Layers of Silence

Imagine a single frame, silence filling the background.

For now, I have organized silence into seven possible states: processing, observing, uncertainty, politeness, self-protection, resistance, and exclusion.

One student may still be taking in information, organizing ideas, or moving between languages. Another may be observing the order in which people speak, sensing the relationships among classmates, and trying to understand the rules of the classroom. One may not yet have formed a complete answer and may be reluctant to take a position too soon. Another may be waiting for others to finish, careful not to interrupt or draw too much attention. One may be a perfectionist, trying to avoid mistakes, ridicule, labels, or loss of face. Another may be quietly defiant, unwilling to accept the rules of an activity or to be forced into disclosure or expression. And one may simply have no clear opening through which to speak—or may have spoken so softly that no one took up what was said.

Now let us place this scene in a specific setting: the cross-cultural space of an international-school classroom.

If so, we might ask: Is a silent child perceived as a child who is not participating? In a space of teaching and learning, what risks must a child take before being recognized as a participant?

Our instinctive response may be: perhaps the student’s language skills are not strong enough. Perhaps.

Yet these seemingly personal hesitations take place within a concrete order of participation.

Those who speak quickly and fluently are often seen as participating. Certain tones are interpreted as confident, while certain forms of disagreement are immediately judged constructive. But when these become the standards by which participation is recognized, silent students are excluded.

Should someone examine these standards of “participation” and the cultural and educational conventions on which they are built?

In this article, I understand the international-school classroom as a small landscape of practice.

What converges in the classroom is not simply a group of students from different countries. Multiple understandings of learning, authority, politeness, expression, and collaboration also meet there. The international classroom is not an already integrated multicultural community. It is a learning environment in which boundaries, positions, and rules of participation are still being negotiated.

The concept of a landscape of practice was developed by social learning theorists Etienne Wenger-Trayner and Beverly Wenger-Trayner as part of their long-standing inquiry into how people learn across communities, professions, and practices. They use the term to describe a complex system composed of multiple communities of practice and the boundaries between them.

A landscape of practice, however, is not naturally a mutually supportive network. That would be too idealistic. It is not a utopia.

It may contain participation and non-participation, openness and closure. It also raises questions about which forms of knowledge are recognized, which positions make it easier to speak, and who must bear the greater cost of crossing boundaries. It must remain open to scrutiny, including the possibility that its relationships are unequal.

Students bring different communicative practices into the classroom, some of which are shaped by cultural experience. Within such a diverse learning system, people may hold different judgments about knowledge, good practice, and responsibility. Crossing boundaries may create opportunities for learning, but it may also produce misunderstanding, tension around identity, and competition.

Over time, students therefore need to learn how to recognize different rules of interaction and how to locate themselves among them.

If we bring Wenger-Trayner’s concept of knowledgeability into international education, one possible interpretation is that an international outlook is not expressed only through how much a person knows about different countries. It may also be reflected in whether someone can recognize their own position, understand the practices that guide others, identify what they do not yet know and whom they need to learn from, and continue working with others across difference.

No one can become competent in every practice across an entire landscape. A person nevertheless needs sufficient understanding of other practices: where they already have experience, which practices remain unfamiliar, and how those practices relate to their own position and responsibilities. This orientation enables them to continue acting productively within a complex environment.

We can now shift our analytical lens from the landscape of practice to the social learning space. The question becomes whether, in a particular conversation or shared task, participants genuinely regard one another as learning partners.

According to Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner, a social learning space emerges when participants care about making some form of difference, are willing to engage with what they do not yet know, and continue paying attention to responses, feedback, and actual consequences. Participants do not need to pursue identical goals, but they must gradually come to see one another as partners with whom they can explore a problem.

Being able to say, “I don’t know yet,” requires personal courage from a student. But it also depends on how the learning environment—and those who hold authority within it—responds to incomplete ideas. Are such ideas treated as openings for learning, or immediately converted into comparisons of ability?

A social learning space may emerge briefly in a single conversation and disappear just as quickly. It is inherently fragile and can easily be compressed by competition for speaking time, differences in status, assessment pressure, or other exercises of power.

Conclusion

International education aspires to bring the world into the classroom through different languages, nationalities, curricula, and global issues. Yet the development of an international outlook depends not only on how much difference a person encounters. It also depends on whether they can recognize the practices underlying those differences, understand their own position, and continue working with others amid uncertainty.

From this perspective, silence is not a deficit that must be corrected immediately. It may indicate that understanding is still taking shape, but it may also carry the traces of how power is distributed within the classroom.

The responsibility of educators is to distinguish between these possibilities and to create a learning environment in which students can say, “I don’t know yet,” choose how they participate, and gradually influence the way shared work is carried out.

Students should not have to prove that they are sufficiently fluent or quick to respond. Nor should they have to perform the particular form of confidence preferred by the classroom before they can be recognized as learning partners. When the rules of participation change, diversity can become more than the presence of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds. It can become a genuine starting point for shared learning.

A final reflection: Silence is not an emptiness waiting to be filled. Once we acknowledge that silence has different layers, what must change in the educational spaces we create?

Silence reveals the boundaries and inequalities within a landscape of practice. What educators need to create is a social learning space where people in different positions can engage with uncertainty together, respond to one another, and gradually shape how they work together.

