ACTION RESEARCH:
DEVELOPMENT OF LEADERSHIP SKILLS IN GROUP WORK
Amanda J. Yoshida
Kanda University of International Studies
ABSTRACTIn language classes, motivation tends to ebb and flow depending on the "learner's
vision of oneself as an effective L2 speaker, the social pressure coming from thelearner's environment and positive learning experiences" (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2010,
p. 86). A focus on leadership skills development can be helpful both in and beyond
the classroom. The development of leadership skills in group work contributes tohigher self-esteem, self-confidence, and motivation (Sussman, 2015). This paper isan overview of an action research project that began as a teaching diary in 2016 andculminated in collecting learner data in the 2020 school year. Students in two
English classes in a medium-sized Japanese university participated in group work
activities, taking turns as leaders, and completed a survey to help them reflect on
their experiences. The author will share the qualitative results in a subsequent paper,
but the background, methods, and preliminary observations are presented here.
BACKGROUND
The Action Research project described in this paper was inspired by my previous experience withaction research in a previous workplace. After teaching in a secondary school for more than adecade, I struggled at my first university teaching job. I felt dissatisfied with my classes, but I
could not ascertain the root causes. A colleague who felt similarly agreed to undertake a twoyear action research project since we taught the same groups of students. For the first year, 2016,
we maintained a shared teaching diary (Mayse & Yoshida, 2017) in which we each wrote one
entry per week. Through qualitative analysis, two major themes emerged: Lack of learneraccountability and lack of teacher/student communication. In our second year, we undertook
the action part of the cycle in which we made changes. We agreed to include 10 minutes of talktime in groups with designated leaders at the beginning of classes with our new freshmen andsophomore students. Our teaching diary, observations, and questionnaires indicated general
improvement with class atmosphere and learner motivation. Students showed more interest in
getting to know each other and more positivity about communicating with us, their teachers.
The following year, I transferred to a different university; however, I believed that lack of learneraccountability and reticence pertaining to teacher/student communication were common issues
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in Japanese tertiary classrooms. I decided to continue the action research cycle with my newstudents. This time, I included a learner reflection section in the students' learning diaries as partof their homework requirement. In my first year at this university, I focused on just the leaderrole, which was the only role I specified for group discussions and group work. By making a leader
schedule, I determined that each student would have four or five opportunities to act in theleader role each semester. I requested those students write reflections about their leadershipexperiences each week. I hoped to read about the groups' experiences reported by the groupleaders, and I felt this was the most efficient way and would save time. Since I had 40 students
across two classes but only ten leaders, I planned to read ten entries each week and monitor
their group dynamics. However, to my surprise, the leaders tended to focus on their struggles
and successes as leaders. It soon became apparent that examining their developing leadershipskills could take my action research into a new direction.
In my second and third years at this university, I made minor changes to improve the logisticalmanagement of group leaders and their learning diaries. However, over these two years, I did
not collect data. Finally, just before my fourth year, I joined the Coordinated Action Research
Project, a project managed by James Owens (Principal Lecturer for Research in the English
Language Institute) and Professor Anne Burns of the University of New South Wales, Sydney,
and the Academic Advisory Board. To join this project, I had to reframe my action research andcreate research questions. With Professor Burns' help, I modified my research design andplanned to collect data that would allow me to answer the newly-formed research questions
below:
1. What aspects do learners focus on when reflecting on their own experiences as leaders ingroup work?
2. What kinds of improvements do learners notice in themselves as a leader for a semester?
3. Does the teacher's input, in terms of class instruction and individualized feedback, seem tocontribute to the learners' leadership experiences?
LITERATURE REVIEW
Several topics emerged and seemed significant throughout this project. This section will
examine relevant literature in the following topics: action research, group work, self-reflection,and the relationship between teacher feedback and learner motivation.
Action Research
Action research is an approach that involves a teacher researching their context by identifying
an issue and then making a slight change that could improve the situation (Burns, 2009).
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Teachers may wish to examine their teaching practice, their own learners' development, theirinterventions with the curriculum, and their teaching beliefs and practices (Fischer, 2001, as
cited in Burns, 2009). The teacher determines a systematic approach and collects informationthat may help answer the research questions concerning the issue. These data collection
methods are typically used in qualitative research, such as questionnaires, interviews, andteaching diaries. Burns (2009) points out that "action research can be contrasted with othertypes of research which may aim to hypothesize, describe, explain, interpret, theorize, andgeneralize - but not to make immediate changes in specific teaching practices within the
research context" (p. 115). Although there are several action research models, one model that I
feel is most useful is Kemmis' and McTaggart's (1986) model that describes the following stagesof a self-reflective action research cycle: Planning, action, observation, and reflection. This cycle
may last for a short or long period and may be repeated as often as necessary.
Group Work
Richards and Lockhart (1994) state that group work activities have several advantages, such asincreasing student participation, increasing opportunities for learners to practice and use thetarget language, promoting collaboration, and allowing learners to take a more active role intheir learning. Nunan and Lamb (1996) suggest assigning leaders to each group and asking
leaders to report back to the class to elicit more whole-class discussion.
Self-Reflection
As with any type of journaling, Richards & Farrell (2005) recommend that people write about an
event within the same day. Therefore, students who summarize and reflect on their group work
experiences in their learning journals days or weeks after the class may have forgotten importantdetails.
Teacher Feedback / Motivation
Stevens and Cooper (2016) describe the importance of providing feedback to motivate students
as they write learning journals because the presence of an audience (or a reader) andindividualized feedback may encourage them to continue. Regarding feedback, teachers may
be familiar with the sandwich method of both positive and negative feedback (Daniels, 2009)and its criticisms for being too focused on the presence of negative feedback (Von Bergen,
Bressler, & Campbell, 2014). However, Kato and Mynard (2015) introduced the concept of"reflective dialogue," in which advisors and teachers are encouraged to open a pathway forstudents to feel heard and consider their actions and beliefs as they progress.

