Chinese Teachers Confront Change: Moral and Civic Education in Transition

• In Event: 60.033 - Challenges to Teaching Moral Education for Adolescents

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to explore how Chinese high school teachers manage the goals and practices of civic and moral education in a period of rapid social change. This was part of a study of how 8th and 11th grade students in Shanghai and Nantong understood civic and moral concepts, which overlap in Chinese culture. 16 teachers participated in extensive interviews, two from each of the schools in the study. The data to be presented in this paper derive from three sections of the interview: questions about what a good person is, and what a good citizen is, and the responses to a vignette about a real life demonstration on an environmental issue where some schools had advised that student participation would lead to serious sanctions. Two forms of analysis will be reported; thematic analysis and Foucauldian discourse analysis. Thematic analysis demonstrates themes of
a) young people being too immature to make reasoned judgments about civic issues and to regulate emotion – a significant theme in Chinese moral education
b) the tension between civic engagement and the need to focus on the highly competitive examination system that determines higher education
c) the rights of young people to express their beliefs and to acquire civic and moral skills by so doing
d) the danger that sanctions for dissent might impair future opportunities.

Whether or not teachers appear to support action at least among older students, there is an implicit but evident tension around their role as agents of the state.
Teachers see moral education largely in terms of personal relationships and private respect, including to whom one has obligations. Civic education includes social and community responsibility and virtues such as honesty, leadership and integrity. The messages they wish to convey to students reflect the interaction of Confucian thought with modern collectivist principles. The next stage of our analysis will use discourse analysis to unpack how the discourses drawn upon position actors, enable action (or otherwise), and reflect the perception and construction of power relations. This will enable the researchers to understand more fully the processes involved in civic and moral education.

Chinese society is in transition towards more entrepreneurial and individually-oriented values, which valorize competition, but the strong orientation to community responsibility is very evident. Grassroots democracy, including localized protest, is valued (the environmental demonstration succeeded in getting the polluting factory relocated) and to be encouraged to an extent; challenging the Party is not. The research with the teachers is being compared with the results from the students’ interviews, focus groups and questionnaires, reported elsewhere. This study provides extensive insight into cultural processes and different cultural perspectives, as well as unpacking how civic and moral education may contribute to cultural reproduction.

Authors

• Siwen Zhang, Harvard University

• Helen Haste, Harvard University

• Xu Zhao, Harvard University

• Robert L. Selman, Harvard University