Feature Article
Against Control: An Essay
Miguel Sosa
International Christian University
Christine Pearson Casanave
Temple University Japan

Abstract
In this three-part essay, the authors provide a critical analysis of control
as it applies to teachers’ lives. In the first part, they present an overview
of control as a concept that prescribes and limits behavior in thelanguage classroom. In the second part, the authors analyze various
kinds of problems that are present in the use of control in the language
classroom. The third part provides an example of the importance ofknowledge of students’ preferences as a way to help teachers manage
classes without having to rely on disciplinarian approaches. The essay
concludes with a short discussion on unpredictability and nonlinearity
as inherent aspects of teaching and learning.
３節からなる本稿は、教師という職能における統制についての批評的分析を提示するものである。第１節では、語学の教室における行動の規定および制限としての視点から、統制のコンセプトについて概観する。第２節では、統制の行使に伴う語学教育現場での様々な問題点について分析を行っている。第３節では、規律主義的なアプローチに依存することのないクラス運営の一助として、学生の嗜好を認識することの重要性について事例を提示する。最後に、教育と学習に内在する予測不可能性と非線形性について短い論考を行い結論としている。
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The root of the word education is e-ducere, literally, to lead
forth, or to bring out something which is potentially present.
The opposite of education is manipulation, which is basedon the absence of faith in the growth of potentialities, andon the conviction that a child will be right only if the adults
put into him what is desirable and suppress what seems to beundesirable. There is no need of faith in the robot, since there
is no life in it either.
—Ted Orland, The view from the studio door: How artists find theirway in an uncertain world (2006, p. 112).
This essay had its origin in conversations we began to have after
reading two articles in the first issue of OnCue Journal. The first, by
Venema (2007), discusses the concept of Professional Learning
Communities, a concept from corporate management literature,
and whether they might appropriately be established in Japanese
universities. In a Professional Learning Community, teachers meet
regularly, adopt a shared vision of goals and a commitment tomeasurable results of student learning, and require specific means forassisting failing students, in many ways, noble objectives. The second,by Hanaki (2007b), discusses class discipline from the perspective of
Foucault’s prison Panopticon, which Hanaki uses metaphorically tosupport his approach to teaching (see the critique by Holland, 2008,
and interpretations of Foucault by Oksala, 2007). In different ways,
both articles seemed to promote a kind of control—the first very subtle,
the second less so—that we would like to interrogate. Our essay is
not just a critique of these two articles, but a product of our thinking
about the theme of control that the articles inspired. For purposes ofour discussion, we use “control” in a negative sense, as a top-downconcept that works against the flexibility, diversity, and unpredictability
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we hope to nourish in our teaching. We should note that we do notsupport an “anything goes” approach—our stance “against control”
does not preclude careful planning and assessment.
In the essay, we make the argument that in its usual meanings—
top-down authoritative mandates that prescribe and limit behavior—
the concept of control is misapplied to educational settings, and to
the second/foreign language classroom in particular. We first describe
several kinds of control by means of hypothetical and real examples. In
the second part of the essay we then offer some views on the problems
we see with these various kinds of control. In the third section wefollow with an example from an EFL classroom in Japan, in which theteacher responds to some of the issues raised in the first two sections.
We conclude with some slightly more theoretical and philosophicalperspectives on why the concept of control does not suit discussionsof educational processes and practices. To support this view, we draw
on a critique of Professional Learning Communities by sociologist
Tarnoczi (2006) (cited but not discussed by Venema). We also takeup the metaphor used by Larsen-Freeman (1997) of chaos-complexity
theory to remind ourselves that unpredictability and nonlinearity are
inherent aspects of teaching and learning.

