Co-Developing Teaching Materials for Civic Classes in China

• In Event: Curriculum Collaboration of Researchers, Policy Makers, and Practitioners for Civic Competence: Perspectives From China

Abstract

Purposes
Chinese government has made it the fundamental task to “foster virtue through education” and emphasized the civic competence of students. Yet, due to the overpowering influence of the Chinese political and ideological system, lived experience is often missing or simplified in civic classes. Building upon constructivist theories, this research intends to answer following questions:
1. What kind of teaching materials can be selected to stimulate confusion, questioning and internal learning needs and promote deep thinking and inquiry?
2. How to develop and shape teaching materials to incorporate complex problems and relationships to address the theme of learning?

Theoretical framework
This study builds on the learning theories of constructivists (Piaget, 1988; Phillips, 1995) and situated cognition (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Graves, 1998). It applies the principle of “anchor” (Glaser et al., 1999; Love, 2004) in the design of teaching materials. “Anchor” refers to authentic and situated activities and goals with inherent ecological validity and includes embedded data for students and teachers to explore.

Research design
This research shares the same data with the previous paper (on controversial issues) and focuses on the portion of co-developing materials with teachers. We took several steps in selecting teaching materials:
Step 1: Selecting major teaching material
The curriculum unit of “life and wellbeing” builds upon a phenomenal Chinese film “Dying to Survive”. Similar to “Dallas Buyer’s Club” from the U.S., the film reflects the conflicts of different stakeholders (patients, medicine companies, and law enforcers), and connects with the main theme of this unit and covers the main objectives of “respecting for life” and legal education.
Step 2: Designing sub-themes and issues
Public discussion on this film includes the prices and management of drugs, health care system, and judicial philosophy. We analyzed students' prior knowledge and experience, made adjustment based on students' reactions, and eventually designed six sub-themes for the curriculum unit.
Step 3: Selecting and tailoring supporting materials
We collected and edited supporting materials for students’ self-guided learning in and out of classes. There is a total of 17 pieces of reading materials (about 18,000 words) and 11 video clips.
Step 4: Implementing and assessing
During the implementation of this unit, researchers conducted classroom observation, textual analysis, semi-structured interview, and a survey to investigate the effect of teaching materials.

Preliminary findings
1. Anchored materials, both major and supporting ones, can stimulate students’ great enthusiasm for learning and arouse their life experience. Students engaged deeply with the discussion and their response rate increased by 50%.
2. Students developed an avid desire to read the materials actively and developed the habit of returning to the materials repeatedly to look for evidence during discussion.
3. Teachers not only developed a new understanding of the difficulty of selecting materials to meet students' learning ability, they became more competent in collaborating with researchers to design materials.

Scholarly significance
This study implemented the principle of “anchoring” when designing learning materials for civic classes contextualized in China. It thus presents a unique perspective on the model of anchoring and how researchers and teachers could co-develop teaching materials

Authors

• Xiaomin Shen, East China Normal University

• Li Cheng, East China Normal University

• Guiqing An, East China Normal University

• Lianghua Liu, East China Normal University