Teaching as Aesthetic Experience: Using John Dewey to Reflect Classroom Teaching in China

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

Abstract

1. Objectives
This study identifies a common problem of teaching practiced by many Chinese teachers: lack of consistency in teaching design and teaching practice. Particularly, the inconsistency is demonstrated between the designed teaching objectives and the delivered teaching practice. Influenced by various guidelines or standards from the upper level administration, teachers often lose their vision on how to integrate their understanding of the teaching material, the teaching method, the process of teaching and the expected consequence.
This study will use Dewey’s philosophy of aesthetic experience as the theoretical perspective to explore an alternative practice of teaching: aesthetic teaching. It aims to explore a new vision to help teachers gain aesthetic experience in teaching and thus build teachers’ confidence and identity in teaching as an enterprise of their own. However, this study has no intention to provide a practical manual or teaching model because a particular teaching pattern or style cannot be separated from the particular teacher’s teaching experience, as Dewey indicates.

2. Theoretical Framework and Argument
In this study, Dewey’s idea of doing and undergoing as two inseparable elements of aesthetic experience will be applied to examine teaching practice (Dewey, 1934/2005). The distinction of aesthetic teaching from the problematic teaching is its consistency in doing and undergoing. In teaching, doing is teaching preparation, practice and reflection while undergoing includes the evolving purpose developed in the process as well as emotions attached in teaching process.
Through this study, I suggest that aesthetic experience – a unified and satisfying fulfillment in an ordered/intended movement of continuous interaction with the object (Dewey, 1934/2005, p. 39-40) – is significant for teachers to cultivate their confidence and identity in teaching. The developing sense of self for teachers is considered crucial for teacher development.

3. Methods and Data Source
In this study, I will use qualitative method to examine three Chinese teachers’ teaching practice and then explore a new vision to improve teaching and cultivate teachers’ identity in their own teaching practice. To reflect the possibility of transforming teachers’ fragmented and inconsistent teaching practice into unified and continuous teaching experience, I will follow these three teachers for the whole semester. The researcher will play an active role in the teaching experiment these teachers conduct by giving comments and suggestions but the researcher will not intrude into their teaching.

4. Educational and Scholarly Significance of the Study
The call to have one’s own vision in teaching is a strong need from Chinese teachers. This study thus has an important educational meaning to help many Chinese teachers who are struggling of looking for their own vision and keeping consistency in teaching.
Discussion of Dewey’s philosophy in the practice of Chinese teaching is meaningful in terms of exploring Dewey’s value in contemporary Chinese modern transition for a democratic society: what happens in classroom is nevertheless a crucial part for a healthy social transformation.

Author

• Huajun Zhang, Beijing Normal University