On Wednesday, I spoke at the Tennessee Educational Technology Association Summer Institute. It was a great day sharing ideas with technology directors, technicians, and staff development folks. I was listening to some local news on my way back to the airport (driving an amazing Chrysler 300 that Dollar bumped me up to). The story that caught my attention was about a group of local educators who had just returned from a fact-finding tour of schools in China.
The first comment was that Chinese teachers were keen to learn how U.S. schools taught creativity. I’ll leave that issue for another day. Then a principal talked about how Chinese educators valued productive planning time for teachers. She said that while most U.S. teachers teach five or six periods a day, with a minimum of “on-the-job” planning time, most Chinese teachers teach maybe two periods, and the rest of the time is spent perfecting their lessons. She said that our teachers do their planning on their own time, and she didn’t see how we could possibly compete.
This is a paraphrasing of the statements, and I was trying to also listen to my GPS, while driving this huge but very fine car, and listening to the radio. A bit much for me. Can anyone corroborate this story, that schools in China give so much time to teacher preparation?
2¢ Worth!
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Hello David,
I recently spent 12 days in China, returning June 4. We mainly visited Universities in Shanghai, Xi’an, and Beijing, but we also spent some time at one high school and one middle school in Xi’an.
I cannot corroborate the story about prep time because it didn’t come up in our conversations. I was struck however about how their instructional methods are very different from ours…or should I say very much like how ours used to be.
The 8th grade class that I visited had about 65 students. The students were extremely well behaved and disciplined. I talked to a group of about 10-15 of them for 25 minutes and it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had in a long time. They were very respectful, very engaged, and just a darn nice bunch of kids. Short blog post here: http://barrydahl.blogspot.com/2006/06/chinese-kids.html
My impression was that at all levels they teach using the expert model. The teacher is the expert and the students are to sit there and listen. Very big on standardized testing and not much use of group projects or similar activities.
It was clear to me that the teachers take great pride in their lectures and in their abilities to deliver a lecture. Based on that, I would say that there is a chance that it is true that they are given a great deal of time to “perfect” their lectures, although I cannot say so definitively.
I think we should get Jeff Utech to chime in on this question since he would have some first-hand knowledge. He teaches at an American school in Shanghai so I would be interested to hear how the American school is different from the Chinese-run schools and what he knows about the normal Chinese instructional methods and the question about prep time. I’ll send him a note and a link. Barry
I ran across this on ed.gov. It’s a bit outdated, but…
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/CPRE/t61/time.html
Thanks Barry for the heads up on the conversation.
Not sure about this, I get back to Shanghai on Aug. 2nd. I’ll do some investigating at that time and see what I come up with.
I do know, as Barry points out, that they are very traditional in their delivery of instruction. Traditional being lecture based. They are fascinated by our school system and we do from time to time have visitors from Chinese schools visit our classrooms. What I have found in talking to some of the visitors is they want to know how to prepare students for American Universities. How do you have a well disciplined classroom and at the same time allow enough freedom for there to be imagination and openness to engage students? A question I guess we are all trying to answer. 🙂
Dave I posted about this awhile back – http://learningismessy.com/blog/?p=83
At the beginning of the post I have a link to an article from ASCD:
Are We Fixing the Wrong Things?†By Yong Zhao
that might help you.
Brian
I don’t know about China, however, I am familiar with the concept of “Lesson Study” which comes from Japan.
Teachers in Japan spend half their day collaborating and learning together in order to improve their lessons — but the focus is not on just developing a bunch of lesson plans, the focus is on learning more about how their students learn and how best to help their students learn. The name says it all — “Lesson Study” — collaborative study of lessons (and learning).
I found a couple of resources that can explain this better than I can:
http://www.lessonresearch.net/
http://www.nsdc.org/library/publications/results/res12-00rich.cfm
Imagine the “Professional Learning Community” concept (Rick Dufour), but structuring the day so that teachers literally spend half the day (everyday) in PLCs (the practice in Japan) instead of 1 or 2 hours per week in PLCs (the average here in the U.S.).
Educators in the U.S. who have jumped on the “Lesson Study” bandwagon have done so under the premise that in order to improve classroom instruction, teachers need to spend more time together in collaborative learning, looking together at student work, and examining their practice in MUCH greater depth.
Yep. That’s what I’ve heard too.
The School District of Philadelphia sent a group of educators to China this year as part of an exchange, and they were really struck by how little the teachers were in the class, but how much was expected of them outside of class, tutoring students one on one, preparing lectures, etc…
I have followed this discussion with great interest. The thought of being valued as a professional and given time to hone your craft and prepare effective lessons is a pipe dream! I currently teach in a New Zealand primary (elementary) school. The teachers here have just won, through union action, 2 days per term (10 weeks) for duties other than teaching. Apart from that they teach all day every day, every subject, and even do lunch duties and extra curricular activities!
Previous to this I worked in the Western Australian school system where we were given half a day a week for ‘duties other than teaching’. This is a little better but …
I’m just booking my ticket to Japan now 🙂