School in the cloud, feet on the ground: Language learning with SOLE

James Pengelley

Independent

Jane Pyper

British Council Hong Kong

This article presents an action research project conducted at a

learning centre in Hong Kong in which the merits of Sugata Mitra’s
Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLE) are applied to an ELT
context. Mitra has received significant support for his work on SOLE
from various sources, including the TED network and Newcastle
University, UK, where he oversees the SOLE Central research unit
and The School in the Cloud website which aim to provide a radically
modernised education to remote children around the world, as well as
to those in mainstream urban classrooms by asking them to research
‘big questions’ on the internet with minimal guidance from a teacher.
SOLE pedagogy makes some profound claims about the nature of
education and characteristics of best practice, and yet there seems to
be very little, if any, independent research available, especially in its
application to learning a foreign language. We aimed to address this
by investigating the quality of classroom discourse emerging during
two SOLE sessions with four groups (N=58) in order to evaluate the
merits of using SOLE in language learning environments. We conclude
that without significant teacher training, learner training and teacher-
intervention, the success of SOLE (and minimally invasive pedagogies)
is highly context-dependent and limited as a language learning tool.

Introduction: From Hole in the Wall to SOLE

In 2001, Sugata Mitra published findings from anthropological studies conducted in
slums in India where he had built computers into walls to see if children could learn
to use the internet (Mitra & Rana, 2001), concluding that they ‘seem to understand
the technology fluently. Language and formal education do not seem to make any

Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 17

significant difference’ (p. 221). He went on to conduct experiments on his ‘hole in the
wall’ (HitW) that measured success by improvements on a computer icon recognition
test score (Mitra, 2005), and later to publish studies suggesting children in remote
Indian villages could achieve scores on-par with their peers in mainstream schools in
subject areas ranging from molecular biology (Mitra & Dangwal, 2010), to intellectual
maturity, mathematics, English (Dangwal, 2011) and English pronunciation (Mitra,
Tooley, Inamdar, & Dixon, 2003).
In 2014, Mitra attended the International Association for Teachers of English as
a Foreign Language (IATEFL ) conference as a plenary speaker where he outlined
his vision for Self-Organising Learning Environments (SOLE) and the future of
learning – a school in the cloud – allowing direct provision of education to the most
remote students and a redesign of the conventional classroom, allowing children to
explore ‘big questions’ using only the internet, in a way that traditional curriculums
do not facilitate. Through SOLE, Mitra claims children can tackle features of the
traditional curriculum many years beyond their school age (Mitra & Crawley, 2014).
Meanwhile, independent discussions of SOLE typically relate to the context of broader
philosophical discussions of educational technology and its role in bridging social
inequality, rather than considerations of the data and methodology underpinning
SOLE pedagogy.
Two prominent critics, Arora (2010) and Warschauer (2003), offer vivid accounts of
failed HitW kiosks in Indian villages, citing lack of community integration by HitW
mediators, poor provision and maintenance of computer hardware, and parents
complaining of the projects being poorly organised and distracting children from
their schoolwork. Arora suggests that while localised successes give the movement
some legitimacy, the lack of independent data, combined with the lack of reporting
of failed projects, justifies a degree of caution.
Note that Mitra also refers to the HitW concept as ‘minimally invasive education’,
which is applied to mainstream classrooms in the form of SOLE. So, bearing in mind
the experimental conditions under which HitW was conducted (isolated Indian
villages, minimal previous exposure to technology, and experimental conditions of
up to nine months), we argue that regardless of the accuracy of such claims about
education past, present or future, no fundamental change should be implemented
without measured critique. Given Mitra´s tech-driven ideology and the implications
of what a school in the cloud might entail, the key issue that remains to be addressed
is what is happening ‘on the ground and with what outcomes’ (Selwyn, 2014, p. 39)
when HitW-based theory is put into practice in SOLE.
Greater detail is needed in promoting SOLE as a legitimate pedagogy. IATEFL 2014

