Education | UM professor challenges views of classroom silence

In a recent academic journal article, a University of Macau (UM) education professor has contributed to a discourse on cultural barriers in how Western teachers tailor their approach to Chinese classrooms.

Specifically, the paper, which is titled “Silence and Silencing in the Classroom of Portuguese as a Foreign Language in Macau: Identity and Interculturality” and is authored by Professor Roberval Teixeira e Silva, attempts to break down conceptions about the differences in the vocal responsiveness between Western and Chinese students.

According to the paper’s preface, the study addresses what Teixeira e Silva terms “an intriguing element that most Western teachers face in language classrooms in China: the so-called ‘Silence of the East’”.

“In language classrooms and especially in situations in which Western teachers are engaged with Eastern students, silence can acquire connotations of a cultural barrier,” wrote Teixeira e Silva. This has resulted in the contrasting slogan: “the silent East versus the talkative West.”

Drawing on his background in Portuguese education, including the professor’s own ten-year tenure as a foreign language teacher in Brazil as well as those of his peers in education in Macau, Teixeira e Silva offers mild criticism of the Western interpretation of classroom silence which fails to consider other perspectives on society, culture and language.

“This silence in Chinese classrooms is usually understood from the socio-cultural point of view of the teachers […] normally [creating] a restricted and stereotypical identity of Chinese students as silent and hence passive,” concludes Teixeira e Silva.

However, classroom silence, even without taking into consideration cultural perspective, can be the outcome of a variety of causes for the child in question. It can signal “resistance, boredom, respect, discouragement, disinterest, thoughtfulness, or such interactional strategies as denial, agreement, request, warning, command, threat, [or] confirmation.”

Therefore silence can be a positive or negative indicator and its “inherent ambiguity” means that “one of the best ways to understand the meanings of silence is to analyze interactions as they occur.”

Within the context of Chinese classrooms and Chinese culture, Teixeira e Silva’s studies into Portuguese language education in Macau finds that children are mostly compliant with cultural expectations. The silence, he writes, “is not intrinsic to the students, but a cultural demand.”

“In fact when the Chinese students keep silent in a classroom, they are not being passive, but rather acting according to cultural indoctrination,” he claims.

Teixeira e Silva is a professor at the UM’s Department of Portuguese, as well as a consultant for Macau’s Education and Youth Affairs Bureau. His educational qualifications and research areas of interest include Portuguese language and linguistics, and cultural and educational interaction in Sino-Brazilian exchange.

Chinese-style teaching trialed in Britain

Other studies and experiments have surfaced in recent years, contrasting and exploring Western and Chinese teaching styles.

Last year a BBC television show aired on Hong Kong’s TVB Pearl, where some 50 British children aged between 13 and 14 were taught by Chinese teachers under a regime inspired by the Chinese education system – though apparently greatly exaggerated.

Intended partly as an experiment and partly as entertainment, the documentary–drama sought to raise a discussion about the relative merits of the British and Chinese systems. However, cultural expectations ingrained in the teenage students proved a resistant barrier to overcome, even for the veteran Chinese teachers.

The documentary-drama was inspired by the success of Shanghai municipality in topping the Programme for International Student Assessment tables – an index that compares educational achievement across the world.