Teachers’ Cognition in Changing Practice: Implementing Group Discussion in EFL Classes in Universities of South-western China

This article reports on a study which sought to explore the implementation of group discussion in EFL classes delivered at universities located in Yunnan Province, an underresourced region of south-western China, and to consider the impact of local issues on their use and effectiveness.It focuses, in particular, on the role of pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical reasoning in implementing group discussion in tertiary level English classes.The data was collected via a combination of classroom observations and interviews with a group of teachers who had recently completed an extensive professional development programme and were seeking to bring about change in their practice as a result of having attended the workshop.The study indicates that although most teachers understood the importance of group discussion to students' learning and to responding to the new English language curriculum's emphasis on developing their communicative competence, they did not necessarily have the pedagogical knowledge and reasoning needed to implement such tasks effectively or to respond to challenges this presented within their institutional cultures.