Exploring the use of accounts to manage reluctant participation in microteaching sessions
Classrooms often fall silent when the teacher poses a question. The pause is not always due to a lack of knowledge. Students may be hesitant, unsure, shy or simply unwilling to participate, and these feelings are often shown through subtle cues such as gaze aversion, delayed responses, posture, facial expressions or quiet laughter.
Such moments can be especially challenging for novice teachers. While ensuring that the lesson is not interrupted, it is also important to avoid the impression that participation is being forced. This makes turn allocation—deciding who speaks next—not just a classroom routine, but a delicate interactional skill. It requires sensitivity, timing and awareness of student readiness.
A new study conducted by Professor Eunseok Ro of Pusan National University and Professor Hyunwoo Kim of Yonsei University examined how novice teachers deploy accounts during microteaching sessions.
The findings were published in The Modern Language Journal.
"Rather than treating student reluctance as an individual trait, we examined how teachers themselves orient to and manage displays of unwillingness moment by moment in interaction. Our analysis shows how novice teachers use accounts to make turn allocation more interactionally acceptable while maintaining the progressivity of classroom talk," explained Ro.
Using conversation analysis, the researchers studied video-recorded teaching demonstrations by undergraduate L2 English education majors in South Korea. During these sessions, preservice teachers taught in English while their classmates participated as students in a simulated classroom environment. The researchers identified three key strategies used by preservice teachers to soften turn allocation.
First, teachers grounded nominations in students' visible behavior. For example, instead of simply choosing a student, one teacher referred to the student as having a "comment face." This framed the nomination as a response to the student's facial expression rather than as an arbitrary exercise of teacher authority.
The teachers also sometimes expressed discomfort before nominating a reluctant speaker. In one case, a teacher said that choosing someone made them nervous before directly selecting a student. This expression of discomfort acknowledged the social awkwardness of assigning a turn when no one had volunteered.
Finally, teachers often escalated participation gradually, from open invitations to whole-class instruction or direct nomination. This step-by-step movement allowed teachers to preserve the preference for voluntary participation before making participation obligatory.
The teachers also used affiliative resources such as smiles, laughter and playful tones to manage tension and maintain a sense of classroom affiliation.
The findings highlight the significance of microteaching. Microteaching is not just a rehearsal of lesson content. "It is a space where novice teachers practice managing participation, silence, accountability and student autonomy. Teacher education programs can use these sessions to help preservice teachers become more aware of how they manage reluctant participants and support the smooth progress of lessons," noted Ro.
Overall, the study reveals that effective classroom participation management can depend on small details like a pause, a smile, a softened explanation or a carefully framed nomination. The study shows that nominating a reluctant student is not a procedural act, but an interactional process.
More information
Eunseok Ro et al, How pre‐service L2 English teachers use accounts to mitigate turn allocation to unwilling participants in microteaching, The Modern Language Journal (2026). DOI: 10.1111/modl.70047
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Citation: Exploring the use of accounts to manage reluctant participation in microteaching sessions (2026, July 20) retrieved 20 July 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-07-exploring-accounts-reluctant-microteaching-sessions.html
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