Early Field Observation

1. Infant/Toddler
Without a doubt, the most fun I’ve had with this assignment has been using what we’ve learned in this course and observing my own son and, on a more limited basis, his similarly-aged cousins when we’ve visited them in their hometown on occasion. My son, Caelan, is now 19 months old and as such falls into the “toddler” stage of development. He is in the midst of exploring his autonomy, both physically and mentally, and often goes out of his way to “push the envelope” of behavior he knows his mom and dad don’t like. “No” is quickly becoming his favorite word, alongside “shoes” because he loves to walk, run, and explore. Nevertheless, he is still very much attached to both of us, but especially his mom, and will run through the house looking and calling for her when she is gone. It’s been fascinating to see him as he come more and more to grips with both spatial and object permanence, now knowing that he’s already looked in a given room or behind that door, and she wasn’t there.
Probably the most interesting thing about this more formalized observation of Caelan has been with his linguistic development. He is learning 3 languages at once: English from me, Mandarin and the local dialect Wenzhounese from his mom. He has very little trouble understanding all three, and has been doing his utmost to transfer that receptive understanding into active use. Notably, though he understands a concept or object in all three languages, he invariably chooses to say the term that is easiest. For “light,” he’ll say “’ite” rather than the Chinese “deng pao,” while for “picture,” he chooses the Mandarin “hua.” For “all done,” he chooses Wenzhounese, saying “a-ba” rather than the Chinese “mei le” or English.
To touch on Piaget’s assimilation into existing schemata, it has been interesting to note the ongoing refinement and guided correction of his own schemata (Carson 2003b). Caelan loves to look at the sky. Not too long ago, everything in the sky was either “moon” or “star,” but he has since been reclassifying what he sees up there based on the gentle corrections of mom and dad. Now he knows clouds are different from birds, and even leaves on trees. He continues to accommodate to the increasingly complex world he observes, and it’s fascinating to watch.

2. Preschool/Early Elementary School
Though I had hoped to observe a Montessori school here in Shanghai, the one I was able to find online did not see fit to reply to my inquiry. Fortunately, I was able to arrange a few observations at the Xinzhuang Campus of LeNing (Learning) English School. Since they had classes ranging from 4-5 year old pre-primary students, up through 12-13 year old students, I was able to observe a wide array of students’ cognitive and learning behaviors.
My observation of the pre-school students was in the classes of an American teacher named Dennis. He is a very active, and excited teacher who is very much of the notion that a class’ energy level and focus is a direct reflection of the energy put in by the teacher. At this age-range, and through most of the elementary level, the classes are 1.5 hours, broken into two 45-minute lessons. Each class focuses on one or two core concepts, and uses a variety of hand-on exercises, activities, and games to keep student interest and maximize exposure to the concepts of the lesson. In one of the earliest lessons I observed, Dennis’ class was brand new, only a few weeks into what was for many of their, their very first experience without mom in the room. Unsurprisingly, there were still episodes of crying and needing a parent to intervene. Mostly, though, Dennis did a very good job of keeping his class on-task and smiling, having a whole host of activities planned, and knowing when to change activities as attention spans began to wane.
A major focus in Dennis’ class, and each class observed at Xinzhuang was the teacher’s commitment to encouragement. Appropriately, his encouragement focused overwhelmingly on the attempt and the motivation of a student, the “effort and the joy of learning, not the person and not the product” (Carson, 2003a, p. 9). A student who happened to flawlessly know a word or idea was not lifted above the others who had a more difficult with the pronunciation of “kangaroo,” for instance, but was instead celebrated and rewarded equally to all the other students who put forth the effort into the activity and attempted the task. Learning objectives were paired with a reward activity – bowling with a big rubber ball, or throwing it into a basketball hoop, to list a couple – to encourage the children to try and stay excited about the material. As long as there was a good-faith attempt, the reward was given.
The disciplinary systems of the classes at Xinzhuang were of interest, and were largely compatible with Carson’s exhortation that lasting discipline replied on establishing and encouraging positive “patterns of behavior over time” (p. 10). Each class established and followed a predictable arc from beginning to end – the students clearly knew the format, and what was expected of them in each class. When misbehavior arose – as “all children misbehave occasionally” – the focus was not typically on punishment, but rather on correcting the behavior and refocusing the class on the appropriate activity (p. 6). There were a couple of occasions observed that did require punitive action. However, rather than simply doling out an arbitrary punishment, there was a clear of what the misbehavior was and why the child would now be losing a star next to his name. The explanation was given in terms that were at the level of understanding for the child, was then translated by the local teacher who assisted Dennis.