Some kinds of control
1. Applied to our daily lives and to our teaching, the notion of“control” has no single meaning. For instance, a teacher might becontrolled by his schedule: The alarm goes off at 5 a.m., and the buzzer
gets turned off; the lights and heat go on; the stove gets turned on andthe hot water put on; fruit gets cut and quickly eaten for breakfast;looking at the clock, he realizes he has 22 minutes to catch the train
to school. He quickly dresses and rushes out the door, arriving at thetrain station just in time. He goes to the same spot on the platform as
yesterday (and the day before), and boards the same car as always,
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hoping for a place to sit down. The routine is soothing, and ordinarily
serves us well even as it dulls the senses.
2. A slightly different version of control continues at school in theform of routinized teaching when the teacher adheres to a fixed schedule,
syllabus, and materials, often resulting in formulaic teaching practices,
either because such practices are mandated or because the teacher is
new and inexperienced. We exaggerate here, but the point will beclear: For instance, class starts at 9:00. The teacher takes attendancefrom 9 to 9:05. From 9:06 to 9:10 she introduces the lesson, providing
instructions for what is to be covered during the next 80 minutes.
Then, between 9:11 and 9:20, the teacher writes five model sentences
and highlights a grammatical rule. The students repeat the model
sentences orally, while the teacher corrects possible pronunciation
mistakes as outlined in the teacher’s manual. From 9:26 to 9:55, thestudents read a paragraph from their textbook and translate it to their
L1. At 9:55, the teacher passes out a handout with the “prescribed”
translation on it, and until 10:25, the students check their translations
against the correct one. Finally, from 10:26 to 10:30, the students fillin some blanks in the textbook. At 10:30, the teacher wakes up thosestudents who have been sleeping and dismisses the class. Althoughexaggerated, the example comes from routines described to us byteachers who are required to work under very structured conditions,or by new teachers who self-impose those structures for fear of notdoing their job effectively. Beyond the survival efforts made by newteachers, inherent in this version of control is the belief that, in fairness
to students and in the interest of systematic and accountable learning,
all teachers must use the same materials, procedures, and methods ofassessment for parallel groups of students.
3. In the practices of testing, we have found yet another meaning ofcontrol: This concerns the relentless efforts to test and measure student
learning and teacher competencies. Drawing on several scholars who
have discussed Professional Learning Communities, Venema (2007,
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pp. 5, 7, 8, 12, 15) states that one of the criteria for a Professional
Learning Community is that results of learning must be measurable.
Many in the TESOL field have endorsed this view. This ordinarilymeans that evidence of successful teaching and learning is represented
by means of numbers and fixed categories, such as so-called objective
tests that can be graded (and given) by computers and by means ofcheck-list evaluation forms. The resulting scores are then reified, giving
the impression that they represent something real—a true assessmentof a student’s abilities or progress and of a teacher’s competence toteach, in a form that is “scientific.” The scores are then passed on tohigher authorities, who use them to make decisions about students’and teachers’ lives. (See the arguments about assessment in Casanave,2004).
4. A fourth meaning of control is that of the disciplinarian, who
confuses control with classroom management. We recognize that boththe ideas of control and of classroom management have the same aim:
to help students engage in an orderly and focused way in their learning
activities. Nevertheless, Hanaki (2007b), misinterpreting Foucault,
describes how he maintains control and discipline in the EFL classroom
by creating a prison-like environment as a way to keep students
focused. He first creates a “model” for the language class based on theisolation and scheduling that take place in a Panopticon, the institutionthat is designed so that every inmate can be viewed by the guards at
all times. In his words, “Applying Foucault’s argument (to the caseabove), the students and the teacher in an EFL classroom correspondrespectively with the prisoners and the guard in the Panopticon” (p. 26).
Students sit in assigned seating arrangements, participate in English
lessons according to the strict requirements of the teacher, and receive
grades (rewards and punishments) for everything they do. He argues
that restricting students’ sense of space and movement brings about
an “implicit dimension of discipline, adjusting students to the course
objectives” (p. 24). In his response to Holland (2008), he refers to this171

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kind of restriction and coercion as “a little push” and “encouragement”(Hanaki, 2008, p. 57).

Some problems with these views of control
1. Getting to school on time
This kind of control of a teacher’s life by a schedule is unremarkableand even necessary to some degree. It enables a teacher, and students,
to get to school on time. In fact, routines such as fixed schedules canalso limit our vision. However, it is possible to create some spark in theway the day begins—with the exception of the arrival time, by altering
what is known and predictable in small ways. For example, simply
standing at a different place on the train platform will give the teacher“a new view of the station” (John Fanselow, personal communication,
October, 2006). Similarly, our walking route to campus, and to an officeor classroom, can be changed from time to time, including simply
walking on the opposite sidewalk. The result is that we open our visionand begin to look for and to see things we have not seen before, eventhough we may have walked on the same street a thousand times.
Again, the point is to open our eyes to things unseen at times when life
appears to be controlled by unchanging routines.