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METHOD
In the previous section, I covered some important areas of the literature. Here, I will introduce
the participants, the interventions for this action research cycle, and some examples from thedata. The focus of this paper is not on the analysis itself but instead to introduce some examplesof data and how it will be analyzed for a subsequent paper on this topic.
Participants
The participants were members of my Media English classes, one of the core required courses.
They were second-year students majoring in English at a medium-sized university in Japan. In
2020, I taught two Media English classes of 20 students in each class. Due to the pandemic, allclasses took place online, using a combination of Zoom and Google Classroom. The classes met
on average twice a week. In each class meeting, the lesson began with a topic of discussion. As
in the past two years, the students were divided into groups of three or four students, and I
created a schedule for each unit. Each unit lasted about four weeks so that every student took
the leader role five to seven times throughout the spring semester. The small group discussions
were nicknamed Coffee Talk, referencing old television episodes of Saturday Night Live, an
American sketch comedy show (Coffee Talk, 2013). In all my classes, Coffee Talk occurred at the
beginning of class. However, the leaders maintained their leadership role throughout the entire
class period for any follow-up group work. They were called on frequently to report on orsummarize their group discussions to the whole class. At the beginning of the school year, I
described this research project to the students and asked them if they were willing to complete
a bilingual consent form via Google Forms. They were reassured that not offering consent wouldin no way affect their grades in the class. Any data used in the discussion section of this paper
will hide students' identities by referring to them as numbers and gender-neutral pronouns.
Intervention
In this cycle, I made the following changes:
1. Ask leaders to fill out a Google Forms survey at the end of class, which would take theplace of their learning journal.
2. Emphasize that Google Forms survey responses would not be included in their grades
for the class.
3. Check the Google Forms results each week and provide feedback to the group leadersindividually via email.
4. Incorporate advice based on group leaders' survey responses and my emailed responses
in the following classes via a slide and a short explanation in the following class.

