Learning and Teaching in the Chinese Classroom: Responding to Individual Needs

Foreword (Lee)

Foreword Chinese teachers and learners have become an increasingly fruitful focus for educational research, not least because Asia, especially China, has been drawing worldwide attention on account of the unprecedented economic and technological development. Beyond the classical Confucian Heritage Culture, there is a curious ‘paradox’ that, on the one hand, learners from East Asia are frequently seen as rote and passive learners but, on the other hand, international assessment studies, such as PISA and the TIMSS, show students from many of the countries within East Asia achieving consistently outstanding results. Hong Kong is a particularly interesting place within contemporary China and East Asia since it is where, distinctively, East meets West. Here, in what is one of Asia’s major world cities, there are obvious legacies of both the Confucian Heritage Culture and British colonialism. What actually happens in the context of learning and teaching in Hong Kong classrooms is an area that invites scholarly enquiry and ongoing critical reflection on successful practice. This book Learning and Teaching in the Chinese Classroom has been written by two experienced scholars, Dr. Lam Bick-har, a specialist in curriculum studies, at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, and Dr. Shane Phillipson, a specialist in educational psychology at Monash University (Australia). A very readable and informative book, it provides a useful starting point for understanding the essence of learning and teaching in Chinese classrooms, including a range of thoughtful and insightful chapters on the following areas: the contexts of teaching in the twenty-first century; constructivist and behaviourist perspectives on learning; the role of intelligence in learning; creativity and learners; the development of the self in learners; motivation and effective learning; language development and the Chinese learner; the teacher as researcher and teacher development; lesson planning, assessment and learning; and the Chinese context of learning. Some of these chapters echo pertinent issues in curriculum, teaching and teacher development in the context of Hong Kong where the Curriculum Development Council promotes ‘learning to learn’ and the Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualifications (ACTEQ) (2003) has published Towards a Learning Profession, highlighting the role of teachers as continuous and lifelong learners x Foreword with ‘the responsibility for promoting professional development within the education sector’ and being ‘change-agents of educational reform (p. 16). In this book, each chapter guides the reader from an initial statement of personal learning objectives or outcomes through the substantive content and concludes with a glossary and suggested activities, which provide vital and stimulating issues or questions for discussion and reflection. The reader is encouraged to read actively and to engage in an interactive way with the substance of each chapter. In the first chapter on the contexts of teaching in the twenty-first century, Bickhar Lam writes, ‘… should we justify that the new active approach to teaching is suitable for learners—the answer is “yes”… However, learning from the example of Confucian educational thought, we may wonder if this new approach, and the need to educate future generations to adopt a global perspective, can be implemented effectively in our schools.’ We seem to encounter a dilemma over whether adopting the active approach to teaching is feasible and desirable. However, regarding the Hong Kong context of teaching and learning, Chan’s (2009, 204) study on two expert teachers concluded that ‘… Chinese learners used seemingly contradictory approaches to make meanings that transcended polarized distinctions of learning approaches, given task demands and contextual dynamics. Similarly, the Chinese teachers developed a transformed pedagogy that took into account student cognition and social infrastructure, integrating Chinese and Western approaches in scaffolding student inquiry, collaboration and understanding’. Duffy (2010, 357), in his recent discussion of direct instruction and constructivist perspectives, comments that ‘we all agree that we learn from lectures and reading books as well as through active, situated participation, and that, at times, drill and practice is necessary’. It has also been found that a high level of teacher support and involvement are salient features of Hong Kong classroom environments and, in contrast to the Western findings, it was teachers rather than students who exert more influence on students’ self-regulated learning (Lee, Yin, and Zhang 2009). It is thus possible and, perhaps, practical to explore critically and creatively different forms of effective Chinese pedagogy that assimilate certain features of the Western teaching approaches and enhance student learning in Hong Kong classrooms and elsewhere. There is encouragement here for teachers to engage in action research and reflective practice to resolve these dilemmas in teaching and...