Primary school children’s peer interaction: Exploring EFL teachers’ perceptions and practices

Abstract

Peer interaction (PI) research to date has primarily focused on documenting the benefits and issues of PI among adult learners, with little research examining teachers’ perceptions and practices of PI among young learners (YLs) in intact English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms. To address this gap, this study explored how primary school teachers in Vietnam perceived and used PI in the classroom. The study used multi-methods, including classroom video recordings, field notes, semi-structured interviews, and stimulated recall interviews with seven EFL primary school teachers to explore their perceptions of PI. Field notes and interview data were analysed following a theme-based approach in combination with descriptive analyses of observational data. Findings revealed that PI was perceived by teachers as including two types: decontextualized form-practiced PI (DFPI) and genuinely communicative PI (GCPI). These results suggested that teachers’ perceptions of PI did not match the definition of PI adopted in this study which only considered GCPI as PI and excluded the DFPI. Regarding the GCPI, the teachers acknowledged its benefits but reported numerous drawbacks in implementing it. Notably, the teachers’ PI practices reflected their stated beliefs about PI, and the results showed that GCPI accounted for only a small portion (20%) of the lesson time. The results revealed a lack of awareness of PI and thus a limited understanding of communicative language teaching (CLT) and/or Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) among primary English teachers in a Vietnamese EFL context. The study provides insights into teachers’ varied interpretations of PI as it is practiced in authentic classrooms and points to a need for further teacher training in equipping primary school teachers with updated knowledge of TBLT, especially in terms of PI and skills to implement it more frequently in intact L2 classrooms for YLs.