18 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2

was an excellent example of this – with half the crowd standing in ovation, and
the other half taking to the blogosphere in uproar at this ‘neoliberal agenda . . .
incarnated in cuddly and charismatic sheep’s clothes’ (Dellar, 2014b). We argue
that this mixed response is symptomatic of a ‘fundamental paradox’ (Arora, 2010,
p. 695) in Mitra’s pedagogical message. On the one hand he condemns traditional
pedagogical approaches that encourage students to learn information and retrieve
it in tests, and in its place he promotes a new educational process that espouses the
futility of knowing and learning facts (provided students have access to the internet),
while also relying on traditional products of education (i.e., test scores that require
students to retrieve learned information) to benchmark the success of HitW and
SOLE. Ultimately, we question the assumption that SOLE is universally applicable
that currently pervades Mitra’s work (Mitra, 2015), and we argue that several critical
details of SOLE need to be clarified, including the role of the teacher, the mechanics
that underlie the learning processes and specific strategies for teachers to enhance
these. In order to highlight some of the inconsistencies in Mitra’s work, we referred to
the transcripts of his three TED talks (on which Mitra relied for much of his publicity)
and the text of his SOLE Toolkit (Mitra, 2015) to identify the following key themes
that we believe warrant greater scrutiny.
The teacher’s role when children learn independently
Tying HitW to SOLE is the notion that children can learn independently and more
effectively with minimal input from teachers. Mitra argues that when children self-
organise, a teacher only ‘sets the process in motion and then she stands back in awe
and watches as learning happens’ (Mitra, 2013).
Mitra fails to offer specific details of what the teacher’s role ought to be in his re-
envisioned classroom other than as a ‘granny figure’ who offers praise, ‘inspires
curiosity, develops language fluency and search skills’ (Mitra, 2015, p. 8). Interestingly,
although SOLE promotes minimally invasive techniques, SOLE teachers suggest that
the key to its success is what teachers do with the information students produce
after a SOLE session (School in the Cloud, 2014).
The role of technology in education
Mitra´s rhetoric in relation to educational technology equating to greater achievement
and faster, more meaningful learning, which Thornbury refers to as ‘an implicit faith
in the almost totemic power of the internet’ (2014), is especially concerning. On
December 2, 2015, Mitra posted on his own Facebook page a response to a Guardian
article (‘Tablets Out, Imagination In: The Schools that Shun Technology’), likening the
report’s premise to the workings of extremist militia. Friesen (2008) calls this type
of discourse ‘ideologically-charged common sense’, believing it fails to acknowledge

Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 19

the complex realities of using technology in education. Our response to Mitra’s
internet-driven ideology echoes Selwyn’s questioning of ICT as an ‘integral and
inevitable feature of ‘modern’ forms of education’ (2014, p. 2).
The question of learning
We would like to know specifically how Mitra intends to ‘design the future of learning’
(2013), as it is unclear what mechanisms for learning inform SOLE pedagogy.
For example, one key learning objective in the SOLE Toolkit is that ‘students learn
what constitutes viable evidence, and interrogate internet sources more critically’
(Mitra, 2015, p. 20). However, a SOLE Australia Network blog post outlines a SOLE
session in which students concluded that ‘we only use 20% of our brain’ (SOLE
Australia Network, 2014), which is actually myth (Highbee & Clay, 2010). The only
solution for this according to the SOLE Toolkit is:

Ask questions about how they arrived at the answer by asking about their
sources. This is a good opportunity to initiate a conversation about how to find
reliable sources.
(Mitra, 2015, p. 15)
Not only does this assume teachers are adept at identifying reliable source online,
but it also fails to give any guidance on a process that might show students how to
identify such sources.
As we will outline below, we noted our students had persistent difficulties accessing,
processing and comprehending information online. Several groups were unsuccessful
because they could not filter and select information appropriately and others were
not able to formulate questions flexibly enough to generate meaningful Google
results, even with teacher support, indicating significant problems in IT and reading
literacy. The SOLE Toolkit’s only suggestion for problems in this area is is:

Since children have different reading levels, sometimes the best option is to
ask kids to explain their findings in their own words rather than reading directly
from a source.
(Mitra, 2015, p. 21)
This seems to be what Mitra means when he claims the future of learning means
‘students need to be able to read discerningly’ (Mitra, 2013) which is meaningless
when students are faced with such significant comprehension difficulties such as
those we observed. And while SOLE is described as a process-oriented pedagogy
(Arora, 2010), SOLE documents provide little description of the mechanisms or explicit
strategies to support the process that might produce discerning readers.

20 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2

Assumptions about learning contexts
Although Mitra occasionally acknowledges the importance of the context in linking
HitW findings to SOLE, The School in the Cloud continues to pursue the use of SOLE in
both affluent mainstream classrooms in the UK as well as poorer, isolated classrooms
globally, many of which are not native English-speaking environments.

