Chinese Teachers’ Expectations and Perceptions of U.S. Students’ Behavior in Chinese Immersion Programs: A Cultural Difference Perspective on Classroom Management

• In Event: Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Classroom Management in Different Countries, Subject Areas, and Venues

Abstract

This paper investigates six Chinese teachers’ cross-cultural classroom management experiences in Chinese immersion classrooms in the U.S. An interpretive analysis of the Chinese teachers’ expectations of their American students’ classroom behavior and the strategies they used to manage misbehavior revealed that the Chinese teachers tended to hold their home cultural expectations of student classroom behavior and stuck to the strategies brought from their home culture in the beginning of their cross-cultural teaching, but were able to develop new strategies to manage the students as they were more acculturated to the U.S. classroom culture. These findings suggest that cultural differences in expectations and strategies should be understood and cross-cultural support in classroom management should be addressed by professional development providers.

Authors

• Wenying Zhou, Michigan State University

• Guofang Li, Michigan State University