2. Adherence to mandates and formulas
In this meaning of control, teaching is formulaic and recipe-like,ruled by the clock, by the predictability of the structure and thecontents of the lessons in the shared syllabuses and textbooks, and by
the pressure to cover everything. Such control leaves little room for
spontaneous interaction with students, for feedback, or for questions
by the students’ that pertain to their learning. There is no room fordigression, play, curiosity, and multiple interpretations, let alone
alternative answers to the questions provided in the textbook. Control
is enacted by the requirement that everyone keep up with a race against
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time, in a way that is “fair” (i.e., uniformly applied) to all students
and that is accountable to administrators. Discovery is replaced byconcern about whether we can cover the contents of the textbook andincrease students’ test scores. In cases where standardized teaching is
mandated or where new teachers have not yet developed spontaneity,
there may be little we can do, but the result is quite clear: Control
in the form of adherence to formulas breeds boredom. Students’ andteachers’ energy is sucked out by the predictable routines created by
textbooks and the accompanying packaged multimedia materials. No
one benefits except for the people who produce and sell the recipes.
But there is great danger in following recipes—in standardizing our
teaching. On the surface, recipes may make things run easier and morecleanly, but underneath, they erode possibilities of seeing learning andteaching as opportunities for very different kinds of students to engage inmeaningful discovery and for teachers to respond to unpredictability—
a basic feature of teaching and learning. Gardner (1999, p. 209) makes
a strong argument as to why teachers should refrain from getting on the
bandwagon of standardized teaching. In his words: “The art of teaching,
however, consists precisely in resisting [italics added] formulas. …
[T]he teacher can and should be encouraged to be as versatile [italics
added] as possible.”
For his part, Eisner (2002) notes that any efforts to push forstandardized teaching have a basic flaw. His comments pertain not
only to young students, but to college and adult learners as well:Children, as all of us know, do not come in standard sizes. A
visit to any fifth grade classroom will make plain at the outset
differences in temperament, the rates with which children
process different types of information, the backgrounds
they bring with them to the classroom, their level of selfconfidence—one could go on and on. This means that those
who work with them will always need the discretionary space
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and the educational imagination to invent practices that areappropriate for not only the individual child, but also suitable
for the particular time and situation in which something is tooccur. Standardized teaching, from an educational perspective,
is an oxymoron. (p. 7)
Another way to look at standardized teaching is to compare it to
the fast food phenomenon. We can think of standardized teaching as akind of “fast-food education.” It is like walking into a well known fast
food chain restaurant in our town, but this time half way around theworld. It does not matter whether one is in Tokyo, Bogotá, Cape Town,
or Monterey, the menu always looks and is served up the same. On
the surface, it may seem like a good idea to have all people (students
and teachers) “eating,” doing the same thing at the same time. But theeducational world is not a factory or a fast-food chain, and it is a fallacy
to think that students learn the same way and are going to come outof school knowing exactly the same things, with the same degree ofskills and ability. Yet, some argue that teaching practices would benefit
from being standardized. Venema (2007) wonders whether the importof corporate practices that have been labeled Professional Learning
Communities will benefit the university language classroom in Japan.
In Professional Learning Communities, teachers and administrators
work in teams that share ideas and “make judgments about what works
or doesn’t work on the basis of results in terms of measurable student
learning” (p. 7). But there is another side to these seemingly wonderfulideas. In agreement with Tarnoczi (2006), we find this seductive
discourse rather disturbing because there is danger of being trapped
into a narrow system that forces people to act in consensus and to beconsidered outsiders if they do not. As Tarnoczi points out, “Generally,
professional learning community discourse portrays conflicting beliefs
as something to be avoided or resolved” (par. 19).
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make administrative sense, policies of such nature dismiss bothteacher individuality, a powerful motivating factor among students,
and an appreciation of diversity. By teacher individuality we mean
the ways in which teachers present, interpret and adapt the contents
of a syllabus or a book and respond to particular students, all ofwhich good teachers do. Individuality—or lack of it—is what makes
us remember our best (and worst) teachers. In other words, teachers
need to know that there is some room for autonomy so that various
forms of interaction between them and their students can take placeand have some degree of uniqueness. Discussing the importanceof emphasizing diversity in teaching, Neil Postman (1995) uses theterm “sameness” to describe its opposite. He defines sameness as the“enemy not only of vitality, but of excellence, for where there are few
or no differences—in genetic structure, in language, in art—it is notpossible to develop robust standards of excellence” (p. 79). Alongthe same line, as Tarnoczi (2006) points out, the idea of consensuallyshared goals and practices subtly devalues diversity and conflicting
ideas, both necessary to stimulate the learning and growth of teachersand students.