I'm proposing . . . an alternative primary education . . . where schools are not

good enough, where teachers are not available or where teachers are not good
enough. If you happen to live in a part of the world where none of this applies,
then you don't need an alternative education.
(Mitra, 2007)
We have found poor general awareness of how the experimental HitW-dependent
variables (rural villages where many children have little to no contact with teachers
and data collection over periods ranging from two to nine months) impact upon
the mainstream pedagogical theory (SOLE). Here, it seems, there is little explicit
acknowledgement in Mitra’s work that the rationale behind SOLE is based upon
variables and contexts in HitW experiments that are so vastly different to the ones
in which they are being applied (i.e., in SOLE).

Research questions
In this paper we present an action research project conducted at our teaching centre
in Hong Kong. We aim to address some of these inconsistencies in Mitra’s message,
and contribute independent data to the discussion of SOLE and its merits.
Based on the issues outlined above, we formulated the following research questions:
• How do children respond to minimal intervention in SOLEs, and how does
this affect task achievement?
• Does the introduction of ‘minimally invasive’, inquiry-driven computer-
based tasks provide optimal language learning opportunities?
• Does SOLE encourage students to read discerningly?

Methodology
Participants
Our research was conducted with our own students at a teaching centre in Hong
Kong with classes of up to 20 students (predominantly Cantonese speakers, 9–13
years old), attending 90-minute classes once a week. In total there were 58 students
in four classes. We selected the classes we were teaching that were all of a similar
age and the highest level offered at our centre for that age group (approximately

Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 21

pre-intermediate–intermediate), giving us four classes of the following sizes.
Table 1: Summary of Participants and Groups
Teacher Group Number of students enrolled in group
1 A 11
2 B 20
C 17
D 10

Written consent-to-record was collected from three groups (Group B, C and D). In
place of written consent, the project, student work and basic findings were discussed
with parents from Group A on the final lesson of the semester, which parents
attended in person.
Data collection
We collected class recordings and written work during two SOLE sessions with each
group, in which we aimed to follow the methodology outlined in the SOLE Toolkit
for teachers (Mitra, 2015). Procedure and instructions to students were:
• Approximately 10 minutes of plenary discussion and research question
formation;
• Approximately 30 minutes of internet research time;
• 10–20 minutes of presentation preparation in the form of a simple poster;
• Students can choose their own groups (an average of 3–4 students per computer
or iPad), compare information, and may swap groups at any time.
During each SOLE session, the teacher set the task and explained these rules to
students. As teachers, we were primarily concerned with troubleshooting ICT issues,
ensuring students were on task, and clarifying difficult language. As far as possible we
wanted to leave the following elements up to the students to negotiate: the process
of self-organising and sharing resources, searching for and choosing information,
making and sharing notes, and negotiating search questions and alternatives.
We aimed to relate the SOLE sessions as closely as possible to recently studied themes
of work, and all four groups completed two lessons in a six-week period. Group A
answered a number of different questions (see Findings section); groups B, C and D
were asked to comment on the demographics of Hong Kong if it were reduced to a
population of 100 people in the first, and researched one of four different survival
stories in the media in the second.
In data analysis we:

22 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2

• took observational notes during the computer-based research sessions, noting
how long it took for students to start work in groups and if students re-organised,
interacted between groups or changed groups during the activity;
• categorised student-student and teacher-student interactions from the
transcribed recordings to identify types of classroom talk;
• asked Group A to re-read their post-SOLE posters and identify which ideas they
had ‘copied’ and which ideas were ‘original’ (written in the students’ own words);
• assessed the students’ ideas in terms of relevancy and accuracy to the topic;
• asked groups B, C and D to provide anonymous written feedback to the questions:
‘How easy was it to find information?’ and ‘How well did you work in your group?’
We collected a total of 10.5 hours of voice recordings (from all classes), and written
poster work from group A. These recordings were categorised according to different
types of classroom talk outlined in Chappell (2014).
Chappell (2014) suggests that certain types of spoken interaction in the language
classroom provide richer language learning opportunities, the most enriching of these
being inquiry dialogue, which is marked by speakers working towards a common
understanding by exploring possibilities, building upon each other’s contributions,
and is commonly achieved by speakers making a request for the other speakers to
consider and reflect on possibilities rather than simply exchanging facts. In Excerpt
1, note the way the teacher and Student 2 work together, adding comments and
inviting Student 1 to consider how and why the concept of an air bubble is relevant
to the task, leading to a greater common understanding.

