Abstract
This chapter takes the phenomenon of the ‘large class’ as a context in which to explore some of the issues raised by Dick Allwright in Chapter 1 in this volume (Allwright, 2006). The large class has often been perceived as a mundane problem which ought to lend itself to straight-forward technical solutions. However, the fact that such ‘solutions’ remain elusive indicates that this is an over-simplistic approach to the phenomenon. Efforts to understand the large-class phenomenon are under way, but these may be founded on unrealistic presuppositions regarding pedagogical efficiency. Alternatively, in our endeavour to make sense of the large class, a Darwinian metaphor may be more useful. This metaphor enables us to see that an individual classroom event, compared to other such events, possesses the characteristics of both commonality and idiosyncrasy (Allwright, 2006, direction 2). The Darwinian perspective also reveals that each classroom event represents the best available ‘local adaptation’ for the environmental niche in which it occurs.
An early version of this chapter was presented at the Fourth Language and Development Conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, 13–15 October 1999. I am grateful to Tony Crocker, Simon Gieve, Inés Miller and Amol Padwad for comments on other version. Tony Crocker, independently, has been using concepts from Darwinian theory in his own work on project sustainability.
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© 2006 Hywel Coleman
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Coleman, H. (2006). Darwin and the Large Class. In: Gieve, S., Miller, I.K. (eds) Understanding the Language Classroom. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523166_7
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