PEDAGOGICAL BRICOLAGE: ELICITATION STRATEGIES, TEACHER CREATIVITY, AND ADAPTIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING IN A CHRISTIAN HIGH SCHOOL IN PALANGKA RAYA

Abstrak

Delivering effective language instruction in resource-limited environments requires teachers to become adaptive experts who creatively reconfigure available materials to elicit student responses. This study investigates how English teachers at a Christian high school in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan, intuitively employ elicitation strategies to promote oral participation, despite the dominant use of Dayakese as the students' mother tongue and severe limitations in learning resources. This research employed a descriptive qualitative case study design with a pragmatic perspective on classroom discourse. The data consist of classroom observations, semi-structured interviews with four English teachers and four students from Grades X and XI, and lesson plan documents. The study applied Cross's elicitation typology and Leech's politeness framework to identify the strategies used in these interactions. The findings reveal that all teachers systematically used WH-questions as their foundational elicitation strategy, despite having no formal knowledge of the term "elicitation." These strategies were implemented through low-technology media such as visual aids, word-guessing games, role-plays, and dialogue-based activities. Grade X teachers prioritized affective security and confidence-building, whereas Grade XI teachers focused on higher-order thinking and grammatical accuracy. Student perceptions confirmed that contextually-embedded scaffolding—particularly visuals and games—significantly reduced cognitive load and enhanced willingness to speak. The way elicitation strategies are implemented depends on the relationship between the teacher and students, the grade level, and the cognitive demands of the task. In some cases, indirect elicitation through games and visuals softened the pressure to speak, whereas in others, direct WH-questions were employed to challenge students' critical thinking. This study provides valuable insights into pedagogical bricolage and adaptive teaching in mother tongue-dominant, resource-constrained environments, shedding light on how constraints can catalyze rather than impede pedagogical innovation.