3. Testing and measuring
One problem we have identified in the type of control inherent
in ordinary testing and measuring practices is the tendency to takeknowledge (often viewed as the things that the government, the school,
the textbooks, and the curriculum planners decide students shouldknow) and turn it into something that can be measured by a robot-likeact of selecting one-and-only-one correct answer. With the powerful
discourse of “science” and “technical reasoning” behind this view
(Tarnoczi, 2006), administrators and teachers come to believe that thecorrect-answer test is the only accountable way to measure learning.
We believe that this style of testing can be performed more efficiently
by test takers who are computers. Knowledge, seen in this way,
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becomes a commodity “to be acquired, never as a human struggle tounderstand, to overcome falsity, to stumble toward the truth” (Postman,
1995, p. 116).
But knowledge is not a commodity. If we see it as a commodity,
education becomes an “act of depositing, in which students are thedepositories and the teacher is the depositor” (Freire, 2000, p. 72).
Tests and quizzes then become acts of regurgitation. It is no wonder,
then, that from time to time, we see students who do all the homework,
come to class, and, to everyone’s surprise, do poorly on tests because
they are not good at or not interested in regurgitating. However, it isoften the final exam, in conjunction with weekly quizzes, that decides
the fate of these students. How can we conduct assessment without
being controlled by the specter of teaching to the test?
One idea is to follow Howard Gardner’s (1999) idea that learning
activities need to focus on the development of understanding. He
reminds us that:Students ought to be exposed from the start to examples ofunderstanding, and should be given ample opportunities topractice and perform their own understandings. Indeed, only
if they have multiple opportunities to apply their knowledge
in new ways are they likely to advance toward enhanced
understandings in their schoolwork and in their lives beyond
the schoolhouse walls. (pp. 128-129)
It is on these performances that students of all ages can be assessed.
Students’ accomplishments can thus be evaluated by evidence of what
students can do rather than just on what they know. In the L2 class,projects, portfolios, discussions, and presentations all show what
students can do in their L2, in ways that go beyond grammar andvocabulary learning that is then tested. These kinds of accomplishments
cannot be precisely controlled nor easily tested.
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Similarly, teachers demonstrate their own competencies better
through evidence of the activities they design for students andthe kinds of interactions in their classes than through “objective”
evaluation check lists or standardized tests of their proficiencies.
In Eisner’s words, “It is ironic that in the effort to improve teaching,teachers are subject to evaluation criteria that mince, dice, and slice
their teaching into bits and pieces, thereby obscuring the necessaryorganic character of excellent teaching” (Eisner, 1991, p. 120, note 4).
Teachers’ competence in their disciplinary fields can also be shown
through the kinds of professional activities they engage in. Here, too,these accomplishments cannot easily or accurately be tested andmeasured. The point is that, in contrast to the view espoused by those
who insist on measurable and objective results of learning, the best
evidence of learning and understanding on the part of both students
and teachers may lie beyond the scope of testing and measuring of theso-called objective kind.

