the topics that linger in my mind relate to classroom seating. Two points are the focus of this article: the classroom layout and the question of whether or not teachers should assign seats to students.

Classroom Layout

The presenter began by showing three simple, effective diagrams for some typical classroom configurations:

1. tables in a U-shape, with the teacher at the front
2. lecture-style, with all seats facing the teacher in front
3. separate tables, with several seats at each—the teacher walks around.
   
   

In groups, we were to discuss which classroom layouts we have used and the cultural discomfort students might have with them. To her suggested configurations, I would like to add two further options that have come up in my own teaching experience:

1. tablet-arm chairs in a U, with the teacher at the front
2. boardroom-style, in which everybody, including the teacher, sits around one large table
   
   

Before and after the group discussions, the presenter mentioned some cultural issues that instructors should consider when planning seating arrangements. Her comments included the following questions (in my own words):

1. Authority/Power Distance of the Teacher: If the tables are in a U configuration or stand alone throughout the room, does the nonsitting teacher lack authority in the students’ eyes? (On the other hand, I wonder as well if the teacher loses authority when sitting at the board table like an equal.) What about if a teacher sits on the edge of a table, as sometimes happens in casual Western educational environments? These behaviors may be unsettling for students from hierarchical cultures. As the presenter noted, “equality is not comfortable for everybody.”
2. Status/Power Distance of Students: With lecture-style seating, do the best students, imposing their own power distance, claim the chairs in the first row and the weaker ones sit in the back? Is this a custom they brought with them from their country of origin, where it was the expected pattern?
3. Proximity, Teacher-to-Student: If the teacher walks around (and has) to lean over seated students to look at their work, do they get too close? Is this issue even more critical when two genders are involved?
   
   

My group of three participants found it stimulating to discuss the points above. For example, we commented on the power distance of students to each other, which we were usually less acutely aware of in the classroom. We also discussed how tablet-arm chairs can make people feel more vulnerable because they (their bodies) are more exposed than when they sit behind a table. I can remember some Japanese women who wore skirts telling me about this in my classes some years ago. While we did not have sufficient time to draw any big conclusions as a group, we enjoyed our exchange of experiences.

Reflecting later on the presenter’s words, I would add that, even if one’s answers to most of the questions above is “yes,” this does not necessarily mean that an instructor must change her or his behavior. There are other ways of showing authority or credibility besides the choice of classroom configurations. Awareness of the options is key.

Seat Assignment

During the discussions, a group near mine talked about assigning seats to students. One participant felt that it was important to assign seats on the first day(s) in order to break up cliques, which seemed to be mostly based on first language/culture in his classes. He believed that students should be presented with a situation in which they had to use English to truly communicate with the students sitting near them. He explained that he would usually stop the practice of assigned seating after some time and became disappointed when/if the students resumed the practice of sitting in their ethnic groups. On the other hand, my own feeling is that students learn best when their stress level is not too high—in other words, that they feel they have some control and choice over a new situation. Therefore, I believe they should choose their seats themselves, especially on the first day(s) of class. I have had classes in which students often assume new seating arrangements as well as those where students rarely voluntarily sit in a different chair throughout the course. I do assign seats for group work tasks, for a variety of pedagogical reasons, such as matching students’ professional vocabularies or English levels.

While the topic of seat assignment was probably not planned by the presenter, it elicited a healthy group minidebate. There are surely variables that we could not delve into at the session, such as the number of first languages in the class and the students’ education level. These variables would need to be factored into an in-depth conversation.

Conclusion and Call for Further Discussion

Within the time limits of the presentation, the goal was not to come to a final conclusion but rather to share viewpoints and experiences in order to gain greater understanding of these cultural issues in the classroom. The experience caused me to reflect on my own practice. Kudos to Vivien Gilles for this stimulation!

I would like to read more viewpoints. Please tell us what you do in your classroom: Do you assign seats or not? Use the sidebar poll of this newsletter. Let's see what our discussion results are: How are we, as a group, solving the issue of classroom seating in our daily teaching?

References

Hall, E. T. (1966). The hidden dimension. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture's consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Joan Bartel, MA, is a contract professor at Humber Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning, Toronto. She teaches occupation-specific language training to immigrant professionals and is a guest lecturer in TESL programs. She also writes and presents on soft skills and immigrants’ critical communication needs for employment and is the author of Office Soft Skills, a self-study textbook that responds to those needs.