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Data Collection
As mentioned above, the focus of this paper is not on the analysis and data itself. Instead, I will
introduce the tools for data collection.
Data collection tools included the Google Forms survey for group leaders, the email responses I
sent to each survey respondent, and the slides I created and used for the following lesson. Just
like the original learner reflections in their diaries, the survey consisted of three questions:
1. How did you feel during the group work/discussion time today? (Not good ←→ Great)
2. Please summarize your discussion/group activities in today's class.
3. How might you improve your discussion/group work the next time you are the leader ofyour group?
In Google Forms, the survey data is transferred to a spreadsheet, and after reading each line ofdata, I wrote a response in a new column and extracted a "theme" in another new column. Then
I copied and pasted my responses into individual emails for each group leader and sent them.
Finally, I used the extracted themes to create a slide for the following class. The following
examples were chosen because they demonstrate participants' responses in length and content.
Analysis
In this section, I will provide examples of the data raw data collected from three students. A brief
analysis will be offered after each example, followed by an explanation of how the data will beanalyzed in a subsequent paper.
Student #1
Please summarize your discussion/group activities in today's class:I could ask all my group members to say their opinions about each subject we discussed. Some
opinions were very funny and unique, so we could enjoy our discussion. We spoke actively in English
through the group activity, and it was a very good discussion.
How might you improve your discussion/group work the next time you are the leader of yourgroup?
We made a silence a little during group work, so I would like to speak more activity not to do thatagain next time I am in charge of the leader.
In response, I sent the following in an email:I am glad you had fun and enjoyed discussing the topics together. When silence happens, what can
you do to encourage people to start talking again? I once read that using people's names helps themget more confidence, and they may become willing to speak more because it seems like you reallycare about their ideas.
81Quick Analysis: This student reported that their experience was generally positive, andidentified one area to work on: Silence. In response, I praised the student and then advised them
about managing silence by asking a question to encourage deeper thinking and suggesting a
possible solution. This exchange holds two possible angles for analysis: The student's struggle
with managing silence and the teacher's approach in her response.
Student #2
Please summarize your discussion/group activities in today's class:I think my time management was terrible. And it's hard for me to do both hear my teammates' idea
and take a note.
How might you improve your discussion/group work the next time you are the leader of yourgroup?
I will itemize next time, make our discussion more smooth.
In response, I sent the following in an email:Time management is hard, especially when we have a lot of tasks in the lesson. Listening on Zoom
while taking notes can be slow-going. You may have to ask them to repeat their points or help you
summarize the main ideas so you can take notes on them. I agree that learning how to take notes
quickly will be a challenge, but it is great that you noticed this weakness and want to work on it.
Quick Analysis: This student reported that their experience was generally negative, andidentified two areas to work on: Time management and simultaneous listening/notetaking. In
response, I acknowledged the challenge of managing time and notetaking while listening. Then
I advised the student by suggesting a possible solution, praising them for noticing weaknesses
and considering ways to improve it. This exchange holds two possible angles for analysis: The
student's struggles with time management and listening/notetaking and the teacher's approachin her response.
Student #3
Please summarize your discussion/group activities in today's class:
We had three group work/discussions today. Firstly we talked about our studies in three English
classes. Most of our opinions were the same, and we had a time, so I asked an extra question whichclass is hard for you. Secondly, we shared about questions to Amanda's presentation. At last, wewatched a video and discussed if the TV show which is about LGBTQ goes on air, is it helpful toincrease awareness? Looking overall, we could have smooth conversations and share opinions
equally.
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How might you improve your discussion/group work the next time you are the leader of yourgroup?
In the discussion, I could not ask if they were ready to share, so I should have asked to make itsmooth.
In response, I sent the following in an email:Okay, it sounds like you wanted them to share their ideas, but they were not quite ready yet. Maybe
they needed a little more thinking time. It is a useful observation for you, as a leader, to notice thatthey need some more thinking time before you start the discussion. The topics were particularly
challenging in this class.
Quick Analysis: This student reported that their experience was generally positive and identified
one area to work on: encouraging participation. In response, I was not certain what was meantby "ready to share" because, in the summary, this student had praised themself for how well thegroup did to "smooth conversations and share opinions equally." It is possible that the student did
not know what to write here and felt it necessary to write at least one improvement point. I
acknowledged the challenge of encouraging participation, especially when presented with atime limit, a common issue in my classes. I advised the student by suggesting a possible solution
and emphasized the need for the leader to allow for thinking time in the case of challenging
discussion topics. In this case, I did not offer praise because the student did write a particularly
negative self-reflection.
Emerging Themes
After looking at the students' responses, I looked for one or two emerging themes and usedthose themes to create a slide for the following class. In this case, the emerging themes weremanaging silence, turn-taking, and giving space and time to think. The first of these themes is acommon issue in group work, but the third is a suggested strategy that leaders can use to
manage complex tasks when met with silence or reticence. At the beginning of the next class, I
showed the slide on leader skills and briefly explained the skills and some possible strategies
that new leaders could employ.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS AND DISCUSSION
In the previous section, I listed four changes I made to this iteration of the action research project.
Here, I will briefly explain how the new changes seemed to affect the atmosphere and students'
progress with some excerpts from the data. Then I will explain how the data answers each of theresearch questions thus far.

