Teacher Development Experienced in RICH Innovation

1

• Teacher Development Experienced in RICH
  Innovation

Huang Aifeng Hu Meixin Foreign Languages
College Zhejiang Normal University April 12, 2003
2
What is RICH?

• R---Research based learning
• I---Integrated curriculum
• C---Community learning
• H---Humanistic outcome

3
R---Research based learning

• Topic presentation (group or individual work)
• Project presentation (group or individual work)
• Creative writing (research report or survey
  report)

4
I---Integrated curriculum

• Textbooks
• Internet resources
• Library resources
• Peoples resources
• English movies, lectures or songs
• Resources from other sources
• Developed and elaborated according to students
  interest and curiosity through research tasks.

5
C---Community learning

• Teachers
• Teachers meet regularly to solve problems,
  share experiences, get support and understanding
  in the community.
• Students
• Students contribute their resources, share
  their life and learning experiences, complete
  cooperative tasks, seek support from each other
  in the community.

6
H---Humanistic outcome

• Learn to be
• Learn to do
• Learn to learn
• Learn to cooperate
• Responsibility
• Sympathy
• Sharing and appreciation
• Learning with enjoyment
• They can only be evaluated through stories.

7
What is the purpose?

• To develop students as life-long learners with
  critical thinking, a strong sense of
  responsibility and a loving heart.
• To develop teachers to be educators, but not
  knowledge transmitters.

8
What has been achieved for students

• Language acquisition accelerated
• Research ability
• Cooperative ability
• Curriculum developing ability
• Evaluation and reflective ability
• Creative ability
• Responsibility
• Confidence

9
How does RICH motivate students to learn with
interest?

• Democratic environment
• Great opportunities
• Trust and confidence
• Needs and feedback
• Passion and action
• Relevant
• Experiential

10
How does RICH evaluate students work?

• Process-oriented
• Students self-evaluation
• Peer evaluation
• Portfolios to record the learning process and
  the achievements

11
How does RICH develop teachers?
12
1.Teacher Development Forum

• Teacher expertise
• Teacher identity
• Teacher change
• Teacher reflection
• Narrative inquiry
• Action research
• Community learning
• Institutional practice
• ( Wu
  Zongjie, 2003)

13
2. Teaching innovation

• Teaching and learning methods
• Curriculum content
• Evaluation policy
• Belief systems

14
3. Developing learning community

• Ideal speech situation
• Common community language
• Talking authentically
• Back to narrative
• Critical discourse analysis
• (Wu Zongjie, 2003)

15
4.Teaching method teachers as ??

• Teachers in RICH are asked to teach teacher
  development course to postgraduate students in
  which teachers get better understanding of
  education and language teaching through teaching
  others.

16
5.Relationships in the community

• Teacher as facilitator, supervisor, helper,
  organizer and co-learner in RICH classroom.
  Students form learning communities in which they
  have exchanges and cooperation.

• Teachers form a professional community and meet
  regularly to discuss what has happened in the
  classroom for better understanding and more
  effective teaching.

17
6. Language of the community

• Teachers in the community talk about teaching and
  research as parts of their life
• A common language has been developed in the
  community which, as a discourse symbol, hold the
  members as a group.

18
7. What has been achieved for teachers

• Understanding
• 1.Education is much more than language teaching
• 2.Teaching, researching and living can be
  harmonized.
• 3.Community is important for teacher development

19
What has been achieved for teachers

• Ability
• research ability
• curriculum developing ability
• process evaluation ability
• harmony
• Teachers life, work and research are bing
  harmonized.

20
8. Why joyful in RICH?

• Self-fulfillment
• Self-reward
• Fruitful
• Understanding gained

21
8. Why painful in RICH Existing Gap

• Current educational discourse place emphasis on
  language proficiency examination and on what can
  be seen immediately.
• Accepted research papers are concerned with grand
  stories, but not secret stories.
• Whats been done can not be understood and
  accepted by current educational discourse.

22
9. Why difficult to change

• Students have been trained to accept and memorize
  whatever is taught.
• Existing concept of knowledge does not match the
  new notion of learning.

• Salary, promotion, publication and reward will
  not be affected al all even if teachers do not
  change with times.
• To change is risk-taking and time-consuming---
  income can be decreased.

23
What to be gained

• Students gain knowledge and abilities both
• Students are sensitive to environment which is
  the broad learning resource.

• Teachers gain understanding and teacher
  expertise
• Teachers become sensitive to the natural and
  social environment which can be educational and
  instructional.

24
Solutions on the way to harmony!

• Make life, teaching and research harmonized.
• (Wu Zongjie,
  2003)

25
Visible achievements of RICH

• Papers
• Published 13
• unpublished 5
• Projects
• funded provincially 1
• funded by ZNU 7
• awarded provincially 2 (both first prize)
• Vedio disc 1

26
Time for questions
27
Thank you very much!