4. Classroom control
We find problematic the idea that control, of the kind discussed by
Hanaki (2007b), is needed for classroom management and learning.
Good classroom management and control are not the same thing. On
the surface, it looks as if the compliant and complacent students in
Hanaki’s class are paying attention to, and possibly learning from, theirlessons, allowing the teacher to make sure the course objectives arecovered. But we are not convinced that the kind of compliance that
Hanaki talks about translates into engaged learning that goes beyond
satisfying the teacher’s demands. Paulo Freire (2000) describes suchenvironments as “the imposition of one individual’s choice uponanother, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed tointo one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness” (p. 47). The
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predictable. In the third section of this essay we provide an example
of a class in which students are helped to be engaged and focusedwithout being controlled in this limiting way (see also a different viewof Hanaki’s teaching in Hanaki, 2007a).
Moreover, as did Holland (2008) we found the prison analogy
particularly disturbing. As Hanaki (2008) admits, the classroom is nota prison, where the teacher’s role is to exercise power over haplessstudents. Treating students like inmates in a Panopticon, as describedby Foucault and applied metaphorically by Hanaki, is not just a way
to exercise power; it is also a powerful way to prevent students fromdeveloping a positive rapport with their teacher as well as their peers.
Students who are constrained by teaching practices based on classroom
control disguised as classroom management often show little interestin learning. Unfortunately, some teachers even at the university level
do not realize this and continue to supply their students with the sametightly controlled and routinized activities. This is so even thoughteachers themselves might be bored with their own routines. In thisway, a vicious cycle that usually begins in junior high school or even
earlier never ends. Similarly to what happens to delinquents in oursocieties, students in the authoritarian classroom, quickly learn tomistrust the people who are supposed to help them (the teacher in thiscase), and to develop a negative attitude toward learning for its own
sake. Once that negative attitude has been formed, it is very difficult tochange it by the imposition of more rules and recipes. Students need aclassroom atmosphere that encourages them to experiment freely withboth ideas and language, not an atmosphere that restricts that basic
freedom, and that includes the freedom of not wanting to participate.
After all, it is their choice.
In short, by supplanting management with control, teachers ensurethat students will be deprived from experiencing first-hand what
it means to learn another language—a creative, unpredictable, anddynamic process. Such students have a great deal of un-learning to178

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do by the time they enter university, if they are lucky enough to findthemselves in a language class that is the antithesis of a prison.
To sum up briefly our problems with the views of control that wehave described in this article, we find that approaching our lives, ourteaching, and students’ learning from a position of control (recipes,
enforced consensus, standardized teaching and testing, physical andmental constraints) limits our vision, our willingness to experiment, tochallenge norms, and to think and act creatively. Equally important,it limits the trust that students and teachers can productively have ineach other. Put broadly, we agree with Solomon and Flores (2001, p.
29), who say:When we attempt to control instead of respect, trust, andinspire one another, the results will always be strained and theconsequences can be disastrous….Reliance on strict laws andsevere sanctions is the hallmark not of a civilized society, butof a not-yet-civil one.