Excerpt 1: Example of inquiry dialogue

S1: No so what this . . . what is this?
S2: Oh . . . it's . . . you can always see some bubbles in the swimming pool . . .
T: So, what's a bubble? Explain it to them.
S2: Because the bubble supposed to be floating to the top of the sea . . . but since
the ship is too large and it is locked let's just say the air couldn't escape.
T: Right, so if the ship sank . . . how would you get air inside? If you're in a boat,
where could the air be trapped?
S1: Air bubble?
T: Right, so he's like this – there's an air bubble and he's here . . . and this is the
top of the ocean . . . so he's sitting in the water in his boat . . . there's an air
bubble . . .

Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 23

S2: The boat
S1: Ooohh . . .
Applying Chappell´s work to SOLE pedagogy, which claims that learning is enhanced
when it occurs socially, we would expect one of three possible features of classroom
interactions in SOLE lessons (Table 2).
Table 2: Rationale for Classifying Spoken Interactions in SOLE
Possible outcome Possible conclusion
Frequent occurrence of inquiry dialogue SOLE effectively supports socially driven,
minimally invasive language learning. It
provides a rich, interactive language learning
environment.

Frequent occurrence of missed opportunities SOLE is an effective method for language

for inquiry dialogue learning, but direct teacher involvement is
needed to draw specific attention to features
of interaction patterns that best facilitate this
process. The teacher may not be trained to
respond to students’ contributions efficiently.

Low occurrence/potential of inquiry dialogue SOLE is not conducive to language learning.

to occur If SOLE does support language learning, it
is unlikely to be dependent on the self-
organisation, group-based elements or minimal
teacher intervention.

While this presents a relatively qualitative approach to evaluating the quality of

classroom interactions, we suggest that it provides a sound diagnostic framework
to evaluate SOLE’s impact on the language learning environment.
Based on our pilot project on SOLE in ELT (Pengelley & Pyper, 2014), we anticipated
that these lessons would place students under relatively high cognitive loading,
indicated by:
• a high frequency of simplified and/or ineffective spoken interactions during
task work;
• a low occurrence of inquiry dialogue during SOLE activities;
• a relatively high frequency of irrelevant/inaccurate ideas and sentences copied
directly from their online sources;
• a large number of students reporting difficulty in finding and accessing the
appropriate information online.

24 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2

Findings
Children’s responses to minimal intervention and self-organisation
Students eagerly arranged themselves into own groups, often doing so before the
instruction to begin work was explicitly given. When difficulties arose, they needed
additional support in order to stay on task, despite being instructed that they could
change groups and share information at any time. The most common problems
students encountered were related to using iPads, dealing with the quantity of
information online and persisting with reading lengthy texts with a lot of unfamiliar
vocabulary (although students were shown how to use online dictionaries). We
concluded that without supervision, there were several instances where some
students may have been unable to complete task.
The effect of SOLE on learning environment: Classroom talk
We noted a range of types of classroom talk. However, we found little occurrence
of inquiry dialogue, and a relatively higher occurrence of missed opportunities for
student-student and teacher-student inquiry dialogue. Generally, inquiry dialogue
was teacher-initiated and absent from student-student interactions. In the case of
most missed opportunities, students seemed unreceptive to speech acts, especially
those where the teacher or other students were making requests or asking questions
to invite group members to wonder or consider options. This also poses the possibility
that teachers were ineffective at presenting and exploiting opportunities for inquiry.

Excerpt 2: Missed opportunity for inquiry dialogue in SOLE

T: Turtle blood is apparently amazing when you can't find water . . . Gross, huh?
S1: Hohhhhhh!!
T: Apparently turtle is . . .
S2: Very impressed.
T: The most delicious thing you can ever have.
S2: Fisherman! His job.
In addition, we noted communication breakdowns and a lack of task focus typically
occurring when students had difficulties using the technology (see Excerpt 3). This
highlights the assumption in SOLE that students will bring with them a degree of
technical literacy that we did not observe in our students.
We also identified a type of classroom talk, which we refer to as ‘echoing’. We feel
this is distinct from a common repeating or recasting type of speaking strategy as
it was most common in groups with a large range of abilities in spoken English, in

Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 25

groups with more than one male student, with the weaker student continuing to
repeat words or chunks previously uttered by a stronger student and in a manner
that typically caused distraction within the group.

