Peter C. Gronn’s And Yongcan Liu’s Perspectives On Resolving Conflicting Issues

Introduction: The project is to review the accomplishment of school administration by Peter C. Gronn and the social organisation of talk in interaction at work in a language teacher professional community by Yongcan Liu. The concept will be linked to modern day business environment in terms of planning and resolving conflicting issues in an organisation. Talk is very essential to the success of every organisation. The way and manner it is being utilised should be of utmost priority to any organisation. Talk as the work (Peter C. Gronn’s perspective): Talk as the work concept was based on a case study of administering a school which demonstrates how talk serves as a central point to the achievement of control in the school. Analysis of extracts of a transcript of talk by the principal showed school administrators trying to direct and control the deployment of personnel in conformity their wills and intents. The principal together with his two immediate subordinates dealt with this issue by talking in less informal way to the administrators in the corridor and staff room. The result not only show the administrators were actively engaging in the talk, but rather the talk was used to loosen administrative control. Thereby promoting a conducive environment. Pondy 1978, commented that a great proportion of administrative activity consists of talk in interactional settings, nevertheless talk remains a neglected dimension in leadership and administration. This is a major issue in many organisation today.

According to Healy 1978, control is seen as an aspect of administration for which talk is a key resource, particularly for staff relations, and in schools, talk is potential instrument of control for both principal and staff. I also suggest for any viable organisation following such route. Methods employed:(Gronn 1979, 1981b), confirmed that participants’ talk was sampled in a school council setting and research was done on them. The research indicated how school principals and parents used their words to pursue their respective interests in obtaining their goals. As the school was a small state primary, prior information about the school settings had been given by the principal and all staff were on first name terms with the principal and with each other. The key issue is handling the deployment in a professional and friendly manner by the principal to avoid disharmony in staff relationships. This is a yearly exercise and the choice of teachers for different grades is a very crucial matter for the teachers as it leads to their professional development.

Challenges: There were grounds for arguments. One of the subordinates has used his words to control the principal in the corridor talk to force him to think and talk about staffing issue. Also, there were further persuasion that could not proceed as the principal was fully in control. According to Pocok (1973a; 79), he pointed out that “in the absence of automatic compliance with norms, words must be increasingly be used,” teachers on the other hand, do not always automatically comply or defer to administrators. Results of findingsThe principal utilized the corridor work system to chat in an informal way thereby easing the pressure. Corridors are crucial territories in school as there is a constant movement between classes and at breaks.

Therefore, messages are easily transmitted and a good amount of organisational tasks are done using the corridor system. Also, the second phase of the discussion was done in the principal’s office and a lot of clarity was achieved before finally taking the talk to the staff meeting and the principal was able to make the staff to follow his view after clearly defining the situation. The social organisation of talk – interaction at work in a language teacher professional community (Yongcan Liu’s perspective):The concept was about a group of language teachers that negotiated their practice through ’talk at work in light of language teaching reform in China. It is important to note that joint lesson planning is a widely practised activity in schools and universities in East Asia where the teachers meet on a regular basis to discuss problems encountered in their teaching and have a joint lesson plan. Joint lesson planning conferences have an important role in the path to educational change as reform documents are distributed and ideas are widely spread. The author made us to understand that teachers may not necessarily agree with each other at the conference and negotiations may be necessitated through talk. The initiative has been met with resistance from the tutors on the programme who embraced the traditional method of knowledge transmission to education.

According to Horn and Little (2010: 183), the research has made very little progress in examining the nature of the interactions by which professional community is formed, sustained and how they are conducive to learning and improvement. The research examined the ways through which practice is negotiated at a conference and looks for opportunities for teachers to participate in talk can be opened or closed depending on the styles and organisations of interaction.

Methods employed: Perakyla (2005: 875), made three assumptions about talk in interaction which are talk in action is structurally organised, creates and maintains intersubjectivity reality. As previously noted, the study is to show how negotiation of practise is accomplished through teachers talk at work and are of paramount importance to identify the moments of negotiation in talk which are defined as units of analysis where teachers engage in focussed discussion of a certain teaching practice. The author first listened to all the recordings and familiarised himself with the content of each meeting. Also, repetitive listening of the recordings was carried out each of them lasting up to 15 minutes. The initial analysis of interaction conducted showed two broad patterns.

