Teaching in K-12 Classrooms in China Today: Emerging Perspectives and Issues

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium examines the challenges and responses of the current teaching practices in China’s K-12 classrooms in the context of an ongoing nation-wide educational reform, namely the “new curriculum” reform. The presenters address this issue from a diverse range of perspectives, including teachers’ teaching conceptions, students’ experience, aesthetic nature of teaching, and identity construction in relation to new classroom teaching practices. All studies to be presented are empirical ones using qualitative methods and provide a collage focusing on what is happening in Chinese K-12 classroom teaching within the reform context. This symposium is also a collective effort to explore the possible patterns and theoretical foundations to meet challenges of China’s education reform in a radically transforming society.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Section 5: Social Context of Research on Schools and Communities

Chair

• Huajun Zhang, Beijing Normal University

Papers

• Exploration of Teaching Conceptions of Teachers in China: A Case Study - Zhiyong Zhu, Beijing Normal University; Xiaohui Fan, Hohai University

• Listening to Pupils’ Experiences of Pedagogical Changes - Wei Kan, Beijing Normal University

• Teaching as Aesthetic Experience: Using John Dewey to Reflect Classroom Teaching in China - Huajun Zhang, Beijing Normal University

• Cultural Identity Formation in an Online Cross-Cultural Communication Project - Liang Du, Beijing Normal University

Discussant

• Gerard A. Postiglione, The University of Hong Kong