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1 Ask leaders to fill out a Google Forms survey at the end of class, which would take the placeof their learning journal.
At the end of each class, I thanked the group leaders by acknowledging their hard work and thenasked them to stay after class for a few minutes. Once all the students had left the class, I
reminded the leaders to fill out the survey as soon as possible and showed them where to findthe survey on Google Classroom. Most students filled out the survey within a day or two after
the lesson. Their prompt responses were an improvement over previous iterations when
students sometimes waited several weeks. The summaries and reflections in this iteration
seemed more detailed than in the past.
2 Emphasize that Google Forms survey responses would not be included in their grades forthe class.
In addition, the fact that the survey was not attached to their assessment meant that thestudents could be more honest in their responses. Many students regularly responded to thesurvey, indicating student buy-in. On their end, they were receiving prompt, individualized
feedback, and most of the feedback was reframed as advice to the whole class, specifically tofuture leaders. These aspects of the class were incorporated to help them develop theirleadership skills and not "assess" or "judge" them, which seemed to allow for higher quality andhonest reflections.
In Table 1 (below), Student #4 mentions having difficulties keeping up with the conversation
since the role involves listening carefully, commenting, and keeping the conversation going.
Student #5 admits that notetaking deterred them from participating actively in the discussion.
Meanwhile, Student #6 refers to the challenge of managing turn-taking and equal speaking time
amongst the members. These responses seem to reflect their authentic challenges with theleadership role and the task demands. It was clear that they took time to think about thequestions and the difficulties that their role as leaders presented on that day.
Table 1. This excerpt from the data shows some participants’ responses that display notions ofhonesty.
Student #4

Student #5

Student #6

To be honest, when we
discussed about the brand I
could not catch up theconversation and it took
some difficulties to continue
discuss. So I have to improve
my listening skills and comeI couldn’t speak a lot because
I thought I had to write down
about discussion. It was notgood so I want not only tolisten others opinion but tospeak a lot my own opinion,
too.

This time, the time was notenough to speak every
members because of one
person speak long. I’ll try to
management time to allmember can speak the next
time.
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up with some comments, notonly listening and asking.
3 Check the Google Form results each week and provide feedback to the group leadersindividually via email.
The day before each lesson, I checked the Google Form results (in their Google Sheets format)
and wrote responses to each student who had acted as a leader in the previous lesson.
Admittedly, this task was time-consuming because there were ten leaders across the two groups,
and my responses varied from 50-150 words. I then copied and pasted each response into email
messages and sent them to the students. I did not require or expect responses, but several
students referred to the individual feedback in future surveys when they acted as leaders again.
In Table 2 (below), the student took on my feedback from Week #6, specifically about using
members' names during discussions. First, they suggest that using names will help make thediscussion smoother on Zoom to avoid talking over each other. Later, they realize that usingnames will also help when their members become silent. Additionally, due to the app's
limitations, they struggled with using body language and reading others' body language on
Zoom. For instance, it is difficult for them to know if someone is willing to speak, and theystruggle with finding the courage to call on people to speak. To keep the conversation going,
they consider the various struggles that all leaders face.
Table 2. This excerpt from the data shows one participant who referenced the feedback theyreceived previously.
Week#

Student #7’s Reflections

Teacher’s Response3

We should add one more sentence It is great that you attempted to facilitate
when someone told the answer.
discussion even if silence happened
sometimes. Topics were a bit difficult. How
can you make sure there is less silence andmore talking? How can you encourage
people to share their ideas even if theirideas are not perfect or amazing?

6

Sometimes some people speak at thesame time. Therefore I want to call theirname so that the conversation issmooth.

Yes, that is true. It is not so hard to manage
turn-taking in real life because it is OK for
people to talk over each other. But on
Zoom, if one person is talking and a 2nd
person tries to speak, NO ONE can hearanything. That is something we all have to
get used to, so calling out their names and85

taking turns carefully is a great idea.
10

It’s good way to call someone’s namedirectly to avoid silent. I didn’t see a facebecause we opened the document on
their iPad, and I couldn’t know who
knows the answer from the facial
expression. I thought I was sorry toassign someone who don’t know theanswer but I need more courage to calltheir names.

