Context for Discussion with Bath AR
Group on Monday, 14th February.
Developing Collaborative Enquiries: Ways
Forward?
By Dean Tian Fengjun, Dr. Moira Laidlaw
and Colleagues at China's Experimental Centre for Educational Action Research
in Foreign Languages Teaching (CECEARFLT),
Guyuan Teachers College, Guyuan, Ningxia
Province, P.R. China.
General Context:
In December 2003, Dean Tian Fengjun, Dean of the
Foreign Languages and Literature Department of Guyuan Teachers College, opened
China's first Centre for educational Action Research. Our mission statement
expresses our desire: to improve the teaching and learning of English for
all children in China. Since
then we have built capacity in teaching methodology with students and
colleagues, developed an AR programme in an English department at a local
secondary) School and written about our work - see http://www.actionresearch.net/moira.shtml.
We also hope to publish our case-studies in a book called: 'Action Research and
the New Curriculum in China', with Beijing Foreign Languages Press in May 2005.
Sustainable development:
One of the chief ways in which we are facilitating
educational and professional enhancement at the Centre is through an emphasis
on sustainable development. We see sustainable educational development as
constituting the building of capacity to render individuals and groups able to
continue and evolve their own beneficial ways of working without reliance on
outside agencies. We are:
á
encouraging
more colleagues in the Centre to take on responsibilities of the educational
development of teaching-methodology for teachers and students;
á
devolving
power in groups and meetings to a wider number of people;
á
helping to
build capacity in research skills;
á
networking in
order to encourage different points of view and fresh insights;
á
trying to
gain good publicity for the Centre;
á
widen the
scope of our endeavours through working with new educational establishments,
holding conferences, visits to England, building stronger links with VSO and
the New Curriculum Working Party in Beijing;
á
encouraging
the development of Action Research with Chinese characteristics, which seems to
be forming itself as a kind of collaborative Living Theory Approach to educational
AR.
A common feature of our work together, and a way of
enhancing sustainability for the AR project is its increasing focus on AR with
Chinese characteristics. Although this is in its early stages, it seems to be
characterised by:
á
a weaving
together of society and family as the context for educational improvements;[1]
á
an emphasis
on the influence of societal precedents' in the present and the future;[2]
á
an emphasis
on 'we' rather than 'I' as the means, purpose and fulfilment of social and
educational improvement[3];
All these seem apparent in a letter from Tian Fengjun
to Moira Laidlaw, February 2005.
Dear
Moira, I hope you are well and my best regards to your mother,
especially at this Chinese Spring Festival. It's a pity that the school Website
Centre is closed but I am lucky there is an installation of a family one now,
so it's very convenient for me to write you back about everything that is going
on here.
The postgraduate class was just finished last week. We were all busily involved
and successfully passed our two courses examination papers. Three days ago I
got time to go back to Haiyuan and see my parents. They are well and send you
and your mother their warmest regards.
Very good news I got last week from Beijing Foreign Languages Teaching and Research
Press -that our book will possibly be published if we do some revising work on
the draft-form, including references and the language itself. I am now doing
some of the work required and hope if you have some time to help me with a
bibliographical list and send them to me by email. I hope the book would get
published late Spring. Is this very exciting?
It's also very good news from you that 'China Development Brief'[4]
or Matthew Perrement would possibly come to Guyuan to visit or interview us.
It's a good chance for us to make the Centre publicised and please let Matthew
know about my warmly welcome to him to Guyuan.
I am also very pleased to know that you are going to have a meeting at Bath
next week with Jack and the AR Group. How important if all the experts at the
meeting could know how their Chinese colleagues are striving to improve
education as the practical, and perhaps only, way to improve their social
development. How they are working deliberately to realise the collaborative
educational living theory and hoping to help students learn better and teachers
develop their professionalism well. And how colleagues here are making
different ways to implement the New Curriculum more effectively, though we are
in a very remote place and have only poorly-equipped facilities here. All this
may possibly cause a "stir" in Ningxia or even in China. What a
glorious task people are fulfilling!