Excerpt 3: Echoing talk and difficulties using technology

S1: No just go to the Wikipedia will be alright . . . here . . . No why don’t you give
me!
S2: I don’t know – what do you give me?
S1: No! What are you doing?
S2: No, what are you doing?
S3: [laughs]
S1: Give back the mouse ah! . . . No just go to Wikipedia . . . Who knows how you
spell?
S3: James know how to spell . . . This!
S1: Anyway, I’m not going to write.
S3: No!
S1: No no!
S2: No no!
S1: Give me back . . . this one . . . this one!
S3: Nooooooooo!
We interpreted this as weaker students attempting to engage in the group dynamic
through word play.
Use of SOLE to develop discerning readers: Evaluation of students’ ideas
The results of Group A’s self-assessment of their work are presented below. As all
information was presented as simple noun or verb phrases, none of the sentences
produced were considered complete. Here we defined an ‘idea’ as any proposition
(either statement or opinion) that was presented by a student in their final poster,
for example: ‘People play sports to stay healthy.’
In SOLE 1, the students were asked to investigate why people play sport, and directed
to consider historical, social and personal reasons. Of the posters we received, all
were submitted in a list format, identical to the single common website that all
students relied on. Only one student presented information in an organised way, with
points listed in conceptually related groups. Table 3 also suggests that students had

26 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2

difficulty distinguishing between their own ideas and those they had copied from
the online material they found.
Table 3: SOLE 1 – Why Do People Play Sports?
Group A = 11 students in class
Total number of posters completed = 7
Total number of ideas presented 70
Total number of ideas presented in complete sentences 0
Total number of copied ideas reported by students 38
Total number of ‘original’ ideas reported by students 32
Total number of original ideas identified by teacher 2
Total number of invalid/irrelevant ideas identified by teacher 7

In SOLE 2, students were given a choice of one of several questions that were based
on topics the class had recently covered in the syllabus:
i) Why is the elephant so big?
ii) Why do elephants walk on their toes, not their feet?
iii) How do submarines go under the sea?
iv) How can camels walk so far?
Of the posters completed, all students answered this task as though there was one
concise answer to their question rather than a range of possible factors, making
answers very short, rather than a balanced response indicative of inquiry-driven
topic exploration.
Table 4: SOLE 2 – Various Questions Based on Topics Covered on the Course
Group A = 11 students in class
Total number of posters completed = 6
Total number of ideas presented 9
Total number of ideas presented in complete sentences 5
Total number of copied ideas reported by students 5
Total number of ‘original’ ideas reported by students 4
Total number of original ideas identified by teacher 4
Total number of invalid/irrelevant ideas identified by teacher 7

Student opinions of task achievement

Student responses to three short feedback questions were collected from groups B,
C and D. Summaries of their responses are given below.

Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 27

Table 5: Summary of Student Responses to Question 1
Q1: Was it easy to find the information?
Yes 23
No 20
No response 4

Most affirmative responses were justified with reference to either the availability
of information (‘We just have to get to the government website’) or the amount of
information (‘There is so much information on the internet’). Negative responders
gave more qualitative reflections, referring to troubles in dealing with the quantity
of information online, and selecting information appropriately:

‘There are so many versions of the same information, I don’t know which is
reliable.’

‘[Although] we can found much information together, we don’t use much what
we had search.’

‘I learned not to trust everything I see and search about it for several minutes
before I believe it.’
Table 6: Summary of Student Responses to Question 2
Q2 : How well did you work with your group?
Well 43
Not well 4

Most students reflected positively on their group work, commenting that they had
spoken Cantonese on a scale from ‘a bit’ to ‘a bit too much’. Eight students made
explicit reference to dividing the research between two groups (i.e., students split
the number of information points/questions evenly between the two) to save time.
This is particularly relevant given SOLE’s reliance on collaborative learning.

Conclusions and Comments

In this research project, we attempted to assess SOLE in its purest form (following
procedures in SOLE documentation) using topics we had noted would probably
interest our learners (based on their reactions to recent themes of study in the
courses). Despite this, we acknowledge that on top of the qualitative nature of data
collection here, the nature of the interactions and responses we collected from
students may well be linked to the nature of the challenging and unfamiliar tasks we
set, rather than a result of SOLE methodology itself, which may have led to students
feeling demotivated from a lack of task direction.