It sounds like everyone is participating andyou could lead the group well. Yes, calling
their names is an important way to keep
the conversation going and get the taskdone in time. But, if you call on someone
and they are not sure of the answer, don't
be afraid to say, "It's okay. We'll come backto you. Please keep thinking about it." I
mean, of course they won't always know
the answers. You are doing very well, so
please just keep practicing.

13

I want to use a body language and speakwith eye contact. In addition, I will makea smile more while talking because I felt
everyone didn’t want to say theiropinions if the atmosphere was dark ina breakout rooms. Thus I will care about
my facial expression to make a active
conversation.

It is great that your discussion wentsmoothly, but it sounds like you areworried about making a good, comfortable
atmosphere. I think we need to startencouraging members to become moreinteractive and to not just rely on theirleader for that day. It should not be just theleader asking all the questions and making
all the comments...it should be a morenaturaldiscussion
witheveryoneparticipating,commenting,askingquestions, etc. Let's try to focus more onthat in the fall semester. Facial expressions
are quite important, even more so on
Zoom because we cannot use our gestures
as much. I recommend working on
this...though you always smile and look so
joyful! How can anyone feel dark when
they look at you?

4 Incorporate advice based on group leaders' survey responses and my emailed responses
in the following classes via a slide and a short explanation in the following class.
After reading their responses and composing and sending them my responses, I extracted someemerging themes that I could use as more general "advice" for a slide in the next lesson. Using aslide was a good way to introduce the new leaders and encourage them to pay attention toparticular issues or try new strategies. It seemed that framing this as if it came from the former
leaders and was for their benefit helped make them aware of the importance of being a good
leader and developing such skills. In Figure 1 (below), I would use the opportunity to praise86

students for improving their notetaking and summarizing techniques. Then I would focus moreon how they, as leaders, can participate more actively in the discussion.
It should be noted that although my emailed responses often included questions to pushstudents to reflect more deeply, it was rare to receive direct replies from them. However, one
particular student did respond to my email with the following: "Thank you for your advice. I
would like to study useful vocabularies and phrases by using vocabulary list on the Media
Reflection Journal so that I will be able to say my opinions clearly and shortly." In the future, I
would like to keep track of such responses from students and attempt to continue the dialogue
with them. This kind of individual attention may be beneficial for them.
Figure 1. This diagram shows the flow from a student’s response (from bottom) to teacher
feedback to whole-class feedback (top), which would be used in a slide for the next lesson.

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CONCLUSION
In the previous section, I discussed some preliminary observations. As I proceed with this projectand prepare a comprehensive analysis of the data, I would like to explore some issues that haveemerged regarding my own teacher development and future iterations of this action research
project.
Teacher Development
Collecting data and staying abreast of any leadership challenges allowed me to give feedback
individually and to the whole group. Moreover, challenges and strategies that we focused on
emerged organically. In other words, the emerging issues and strategies came from the students
themselves and not from a textbook or an authoritative figure (me) slightly outside of their circle.
In my feedback, I attempted to provide them with an adapted version of the sandwich-style offeedback (Daniels, 2009); however, my version started with praise, then gave suggestions oradvice, followed by questions for further reflection, and ended with encouragement. I plan tolearn more about the "Learner Advisor" language, such as Kato's and Mynard's Reflective
Dialogue (2015) to encourage learners and help them self-reflect without giving direct advice orsuggestions.
Future Iterations
In a future iteration, I plan to make more changes, including the following:
1. Allow students to be the group leader for the entire week of lessons. Students would be
leaders for two lessons in a row, allowing them to self-reflect on their leadership andmake immediate improvements by trying out strategies sooner rather than waiting
several weeks before their next turn. This would also lessen the teacher's workload of
having to prepare individual responses for each leader.
2. Request students to make a short speech at the beginning of the next class to explain
their challenges and attempted strategies and perhaps offer advice to other students. I
hope that this would result in even more vested interest on their parts, and rather thanme coming up with emerging themes based on the data, I can allow them to find andspeak about these themes themselves.
Leadership skills are essential and may be helpful in students' future careers. Therefore, it may
be helpful to incorporate leadership skill development into language classes since manyteachers use task-based learning and project-based learning approaches. Additionally, simple
group discussions can benefit from the incorporation of leadership reflection and training.
Although teachers may not have the wherewithal to respond to each student's reflections about88their leadership experiences, incorporating some training will allow them to develop this vital
skill that does not come naturally to everyone.

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