Whether this all happens or not, it is still good
enough to let them know that colleagues here are trying to enlarge their
collaborative work with one or two middle schools and two colleges (one is
Wuzhong Technical-vocational College in Ningxia, the other is possibly Shangluo
Teachers' College, south in Shaanxi Province). A bright, widely expanded
'Collaborative Living Educational Theory Action Research' and the New
Curriculum Implementation from our Experimental Centre will be developed in
this new year.
I am still thinking about the importance of getting Masters a Degree Programme
going, possibly even this year although I am sure this would bring Jack and
your other friends there many difficulties. If you can spend time with Jack
during this time to talk more about this programme and let me know I would be
very appreciative.
With a cup of tea, I am very happy to be writing this letter to you. Hope you
may also be enjoying your tea as you read this.
Warm regards to you and please give my warmest wishes to your mother. I am
looking forward to seeing you soon.
What are we looking for?
Recently, the specifically collaborative nature of our
work has been concerning us a lot because in China, group-norms often supercede
individual ones and social ramifications sometimes take preference over
individual needs. Validity is, it seems, differently arrived at between Western
and Chinese ways of doing things[5].
We are now looking at the work currently being done here at Bath in terms of
inclusionality (Rayner, 2004), and a 'life-affirming flow of humanity'
(Whitehead, 2005) which we believe, will be of enormous benefit to us in understanding
and developing our collaborative abilities further. We wish our colleagues to
gain insights, which might deepen our ability to evolve an authentic Chinese
way of enhancing the educational value of our AR Centre and its work.
In discussions with colleagues in January 2004, we
have concerns about how we might achieve this in approaching the following:
á
widening our
research-skills and knowledge;
á
improving
classroom practice;
á
improving the
practical and educational quality of inservice training[6];
á
widening the
scope of our influence;
á
improving the
collaborative nature of our work in order to enhance its educational quality.
It seems likely that one of the chief issues we need to address will involve
the dynamics between power and knowledge[7].
In July, 2005, Tian Fengjun and Gao Qin (from the Hui
Middle School we work with) are coming to Wiltshire (to the John Bentley
School) in the first, we hope, of many exchange-visits to promote links between
rural China and England. Both are conducting AR as an integral part of their
professional development and look forward to meeting you then.
We would value any thoughts you care to give us about what we are trying to do.
Please ask as many questions as you like. We truly value making links between
your work and ours in the pursuit of enlightenment and improvement.
Warmest regards,
Colleagues at CECEARFLT, February 2005.
[1] Liu Xia, (2004), 'How can I help my students to learn through respect and encouragement?' paper at above website.
[2] Tao Rui, (2004), 'How can I help to motivate my students?';
Li Peidong, (2004), 'How can I help my students to be more confident in classwork?';
Zhao Xiaohong (2003), 'How can I help my students to become more responsible for their own learning?' papers at above website.
[3] Tian Fengjun, (2003), ÔAction Research and Creativity in Foreign Languages TeachingÕ, Journal of Foreign Language Education, Nov./Dec. ISSN 1000 5544.
Li Peidong &Laidlaw, M., (2005), 'How can we facilitate a process of educational change?' joint paper in process.
[4] China Development Brief is a bilingual, educational newsletter and newspaper. A British and a Chinese journalist will be visiting Guyuan in late-March.
[5] This is a huge statement and there is not the space here to go into this at length, but this is a truism we have found to be a contributing factor to ontological and epistemological conclusions about the nature of our work.
[6] In March 2005, GTC has been given the go-ahead to act as a centre for re-training 53 adult-workers to become English teachers over a two-year period. The first year will be spent honing their English skills with some educational theory. The second year will consist of practical teaching and courses in AR.
[7] Foucault, (1986), 'Power/Knowledge', Jossey Bass Publishers, New York.