The ‘power game’: Interactional asymmetries in EFL collaborative language teaching

This study examines South Korean EFL classrooms with an interest in revealing the hierarchical relations of power and status in co-teaching partnerships. To investigate how diff erent teacher roles and possible issues of dominance are engendered and negotiated in each teacher pair, I focus on what conversation analytic studies have conceptualized as interactional asymmetries, a temporally unfolding process through which participants are positioned and portrayed in relation to each other (J.-E. Park, 2007; Robinson, 2001). The data involve video-recordings of co-taught elementary EFL lessons wherein two teachers – a Korean and an American teacher – are present in the classroom. The analysis shows that while the teachers are institutionally granted an equal co-teacher status, their actual classroom practices exhibit an asymmetry in teacher authority regarding the management of classroom contingencies and student discipline. Focusing on these interactions, I will demonstrate how the participants orient to asymmetric teacher roles and relationships during the lessons, and consequently what those moments reveal about the interactionally occasioned co-teacher rights, responsibilities and expectations.