An example
In opposition to the prison analogy, we believe that it is possible
to help students focus without having to resort to a rigid approach or
to an overly authoritarian classroom. Our idea of a successful class is
one where unpredictable things happen because students know that
their ideas and views are valued and encouraged and that their input,
including new questions on their part, will contribute to everyone’s
understanding of the topic at hand. Miguel tells a story of a class wherea little creative thinking on his part helped students to become focusedand to see some practical purpose for learning English:
A couple of years ago, I was asked to teach a first-year class at a
women’s college. The school provided teachers with a syllabus for theclass, a textbook and its counterpart, a teacher’s manual. The syllabus
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stressed that I should encourage students to talk, write, and read in
English. Chapter One in the book was entitled “Asking Questions.”
On the very first day of classes, I walked into a room with 23 firstyear students. For about ten minutes, I made attempts to communicate
with them. I had prepared a series of questions which I thought wererelevant to the first chapter in the book, questions that in my mind werealso interesting for them. I wanted them to tell me about themselves,
what dreams and goals they had. However, my approach felt outdated
as each one of my questions was met with silence.
While I was asking questions, I noticed that students were keeping
their hands under their desks. From the place I was standing, theylooked very polite and well behaved. In reality, they were checking
their cell phones. Gradually, some of them began to chat. I felt ignored.
This was the point where I knew something had to be done or I would
lose them for the rest of the semester.
I remembered that the sixth chapter in the book was about past
events. There were some black and white pictures of old buildings,
as well as pictures of objects we no longer use. I decided to put
together Chapters One and Six. I told my students to look at the typesof questions in Chapter One, and tell me whether they were difficult oreasy to understand. Some students opened their textbooks and lookedat the questions. Again, I asked them if they knew these questions towhich they replied, “yes.” “OK,” I said, “then, let us think of questions
we would like to ask, not to the person sitting next to you but to yourgrandparents.” Their faces showed me that “Eh?” expression meaning“What?” that many teachers know. “Well, here is an idea,” I said.
“Please look at Chapter Six. Think about the pictures you see on thefirst page of the chapter. Some of those pictures were taken at least
60 years ago. At that time, there were no cell phones, no email, andno computer games. Think about the things people in the pictures did
every day. Then, I would like you to look again at the questions in
Chapter One. Using those questions as models, write ten questions
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that you would like to ask your grandparents about the time when
they were the same age as you are now. For example, instead of asking“what did you do yesterday after school?” you can ask one of yourgrandparents “what did you do every day after school?”
One student said, “Tsumannai,” the Japanese equivalent for“boring.” I replied, “The best part is next.” I told them to write theirquestions, check them with their peers, and then call their grandparentson their cell phones, and interview them on the spot, making notesof the grandparent’s responses. Apparently, none of my students had
imagined that a cell phone could be used for interviewing someone.
Once they knew that they would be using their cell phones, that thequestions were relevant because it was they who produced them,and that the results of their interview would have to be translated into
English, they set to the task. From that moment on, I had the classinterested, and participation and classroom management were nolonger problems. Not only that, but we managed to cover the material
from two chapters in one week. I continued to ask them to use theircell phones from time to time to check information on the Internet, or
to take pictures of interesting things they saw in their daily lives andwrite about them. All tasks were based on the themes in the book.
Testing was based on their work, but offered them options. Each week,
I would ask them five questions related to the task they were expectedto accomplish during the week. Students were required to answer only
one question. That way they had the opportunity to demonstrate whatknowledge and English structures they felt comfortable using.
We decided to share this story with readers for several reasons.
First, we would like to remind teachers that with a little creativity
disruptive or unengaged classrooms are usually manageable. It all
depends on how we engage and respond to the syllabus, the book, thecontext, and the students themselves. Even in test oriented programs,
it is possible to conduct classes without having to resort to coercive
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the subjective, limited, and local nature of effective testing. How weinterpret scores, what we test and how something gets tested involve
humans making decisions about particular groups that we are familiarwith. As such, we believe that using testing in order to establish
control and to measure results that are in many cases unmeasurable,
such as the results of students’ cell phone interviews, is fundamentally
flawed. Bill Johnston (2003) reminds us that “the learning process is ahighly individual one, and the teacher – student relation is similarly
unrepeatable” (p. 97). Third, we find that by connecting the contents
of a textbook and a syllabus to something in the students’ world, we
can actually manage to cover the important points in textbooks. When
students are encouraged to provide multiple interpretations, whether areaction to a reading, or in using grammatical rules (students producing
their own examples and consulting with the teacher for explanations
on what works and what doesn’t), they can make progress. But whenand how these connections happen is unpredictable.
True, sometimes things may not work as fast as the curriculum
planners would like, but whatever material is covered will be
understood. In this way, we would like to repeat that we do not believe
or support an “anything goes” approach to teaching, as we mentioned
in the introduction. In other words, we do not believe that learning
can take place in situations in which there is not an agenda of somesort. Nevertheless, our idea of a successful class is when unpredictable
things happen because the teacher is not restricted by formulas. Instead,the teacher attempts whenever possible to connect the students’ world
with the materials. In such scenarios, students’ ideas and views arevalued and encouraged and their input is seen as a contribution to
everyone’s understanding.