The first group showing frequent disagreement while the second group reflected expert model of interaction in which expatriate takes control over the talk and act as the expert who actively encourages the other participant as related by (Storch 2002: 129). Challenges: There were also arguments which created difficulty in obtaining the desired goal. Talk as the work was accomplished by different organisations of interaction and identities in this instance and in the process display of power structure was projected which created a serious issue for teachers to fully participate in the talk.

Results of findings: Utilizing the liberal approach to education proposed by Richard 2006, requires teachers to develop creativity of their students and to avoid making guiding instructions the centrepiece of their pedagogy while the traditional approach on the other hand focuses on transmission of knowledge and argues that teacher’s modelling for students is important in learning.

The process suggests that through changing the approach teachers interact with each other, it could lead to a democratic social institution for teacher learning and professional development in the workplace. A Brief look at the benefit of talk in an organisation:Firstly, it allows employees to voice out their concern at work. When an employee voice is not heard, it is difficult to bring their ideas on board and actively contribute to the success of the organisation which in turn will earn them respects. The more an employee talk and pour out their opinion, those around them will provide inputs that can then be evaluated and lead to strategic decisions that may influence a given plan of action. Companies have invested a lot into by offering seminars in the area of talk in an organisation as well as employees’ engagement forum for people to speak their mind at work. Secondly, unexpected Opportunities are created through talk.

For example, in a managerial meeting, someone heard you speak and found your opinion to be valuable enough to share with the board of directors, this could create an opportunity for growth for both the individual as well as the organisation. The result not only help the company to seize opportunities when they arise but also to spot potential threat to the organisation which can be easily tackled at the early stage. Thirdly, talk can be used to resolve organisational conflict. These can be done by engaging in talk with the other person either one to one or in a meeting were senior managers are involved and the issues leading to the conflicts are discussed and parties involved listened attentively. Through this medium, points of agreement and disagreement are identified with the intention of developing a plan to work and resolve the conflict. Directors to the junior hierarchy in the company can have internal disputes and conflicts. Engaging in appropriate communicating pattern with other party will speed up the solution to the issue. Part of the governance module is for Trustees and organisations to have adequate dispute resolution in place.

Lastly, talk help us to recognise and respect personal differences. Opposite views, behaviours and work patterns can cause a lot of arguments and misunderstandings among colleagues. Wortham commented, If clashing personalities are the root cause of a lot of your team's problems, work on being more aware of the differences in how you view a situation. This could range from how a meeting was run, how a strategy was deployed to how stakeholders were engaged. It is important to be aware that once other people can interpret the same event in different ways this could lead to potential conflicts.

Also, Wortham told Business News Daily. "[Knowing] how you prefer to communicate and being able to recognize others' communication styles can help build the bridges of understanding. ". This is very true as our intonation and body language goes along way in terms of communication with outside world.

Observations: Looking at both scenarios, talk requires a good communicator to achieve the desired goal. Looking back again at Talk as the work, the principal was persuasive and very objective to get the desired result. This could be seen in his approach to his subordinates and staffs when communicating the message to them. The communication to and from the principal consists of high variety language in order to meaningful pass the message across.

Moreover, a joint effort was required by the participants on the social organisation of talk to be effective. This was seen on how both groups evaluated and responded to the issue. The first group did not agree to the concept while the second group had a different understanding and agreed to the proposal. It is important to note that controls were in place during the process of passing on the information in Talk as the work. According to Golfman’s (1976a; 280), the way to appreciate how control is brought about is by examining how each recipient reacts to an immediately preceding speaker and he drew a distinction between response category and reply category. Furthermore, Forester 1980 made a distinction between listening and how hearing was used to subdivide the first six replies into two categories of attentiveness. Relating the above to modern day business issues, managers tend to use several forms of communications and resist quantified decision support systems. Not only that, managers play an important processing role in an organisation and serves as centre of information distribution. They are constantly giving and receiving information which is being used to determine the trend the organisation is moving with the aim of achieving its target goals.

Conclusion: The argument derived from the findings is that teacher’s talk at work is accomplished by different interactions among the participants. In the case of talk as the work, the principal knew how important it is to carry everyone along with his objective. Both materials reveal how important talk can be used to resolve key issues and this technique can also be adapted in any organisation. The key thing to note is that both methods were used to get people talking to achieve a common goal even though the interaction proved some signs of initial rejection at the initial stage before final acceptance at the end.