Search results for: China

In this study, the authors examined the design of a short-term study abroad program for inservice teachers and the impact of the program on both teachers’ intercultural competence development and their teaching beliefs and practices. The authors conclude that study abroad programs offer a unique opportunity for teachers to develop intercultural competency and teaching beliefs through intercultural immersion experiences. They also emphasize that teacher educators interested in integrating study abroad programs in professional development programs need to design intentional and meaningful integration of cultural experiences, teaching opportunities, language learning, reflection, and collaboration.

This study surveyed the beliefs of behavior, learning, and teaching that the mainstream Han and minority Mongolian Chinese teachers in the same school contexts hold about their Mongolian Chinese students. It found that the two groups agreed that teachers’ inadequate planning and management were the major sources of their students’ behavior problems while students’ home backgrounds, abilities, and efforts explained their learning failure or success. Both believed that students’ emotional and social problems were more important than their learning problems for them to attend to, and their expertise in helping students develop self-worth was more important than their expertise in curriculum and pedagogy.

The present study compared Chinese kindergarten teachers' values and perceptions of program quality with trained raters' assessments of quality in order to gain insights into effective professional development for improving teacher quality. Results shows teachers' beliefs of quality is the strongest predictor of their self-assessment. Implications of the findings for professional development are provided, along with limitations of the current study and recommendations for future studies.

In this study, the authors investigate associations between Chinese elementary teaching candidates’ mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) and their experiences in mathematics courses, mathematics methods courses, and student teaching. This study provides evidence that candidates who were exposed to greater numbers of topics in general pedagogy courses had higher levels of MKT in number and operations (N&O). The study also found that exposure in general pedagogy courses to two specific topics, classroom management and collaborative group work, was especially valuable for teaching candidates’ MKT. Finally, this study found that the extent to which a teaching candidate engages in student teaching with full responsibility for instruction was directly related to their level of MKT in N&O while the overall length of student teaching did not seem to matter.