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沉默的層次

有一格畫面，背景充滿寂靜。

我暫時將沉默整理成七種可能狀態：理解中、觀察中、不確定中、禮貌性、自我保護、抵抗性、被排除。

他可能還在聽取資訊、整理觀點、轉換語言；另一個他，正在觀察判斷發言順序、感受同儕的關係與教室規則；還有一個他，還無法想到完整答案，不願意過早表態；更或許他在等待其他人說完，避免打斷或過度突出；也或許另一個他就是個完美主義，避免犯錯、被嘲笑、被標記或失去面子；更有一個頑強的他，不願接受活動規則、拒絕被迫揭露或表態；最後還有個他，沒有適合的發言入口，甚或他的聲音微弱，未被承接著。

我們來給這個畫面，一個場景。在國際學校的跨文化這個空間裡。

若是如此，「沉默的孩子，是否被當成沒有參與？」一個教與學的空間，孩子怎樣表現才有資格被視為正在參與？

我們可能直覺地說：喔，他可能語言程度不夠好。或許。

但這些看似個人的猶豫，其實發生在一套具體的參與秩序之中。

誰能快速流利地表達、什麼樣的語氣被視為有自信、哪一種反駁的聲音馬上被視為有建設性，往往都是被視為有參與。但這個「他有參與」的標準，排除了沉默者。

是否該有人來檢查這套由文化與教育慣例所建立的「參與」標準。

我在這篇文章中，要將國際學校教室理解為一片小型的「實踐地景」。

教室裡交會的不只是不同國籍的學生，也包括多套的理解：對學習、權威、禮貌、發言與合作。它不是一個已經完成整合的多元社群，而是一個仍在協商邊界、位置與參與規則的學習環境。

「實踐地景」是社會學習理論家Etienne Wenger-Trayner與Beverly Wenger-Trayner提出的，人們如何在不同社群、專業與實踐之間共同學習。他們以「實踐地景」（landscape of practice）描述由多個「實踐社群（community of practice）」及其邊界構成的複雜系統。

當然，注意這裡的實踐地景，絕對不是天然互相支持的網絡，這太夢幻。它不應該是一個烏托邦。

它可以包含參與與不參與、開放與封閉，也涉及哪些知識被承認、哪些位置比較容易發言，以及誰需要承擔較多的跨界成本。接受質疑及可能的不對等。

不同學生帶進教室的溝通實踐包含文化特色，但這樣多元的學習系統，可能對知識、良好實踐與責任有不同判斷，跨越邊界有可能帶來學習，也可能造成誤解、身分張力與競爭。

在這樣的前提下，學生需要學習的包括如何辨認不同的互動規則，以及如何在這些規則之間找到自己的位置。

如果將Wenger-Trayner 知曉能力（knowledgeability）放進國際教育的情境中，我的理解是，國際觀未必只表現在一個人知道多少國家的知識，也可能表現在他能否辨認自己的位置、理解別人依循的實踐規則，並知道自己還不了解什麼、需要向誰學習，以及彼此如何在差異中繼續合作。一個人不可能精通地景中的所有實踐，卻需要對其他實踐有足夠理解，知道自己在哪些實踐中具有經驗、對哪些實踐仍然陌生，以及它們與自己的位置和責任如何相關，才能在複雜的環境中繼續行動。

我們現在從實踐地景將分析角度切換到「社會學習空間」，在某一次對話或共同工作中，參與者是否真的把彼此視為學習夥伴。

Wenger-Trayner兩位研究者認為，社會學習空間出現在參與者真正在意某種改變、願意面對尚不知道的部分，並持續留意回饋與實際結果。參與者不必追求完全相同的目標，但必須逐漸將彼此視為可以共同探索問題的學習夥伴。

能夠承認「我還不知道」，代表著學生個人的勇氣，但它也取決於這個環境場域及主導者如何回應不完整的想法：是將它視為學習的入口？還是立刻轉化成能力比較？

社會學習空間可能在一次對話中短暫形成，也可能很快消失。它本身相當脆弱，容易因為發言競爭、身分差異、評量壓力或其他權力操作而受到壓縮。

結語

國際教育的願景是把世界帶進教室：不同語言、不同國籍、不同課程與全球議題。但一個人是否形成國際觀，要看他接觸了多少差異，也要看他能否辨認差異背後的實踐規則，理解自己所處的位置，並在不確定之中與他人繼續合作。

從這個角度看，沉默不是需要立刻修正的缺陷。

教育者的責任，是辨認兩者的差別，並建立一個讓人可以暫時說他不知道、可以自主選擇如何參與，也能逐漸影響共同工作的學習環境。

我們的學生不必證明自己足夠流利、反應足夠快速，也不必為了迎合課堂偏好的自信表達方式，每位學生都有資格被視為學習夥伴，在參與規則改變後，多元不只是不同國籍與文化背景的成員組成，也是成為共同學習真正開始的條件。

最後的省思：沉默不是一個等待被填滿的寂靜，當我們承認沉默有不同層次之後，教育的實踐場域應該改變什麼？

是一個讓不同位置的人能共同承擔不確定、回應彼此，並逐漸影響共同工作的社會學習空間。