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Conclusion: The unpredictability of teaching andlearning and the dangers of consensus
We are making these arguments against control (e.g., against
measuring, standardized testing, formulaic teaching, inflexible
scheduling, and overly rigid classroom management) because
we believe that teaching and learning are unpredictable activities
that cannot be controlled and measured precisely and still remain
meaningful. These ideas are not new (see, for example, work by Dewey,Freire, Postman, Eisner, and others), and in recent years have been
linked, metaphorically at least, to concepts in chaos and complexity
theory. Chaos theory (a mathematical theory that emphasizes featuresof some systems in nature such as nonlinear complexity, sensitivity totiny changes, and the emergence of new but unpredictable patterns)
has been increasingly applied metaphorically to the social sciences
and to second language research (Harshbarger, 2007; Larsen-Freeman,1997). This metaphor increases our awareness of the unpredictable yetpatterned nature of human behavior and of language acquisition.
As long ago as 1989, Cziko argued that chaos theory helps us
understand that “student variables such as intelligence, motivation,
cognitive style, socioeconomic status, and background knowledge areat best extremely difficult to measure and impossible to control” (p.
24). In the field of second language acquisition, Larsen-Freeman (1997,
p. 154) also drew on chaos theory to claim that “If SLA is indeed acomplex nonlinear process, we will never be able to identify, let alone
measure, all of the factors accurately. And even if we could, we would
still be unable to predict the outcome of the combination.” Harshbarger(2007) as well argued that most aspects of second language learning
are impossible to control. This is because language is an example ofa complex system in which the results of its myriad interactions are
unpredictable.
We do not know what the future is of applications of chaos183

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research, or whether it will turn out to be primarily a useful metaphor(Cziko, 1989; Larsen-Freeman, 1997), the basis for empirical research
programs (Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2006; Eve, Horsfall, & Lee, 1997),
or a passing and pretentious fad (Swan, 2004). At this point in our
understanding, however, we believe that unpredictability is a featureof complex systems both in the physical and the social sciences. Inline with this view, we also know that the norm for language learners
is individual variability as they interact with their teachers and themillion other things in their environments (Larsen-Freeman, 2006).
As for the goal of consensus—of shared visions and values—in theProfessional Learning Communities discourse, we agree with Tarnoczi’s(2006) critique that the discourse subtly promotes managerial control
of teachers. Once teachers are required to share a consensual visionof how to teach and test, one that has been mandated and constructedby authorities with only a veneer of collaborative participation byteachers, conflicting views are seen as disruptive and as working
against a collective good. Such a view, according to Tarnoczi (2006),
represents a management strategy designed to control the behaviorof teachers. He adds a point implied by this view: “By assumingthat conflicting interests can and should [be] resolved, professional
learning communities discourse promotes the notion that there is asingle unitary view of education” (par. 18). As should be clear in our
essay, we do not believe that a unitary view of education is possible ordesirable.
We strongly support the need for change, but not change that is
mandated or that requires consensus. To promote change and growthin both students and teachers, we hope to encourage, not stifle,
unpredictability, diversity, and variability. And as chaos-complexity
theory hints, although it may be unpredictable, learning on the part ofstudents and teachers is not random. There are patterns, and there ischange in the direction of greater complexity, as long as nothing blocks
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Against Control: An Essay OnCUE Journal, 2(3), pages 167-187

growth. But control of the kinds we have discussed here blocks bothstudent and teacher growth. These blocks include teaching formulas andmaterials that aim for standardized practices, testing that standardizes
what students and teachers are supposed to know, attempts tomeasure knowledge in ways that limit and trivialize it, and classroom
management techniques that force students into compliance.

“[Teaching is] an organic activity, one that can be described inbroad outlines, that has recognizable patterns, but that is also
unique in each instance of its occurrence.”—Mark A. Clark, A place to stand: Essays for educators introubled times, (2003, p. 154)
Acknowledgments: We thank two anonymous reviewers and Dexter
Da Silva for their suggestions, which helped us improve this essay.
Special thanks as well to Stephanie Vandrick for her comments andencouragement.
Miguel Sosa

I have two careers, one as a language teacher and the other as amusician. After teaching music at a university in Canada, I became
interested in learning--how we learn music and languages, and how
we turn out the way we do. I then went back to university to learn
about teaching languages. There, I was encouraged to ask questions
about everything. In doing that, I discovered writing. Now, in
addition to playing several piano concerts a year, I help students see
how writing stories connects people.
Christine Pearson Casanave

For many years, I have been working with language teachers andstudents, writing and sometimes publishing, reviewing and editing
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manuscripts, and reading while I walk. For most of those years, I havedivided my life between California and Japan. It is less dangerous toread and walk in Monterey than in Tokyo, so in the interest of longevity
and further study, I will probably spend more time there in the future.

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