3. Later Elementary School
I was also able to observe several upper-level courses at the Xinzhuang LeNing campus. These were taught by a British national named Ian. These classes were, unlike the lower-level classes, broken into two distinct 45 minute parts, with one focused on verbal practice and pronunciation taught exclusively by the foreign teacher, and the other focusing on grammar and writing skills taught exclusively by the Chinese teacher. There were still large elements of the lower-level classes used here, games, participation, but the classes began to look and act more “class-like:” less frenetic running, and more focused practice on skills.
Ian, similarly to Dennis, would present the grammatical lesson point, and then encourage the students to repeat him, thereby engaging them in mimetic learning. From there, though, he differentiated himself from Dennis’ necessarily teacher-centric model and instead had the students take turns acting as the teacher, asking the other students questions based on the lesson and correcting them as they were able. It was, as it is in my own classes, notable to see the level of engagement and positive energy from the students in these environments. With few exceptions during my observation, the students needed little encouragement to participate and were genuinely excited about the class. Empowering them in a semi-democratic fashion is quite effective in getting them invested in their own learning. This was made all the more clear by my subsequent observations at other schools, which I discuss below.

4. Middle/High School
I was able to observe for a few hours at Xuhui Zhongxue, which encompasses both the middle school and high school-aged years. I was able to observe primarily Mr. Liu, who is a history teacher for the second and third-year students there. The differences between his – and the school as a whole – philosophy and that of our class, my lower-level observations, and that of my own school were pronounced.
Engagement between students and teacher was almost entirely one-sided. The students had clearly been conditioned to listen and accept what was coming from the front of the classroom, and rarely had much to say, ask, or do, other than listen to Mr. Liu’s presentation. Though my grasp of Chinese is limited, I knew the general topic being presented: Chinese history during the in Dynasty (roughly 1115-1230 CE). Though Mr. Liu did occasionally stop and ask if there were questions, the hour largely went by as a one-sided lesson of anti-Adlerian philosophy: students only engaged by and with the instructor, and said instructor acting not as a guide in a cooperative, equal society, but as the conduit of “Knowledge” to fill the students’ minds (Carson, 2003a). Though “rote is […] a valuable strategy for certain types of learning”, my impression of Mr. Liu’s class was that of rote and little more (Tenets, p. 2)
My other experience at Xuhui Zhongxue was somewhat more encouraging. I observed Mrs. Chen’s English class for grade 10 students. Her style was to some extent more intercommunicative, and more engaged than my previous observation. As is especially necessary for a linguistics class, there was far more interaction between teacher and student, as well as student to student, than Mr. Liu’s history lesson, and the students were obviously more engaged as a result.
Still, there was a major issue that bothered me at the time, but was able to better define after reading our week 8 texts. Specifically, that for a class about the English language, there was relatively little used. Only rarely, when defining specific grammar points did Mrs. Chen – and consequentially her students, too – break from Chinese. It seemed more a discussion about English, than a study of the language itself. Upon reading such tenets as “The primary cultural system in any society is its natural language” and “To learn a language is to learn a method of thought and a way of life”, it was made more clear: the structure of the class was fundamentally insufficient to give students a real window of understanding into the language they were ostensibly studying, or the cultures from which it comes (Tenet, p. 1). The students, by and large, clearly had a good grasp of the mechanics, rules, and procedures of constructing a sentence using English words. They were able to name and define tenses and forms I had never learned formally, yet in many cases struggled to string a sentence together orally, or pull key information points from a CD-based exercise. They were learning about the language, but largely ignoring or avoiding the language itself, Mrs. Chen included.
There was a noticeable divide in Mrs. Chen’s classroom as I observed it, between the students who clearly were focused, attentive, and largely seemed to understand the material presented… and those who were “phoning it in.” For one reason or another, there were several students… typically having situated themselves in the back or a corner of the classroom, who had long since decided that while they were required to be physically present in the room, their minds were under no such compulsion. The ones I noted were virtually nonexistent in the class, neither paying attention, nor being paid attention by the teacher. It was as though there had been an “arrangement” made between them: neither would, save for the most prosaic of rituals, acknowledge the other. It was a truly sad and demoralizing thing to realize.

