New Meeting Schedule:
Feb 4: Meet and organize
Feb 18: West meets East through Chapter 2
Mar 3: West Meets East, Ch 3-4
Mar 24: West Meets East, Ch 5-7
Mar 31: Condon through Ch 2
Apr 14: Condon, Ch 3-4
Apr 28: Condon, Ch 5-6
May 12: Condon, Ch 7
*Dates in italics have been modified
I was intrigued with this week's readings of Chapters 1-2. "Developing new cohorts of highly qualified and competitive workers requires a high-quality education system in every local community," (p. 1) struck me as a powerful introduction. This captures the global nature of education quite well, I feel.
Further thoughts and quotes for consideration:
Ch 1
- "... we aren't competing against a stationary goal," (p. 3). I'm trying to recall the theorist who questioned whether progress was indeed what led to bettering society. This seems like a value judgment based on capitalist beliefs. Marx??
- The US is 26th in math -- p. 2. Does this surprise readers? I wonder if this shows the US education system as wanting, compared to other countries. Do you think this affects students' desire to study abroad? In math-based programs, or in all programs? What do you think student perceptions are of the US as an international educational choice (prohibitive costs aside)?
- A delicate question: The Chinese model focuses upon "memorization, drilling, and prescribed textbooks -- to practices that foster individuality," (p. 4). Issues of plagiarism are frequently discussed as concerns of teachers instructing Chinese students. These two viewpoints seem to conflict.
- Another delicate question: "...people from Western cultures tend to attribute success and failure to ability (or lack thereof)" (p. 8). I sincerely disagree from a personal perspective. I have never thought this way. What do our American instructors feel about this statement?
- Upon reading the passage on p. 8 to a friend (Gardner's statement), a friend likened US views of students ("Genetics, heredity, and measured intelligence play no role,") to "Evangelical" thinking, and the Asian belief that failure results from students' lack of hard work as "Catholic."
- It's interesting that as we are studying learner-centered pedagogies in the US, the trend has shifted. "The educational reform initiatives in the so-called Asian tiger countries... have become more "American" and have become increasingly learner-centered and focused on higher-order thinking (p. 9).
- Grant et. al provide an outline of three key guidelines used by the NCLB law to determine whether a teacher is highly qualified. Those guidelines seem to set the bar for educators extremely low, and number 3 doesn't appear to be an objectively measurable goal. Frankly, I'm underwhelmed with those standards. What are others' impressions of these guidelines?
- "...the research team chose to accept the risk of equating national teacher awards with teacher excellence," (p. 14).
- "...awards and achievements revealed that [grantors'] criteria included some of all of the following qualities:
- Contributions to education..." (p. 16). Is this even a standard? Really, this is the most fundamental aspect of teaching responsibilities. In China, "... exceptional roles played by teachers as they inspire the development of their students as whole people." This seems noble and altruistic.
- "To that end, he made home visits early in the year, sitting around the kitchen table with parents -- 'on their turf' -- to discuss shared goals for student progress," (p. 23). Is one visit enough? This makes me uncomfortable thinking a teacher might come into my home and pass judgment on my lifestyle.
- The comments from the Chinese teachers feel more holistic and focused on developing students as members of their society. The comments from the American teachers feel detached from deeper levels of emotion -- obligatory. "Teachers in China had more personal and family-like relationships with their students, and they often spoke of maintaining harmonious relationships," (p. 25). My mentor Dr. LaVona Reeves continuously modeled this aspect of compassionate teaching. "Teachers in the United States are more likely to focus on caring within the context of a professional teacher-student relationship," (p. 27). I feel this is very true, and unfortunate.
- The teacher's comments at the end of p. 27 and into p. 28 feel to me they're not relationship building (as they were framed) but rather merely having access to the parents in order to report negatively upon the child's actions. This bothers me. Even though all teachers believed they were educating the whole child, serving as role models, etc. (p. 30-31), there is a difference in the ethos I detect in the teachers' feedback. The US teachers seem to "other" and distance students, referring to the students as "them" and answering the questions in very egocentric terms or by stating nothing of interest in their self-reflective assessments. The Chinese teachers seem to be more community oriented and vested in the students more organically. I believe this is one significant difference between collectivist and individualistic cultures shining through.
- Question: Do our visiting scholars have philosophy statements? Are they norms in China for instructors?
- The videotape and self-reflection method on p. 43 is reported as, "a similar approach to collaborative lesson study." I don't see this at all. If there is no feedback from the community, these instructors are missing a valuable contribution of peer review.
