Cross-cultural Collaboration within Global Competition: US Teachers’ Perceptions of “Best Practices” in Hong Kong and Macau

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday I)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Global-Local Tensions of Globalized Education

Proposal

In our increasingly globalizing world, education is constantly compared and assessed on an international level. Perhaps the most prominent example in policy and economics is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that compares and ranks students’ performance on reading, math and science in one third of the world. International assessments like PISA lead many scholars and practitioners to believe there are models of “best practices” in the top ranking countries that could be identified and replicable across education systems (Kamens, D. H. & McNeely, C. L., 2010; Zhao, Y., 2011). Critics question whether education can be adequately assessed by a regime that claims to be ideologically neutral and does not take into account of social, economic, or cultural differences. Furthermore, critics question the possibility of culturally neutral education practice (Steiner-Khamsi, G., 2004). Are best practices transferrable?

The current study aims to consider this question from a new perspective, that of the educators themselves. Do teachers find that the performance in top ranked schools is replicable to other cultural contexts? To find out, researchers will accompany US educators and pre-service teachers into classrooms in a top ranked country. Qualitative data will show if the classroom teachers are demonstrating “best practices” from American teachers’ perspectives; furthermore, data will show if the American teachers believe these “best practices” can be adopted in their own classrooms.

Two schools in Hong Kong and two schools in Macau are selected as “exemplary schools” with the help of the education faculty at a partner institution who have an extensive knowledge of PISA as well as the local schools. Hong Kong and Macau are well known for their education performance in math, science and reading on international testing. Hong Kong was ranked second in the average score of mathematics, science, and reading in 2015 while Macau was ranked fourth (OECD, 2016). Hong Kong students were also ranked second for their mathematics performance in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2015. Thus, we selected Hong Kong and Macau as our first sites to explore our study.

This study will qualitatively analyze how American teachers perceive the teaching practices in math, science and English classrooms in Hong Kong and Macau during their two-week fieldwork program organized by a large research university. Through the study, researchers will explore American teachers’ perceptions of the teaching practice in Hong Kong and Macau, specifically 1) if the teaching practice in Hong Kong and Macau can be recognized as “best practices” from their viewpoint; and 2) if any of the teaching practice in Hong Kong and Macau can be adopted and implemented in their own classrooms.

The first group of participants for this study are pre-service and in-service teachers in the global fieldwork program who will visit schools in Hong Kong and Macau. They will observe the math, science or English classrooms in the selected schools in Hong Kong and Macau while the researchers will videotape the teachers teaching. The second group of participants are pre-service and in-service teachers who will watch the video clips of the math, science or English classes, which are selected by the teachers and education faculty in Hong Kong and Macau as the “best practices”. Both groups will participate in video-cued interviews, which is inspired by Joseph Tobin’s research method in Preschool in Three Cultures. Using video clips to stimulate conversations and reflections in the interviews has been found in Tobin’s research to be an effective way to engage the teachers (Tobin, J., Hsueh, Y., and Karasawa, M., 2009). In this method, we will 1) videotape the classrooms 2) ask the teachers in the videotape to identify the “best practices” in the video 3) show the “best practices” video clips to education faculty for confirmation or discussion 4) show the video clips of “best practices” to the first group of participants 5) show the video clips of “best practices” to the second group of participants, 5) bring the questions raised in the interviews back to the teachers in the videotapes and education faculty in Hong Kong and Macau for further explanation and clarification, 6) the feedback will be shared and discussed in the follow-up group interviews with the participants. All data collection will be completed by early January with analysis completed one month later in early February of 2019.

Through this study, we hope to understand more about transferability of best practices in the classrooms from American teachers’ perspectives, instead of the perspectives of administers and policy-makers. We also hope that observing and watching the “best practices” in Hong Kong and Macau can help American teachers reshape and reframe their understanding of “what constitutes the best practices”, and therefore, inform their own teaching and their professional dispositions as teachers.

Authors

• Wei Liu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Allison Witt, University of Illinois