5. University
I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Wenzhou Medical College, the school I had once taught at in Wenzhou, Zhejiang. Their School of Foreign Language was willing to let me observe a few classes with a teacher named Warren. Warren specialized in teaching upper-division English writing and public speaking. As most of the students he taught were English majors, there was a considerable degree of focus and expertise in his style.
It is still the case that, though WZMC is quite prestigious in China as a medical school, the school of foreign language (in virtually any university in this country) is primarily for women, and male students with scores too low for any other area, but families rich enough to ensure their entry into university. This remained in full effect as of my observation of Warren’s classes, and a general overview of the campus. Though there were several male student in some of the lower level classes I saw – I estimate less than 10-20% of a class, on average – by the upper-division courses that figure had shrunk even more to there point that there was only one or two males per class in Warren’s lessons, and with class sizes frequently exceeding 30.
Still, it was notable to see the difference in command and confidence these upper level students possessed when compared to the first or second-year students I both saw and at one time taught. Warren operated, though in a more authoritarian fashion than perhaps many college professors in the US, in quite a more democratic fashion than many of the Chinese staff I was able to see in my time again at WZMC. Students were encouraged to question, to discuss amongst themselves, and to be generally generative to the process of learning. And they responded quite well to this environment. Students I saw with their normal Chinese professors behaved, at least in passing, much as they had in the Xuhui high school I had observed: silent, attentive, receptive, with a mind to simply take notes and memorize the information therein. But with Warren’s class, that was not sufficient. Participation and contribution to discussion were encouraged, and critical thought rewarded. As such, the students had learned that, at least in that classroom, there was quite a bit of elasticity in their otherwise fairly rigid classroom relationship between one another, and with the teacher as well. There was a considerable degree of willful participation, questions and problems posed sheerly out of personal interest, and a general feeling of energy and interest that was lacking from so many of the classes I have observed in this period.

6. Adult Workforce
My circumstance precluded me from venturing very far from my own profession to observe and talk to the general adult population via their work environment. Largely I am restricted to my own field, which I realize is somewhat limiting. After all, the kind of Westerner who find themselves in China is a fairly narrow subset of their home population. Still, it was illuminating to discuss and listen to the other foreign workers with whom I was able to speak.
For many to whom I spoke, their sojourn in China was merely temporary. It was seen as a job, or a stop on an otherwise-continuing adventure. Most of the people I work with are as young or even younger than myself, and so it’s not surprising that many would lack direction, and are still in the midst of “identity diffusion” (Carson, 2011, p. 18). Teaching English abroad, at least in Asia, is not commonly thought of a “career” so much as a way to pay the bills while travelling or “finding” oneself.
Still, I was able to talk to a few people who defied the mold as had been teaching abroad for long stretches of time. For some, it was still just a paycheck, but for others it was a passion that they had realized: to disseminate their knowledge to those who wanted to learn it. As in any other field of teaching, there are few feelings of accomplishment quite like being a part of a child’s journey to understanding. It was heartening to see that such a spark could persist even in a few of those who had been in country for more than a decade.

7. Senior Life
Unfortunately, the idea of a Senior Citizen Center is utterly foreign to China. It quite simply does not exist in any meaningful sense. Instead, the elderly are – now more than ever – given the task of direct childrearing for their grandchildren, while the parents are off at work. For those less fortunate, that can sometimes mean working in entirely different provinces, and only seeing their families once or twice per year.
The only seniors I have ever been able to have any meaning access to, my grandparents-in-law, fit this paradigm exactly. They had been central to the rearing of my wife and her siblings, while their parents had labored for years on end. Unfortunately, I was not able to interview them, as one passed away recently, and the other does not speak Mandarin (much less English).

8. Summary
Though I know that my own observations are in many ways quite different from the average student in the NPTT program, I don’t think they are any less valuable. In the course of this exercise, I have been able to both compare and contrast the philosophies and theories of the psychologists and teachers we have studied against the dual backdrops of a culture that operates on a very different worldview, and a substrate of the educational system that is a mix of the two.
Though many of my observations were in direct opposition to the guiding philosophies of pedagogy we have been studying in the NPTT program thus far, that has largely served to reinforce the validity and necessity of those philosophies, from seeing the dangers and pitfalls of their absence. Moreover, when I have seen elements of them present in the classrooms I observed, their positive influences were made all the more apparent by their irregularity. With these lessons and observations, both positive and negative, I feel prepared to move forward in this program toward making myself a better educator.



Resources
Carson, R. (2003a) “Adlerian Social Psychology”, EDCI 552 Coursepack. Montana State University, Northern Plains Transition to Teaching, Bozeman, Montana.

Carson, R. (2003b). An Introduction to Vygotsky. Bozeman, MT: EDCI 552 Coursepack.
Montana State University, Northern Plains Transition to Teaching.

Carson, R. (2011). Early Field Experience Manual. Bozeman, MT: EDCI 552 Coursepack. Montana State University, Northern Plains Transition to Teaching.

“Tenets and Principles of Effective Learning Communities.” EDCI 552 Coursepack. Montana State University, Northern Plains Transition to Teaching, Bozeman, Montana.