- Figure 2.3 shows the Lesson Study Cycle. While a couple of these aspects are modeled in the pedagogy courses I have attended, I'm disappointed we miss out on collaboratively planning lessons. This seems key to what we're modeling in the classroom, yet our lesson plan development is valued as an individual exercise.
What are your thoughts?
Low performance in math doesn't surprise me. Is it bad that the majority of our doctors and engineers and computer scientists in the US seem to be from Asia? The educational system in Asia can lend itself to deep memorization, which is useful in some professions for quick diagnosis.
ReplyDeleteWhy should we value others' work by referencing it? This is something that we've been discussing lately.
Are there situations where teachers SHOULD NOT interfere with student lives? Why or why not? In my view, sometimes teachers need to recognize they carry power and ethos that may not be warranted; for instance, I sometimes have students ask me about what I perceive as psychological issues or family problems. I'm not trained to intervene, even if I want to. Teachers want to model specific behavior, and that makes sense, but I've always felt it dangerous to step into certain circumstances students may be wrestling with. Stepping in could do more damage than good.
My philosophy statement is at http://richrice.com/philosophy.pdf (I think I'd like to revise it this semester according to QEP-related beliefs).
Jing Mu is doing some work with video. What's it about?
Thanks for sharing your ideas, Rich, and for provoking further thought. You raise an interesting point about student-instructor relationships. Grant et. al don't mention, to my recollection specific training the Chinese teachers received in learning to address students' mention of personal lives or psychological matters. I believe mandatory reporting laws in the US are taught to reduce indemnity to the university, but as I understand it, instructors are only required to report if they believe a student is in imminent danger to himself or others. Compassionate teaching methods taught by Parker Palmer, Mary Rose O'Reilly, Suresh Canagaragah, etc. suggest we have a responsibility as teachers to be good compassionate listeners. Added to the ideas suggested of Chinese teaching philosophy (holistically represented) in Grant et. al's transcripts referenced through chapter 2, teachers hold their students' trust. The personal account we heard in Friday's discussion further suggests teachers are even more highly regarded than students' parents. This implies an onus of responsibility for the instructors to build and maintain trust that might allow students to freely share feelings if they so choose, and without the risk of psychiatric intervention. Sometimes the best therapy, or at least the beginnings of therapy, start with the ability to talk about things.
ReplyDeleteI would ask whether we need to better train teachers to be more compassionate listners, or whether we should focus on hiring teachers who possess compassion as an innate attribute. Does either American or Chinese academic culture include ways of measuring such things_
In China, there is a famous quotation: to be a teacher is to pass on knowledge, to help make a living and to dispel doubts. The teacher at his best is to dispel doubts for the students. Now in China, students are demanding freedoms and rights;they have their own thoughts. This is a good phenomenon, but what the teachers can do is very little.
DeleteThe "hook" on page 65 seems to me a very important concept in teaching from Chapter 3. It's called different things in educational theory, but good teachers connect the hook in specific ways, leading students to achieve, for themselves, course objectives of any given course, through appropriate assessment measurements. The hook, too, should be rooted in students' lived experiences; that is, they should be able to develop connections between what they're interested in outside of school with content mastery inside school. I think the hook, for me, is the key to being a good teacher.
ReplyDeleteI agree with that -- as both student and instructor. In TESL pedagogy, we often discuss *relevance* as a necessary ingredient of student engagement and success. If the information is relate-able to the student's life, she is more likely to engage in meaningful lasting ways with the content.
DeleteI've been thinking a lot the last few weeks about if Nanjing Forestry University would like to begin to develop courses in TCR, a way to begin would be not to start with a new course altogether, but adding components to current courses. Perhaps those are courses in translation (see the recently released issue of the Connexions journal on translation and tech comm). The idea would be to expand the objectives and the assignments, just a little, in existing courses, and to see if students have an even better time in those particular, treated sections. This is an experimental action research design, in other words. And that way you'd build collaboratively, as the book suggests is a useful networked thinking approach (page 71).
ReplyDeleteNot sure if you've seen Tibor Nagy's column in yesterday's Lubbock newspaper on India and China... http://lubbockonline.com/editorial-columnists/2016-02-28/nagy-indias-growth-dynamically-propelling-it
ReplyDeleteI have read it just now and feel dismayed. it is easy to understand why the author chooses India as a valued friend and Indians find it easy to come into US society. India enjoys the language prestige and its educational system is similar to the west. These are the heritages of being colonized by Great Britain. Haha, bright side of colonization.
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