What is the Role of Shyness in Classrooms? Exploring Views of PreService Teachers on Shyness in English Language Teaching Context

Abstract

Shyness appears as an important factor affecting teachers’, pre-service teachers’ and students’ performance, productivity, creativity and how teachers handle classroom management situations in the classroom environment. In this context, the purpose of the research is to unveil teacher and student shyness and teachers’ classroom management strategies in the field of foreign language teaching and suggest new avenues for the investigation of the differences among teachers’ classroom management strategies in terms of teacher and student shyness. Participants were 99 pre-service English teachers attending a state university in Turkey. Participants completed a shyness scale measuring their shyness levels and responded to hypothetical vignettes depicting different hypothetical students. The data gathered were analyzed through ANOVA, and the findings revealed that pre-service English teachers’ high-powered strategy usage showed evidence of a meaningful difference depending on student shyness, student gender, teacher gender, the interaction of student shyness and student gender and the interaction of student shyness and teacher shyness while social learning strategies indicated a significant difference depending on student shyness and the interaction between student shyness and student gender. Findings are discussed in detail in terms of the implications for all stakeholders including institutions, policy makers, teacher candidates and researchers.