28 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2

However, as one of the few independent sources of data on SOLE, it does raise some
very pertinent questions.
SOLE and ‘discerning readers’
We were not satisfied that our students successfully explored or discussed the
questions posed, nor were they able to read discerningly enough to select relevant
and accurate information. We question Mitra’s claims that SOLE results in children
learning content years ahead of their time (Mitra & Crawley, 2014) because
we observed many instances where reading ability directly restricted students
accessing information, thereby limiting successful task achievement. The unstated
implication in SOLE is that students will simply learn to read effectively, filter and
select information successfully if teachers provide them with minimal guidance and
maximum opportunities. We conclude that this remains an unsatisfactory rationale:
asking students to behave like experts does not automatically make them so, and
nor will it despite the best and repeated efforts of well-intentioned (or minimally
invasive) educators.
Our observations here are in-line with the ‘overwhelming and unambiguous evidence
that minimal guidance during instruction is significantly less effective and efficient’
(Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006, p. 76). Ultimately, if we want students to develop
the ability to analyse, evaluate and critique, they first need to know facts and have
knowledge in order to apply these skills (Christodoulou, 2014). Indeed, students who
tackle problems with more prior knowledge generally achieve better educational
outcomes (Willingham, 2007).
Based on the relative lack of satisfactory task achievement in the SOLE lessons we
observed, we suggest introducing open-ended internet-based research activities is
not a viable solution to a contemporary design of learning unless greater clarity on
the teacher’s role and learning mechanisms is offered.
Children’s responses to SOLE
Although we observed consistent and efficient self-organisation in our classes, we
remain unconvinced that this inherently enhances learning, nor is it a pre-requisite
for enhancing task outcome. We feel that the key determiners of task achievement
in SOLE lessons are:

i) students’ technical literacy;

ii) their reading ability in the target language;

iii) their ability to evaluate and select important information;

iv) their pre-existing knowledge of the topic they are researching.

Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 29

At present, the best SOLE guidelines can offer, in terms of pedagogically supporting
teachers, is an assumption that they will improve with plenty of practice. Looking
at the range of information students found, and their comments and awareness of
difficulties with accessing information, our students’ responses to SOLE were mixed.
We suspect this was due to the cognitive loading, ambiguity and unfamiliarity of
the task.
Impact on the language learning environment
Our observations support Chappell’s (2014) conclusion that teachers must
acknowledge that ‘functions and forms that will realize [an] activity are important
features to make explicit to students’ (p. 10). It may suggest that inquiry dialogue is
not a natural feature of young learner classroom discourse, at least in the context our
students are accustomed to, in which case additional control-type studies would be
beneficial. Alternatively it may be that when compared to ICT-based tasks like SOLE,
traditional and familiar classroom tasks (such as collaborative written activities) place
lower cognitive demands on learners, enabling them to focus on and engage in more
complex social interactions when operating in a foreign language (Pengelley & Pyper,
2016). However, if spoken interactions emerging in SOLE are to be fully exploited for
language learning, this ultimately requires direct, intentional and carefully staged
teacher-mediated classroom behaviour.
It is worth acknowledging the possibility that with further exposure and reflection,
our students may come to benefit from and enjoy SOLE lessons. We feel that our
students’ educational experiences, as learners in Hong Kong, were significant
factors in the difficulties they encountered in our SOLE lessons in terms of task
achievement and the quality of classroom interactions. Hong Kong students typically
attend school in classes of up to 40 students that tend to be highly teacher-led
and in which it is not uncommon for English lessons to be conducted largely in
Cantonese. It is not difficult to understand how a student from this educational
paradigm might struggle in SOLE, and would rely on significant learner training in
order to succeed. From a pedagogical perspective as much as an empirical one, this
question of generalisability is ultimately the feature of Mitra's work that we find
most contentious, and until he is able to justify the absence of any such commentary
in his work, offer adaptations of his model to suit local learning contexts or further
independent data is produced, we suggest that educators' keep their feet and their
schools planted firmly on the ground.

30 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2

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Mitra, S. (2013, February). Sugata Mitra: Build a school in the cloud. [Video file].
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Warschauer, M. (2003). Technology and social inclusion: Rethinking the digital divide.
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(Summer), 8–19.

James Pengelley has been working in Hong Kong as a CertTESOL tutor for
the last 18 months. He has worked previously in Colombia, Thailand and
Australia and was a recipient of the 2014 IATEFL John Haycraft scholarship
for classroom research. His interests include integrating phonology into
language lessons and investigating classroom discourse.

thehairychef@gmail.com

Jane Pyper has worked in ELT for more than 10 years as a Cambridge Exam
Co-ordinator at Kaplan in Perth, Senior Teacher at IH Bogota and Holiday
Courses Co-ordinator for the British Council Hong Kong.

janenating@gmail.com

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